Magento is widely regarded as one of the most popular ecommerce platforms in the world. Its dynamic design, complex databases, and expansive framework make it a common choice among large brand names who do sales of $1 million or more.
However, it’s no surprise that such a powerful platform comes with a few bugs. For all of the features and capabilities Magento offers, it’s bound to have some problems.
One of the most common problems users run into with Magento is with their SEO. Often, they don’t understand the system and aren’t even able to identify the problem.
So, here are the top 8 Magento SEO problems and how to fix them!
1) Magento Site Speed
Because Magento is such a large ecommerce platform, this can negatively affect site speed. Pages load slowly, images take forever to show up, and customers get frustrated and end up leaving the site.
While this is happening you’re not only losing customers. You’re also losing out on your organic search performance.
See, when Google decides on what websites it should feature on its top results, page load speed is one of the factors it takes into account. Google wants to provide their users with the best experience possible, and users don’t want to use a website that takes longer than a few seconds to load.
Luckily, there are a few ways to speed up your website, such as:
- Disable your default logs.
- Use a server with enough RAM.
- Compress images and other front-end applications
2) URL Rewrites
Magento can create product URLs that lead back to the original catalog path. This results in duplicate URLs being created based on the title of the product page. This can be a problem, since this can happen randomly and can lead to a negative customer experience.
Fortunately, utilizing Robots.txt to block these URLs is often all it takes to fix this problem. However, URLs can revert back randomly, so always be on the lookout.
3) Using Magento Seo Canonical Tags to Indicate Duplicate Variants
Often, users will create one product as a simple product to show off multiple variants of that product on the product page. For instance, a user might create a pair of shorts as a simple product to show off different color variations for that pair of shorts.
However, users often forget to rewrite their product copy onto each of these variant pages, which can make your product listing pages seem empty to Google when they crawl your website.
In order to resolve this without having to rewrite content for every variation, use the canonical tag to link back to your core product. This will show Google that the additional product pages are different variations of one item and it will give them some additional content to crawl, which will help you rank better in their search engine.
4) Using Default Title Tags
Magento tends to default to using the product name as the title tag. Since the title tag is one of the few things users see from the search engine, this makes it ineffective for SEO purposes.
Instead, users should conduct keyword research and then rename their title tags to something more general and broad. You want to use keywords that people are more likely to search for.
Changing your title tag is easy. Choose your product page from the backend and simply change the text in the “Page Title” field.
5) Duplicates from Filters
If you have configured Magento to canonicalize pages that use filters that only append a query string, you don’t have to worry about this. However, if you’re using a theme that uses a filter that generates new URL’s, be careful. This will create duplicates of primary pages, knocking down your SEO ranking.
Instead, just enter this within thesection of your page:
This will ensure that your pages aren’t being indexed on the search engine.
6) Indexed Search Results
Search result pages are another thing that you don’t want to be Google. Similar to the method to avoid duplicates caused by filters, you’ll want to enter this within thesection of your page:
This will ensure that your search result pages aren’t being indexed on the search engine.
7) No Redirects for Changed URL’s
When changing URL’s, the page will go to a 404 error page if you don’t make Magento aware of this change.
In order to do so, go to your System > Configuration > Catalog on the backend, then choose “Search engine optimization”. There, you will see a tab for “Create Permanent Redirect for URLs if URL Key Changed”. Make sure this is set to “Yes”.
8) Using Proper Heading
Make sure to only use the H1 tag when creating headings. Similarly, make sure that subheadings are created appropriately. H2 headings should be inside H1 headings, H3 headings should be within H2 headings, and so on.This helps search engines understand your website better and will help your ranking within the search engine.
The Takeaway
Magento may seem difficult to navigate, but these 8 tips should be all you need to troubleshoot the most common issues! Leave a comment and let us know how they worked for you.