E-Commerce website development is in huge demand nowadays. After the recent pandemic, the number of people buying products and services online has shot up in an unprecedented way. It can be the right time to Develop an e-commerce website. However, it’s important for you to pick the right tool or framework for developing such websites. You must know, there are plenty of e-commerce site tools and applications available to your rescue.
Magento commands a major share of this market. Not only is its CMS easy to use, but also scores over the competing applications/platforms owing to its robust SEO-friendly measures.
Why is Magento ahead of rivals in terms of SEO?
Nearly all e-commerce website builder tools and frameworks include some inbuilt SEO features. Without SEO deployment, your site faces the risk of getting lost in a huge sea of similar sites online. Opting for Magento can be a smart decision in this regard.
Listed below are the top SEO friendly features found in Magento that gives it an edge over rival products in the segment:
1. Product Fields Auto-Generation
In any website, the major SEO elements are the H1 tag and meta title for sure. In Magento, users get the benefit of Product Fields Auto-Generation. This helps in generating product meta-texts with the product attributes.
2. Category Page Optimization
In an eCommerce website, products are displayed in various categories, and there are subgroups too. This helps in making products easily accessible to the customers. For effective category page optimization, it is necessary to set the canonical URLs in the right way. You have to look for duplication as it makes your site look less professional. The Layered Navigation feature found in Magento ensures the visitors can navigate and find the right products minus hassles. The visitors can also make use of drop-down filters to tweak search results.
3. Sitemap enhancements
In Magento, the default XML sitemaps have been enhanced. Basically, an XML sitemap is a file containing a list of urls that the search engines like Yahoo, Bing and Google crawl. The XML sitemaps often have attributes that offer useful data about the urls to the search engine crawlers. When your site has a well designed XML sitemap, the search engines can locate your page fast. All in all, Magento offers an effective way to boost your site’s online visibility.
4. Schemas
Magento 2 was unveiled with a wide range of tools for structured markup data optimization. Using this feature, it becomes easier to make your site pages stand out in online search results. You can make use of attributes like currency, rating stars, and price. The good thing is this feature is activated by default.
5. Independent Navigation Links
Navigation links are basically the text links for your site’s product pages. The majority of e-Commerce platforms/tools generate such links automatically, as per the product category and name. In some tools, changing these links may be tedious. Magento gives the users absolute control over the navigation links. From the SEO perspective, it is bliss.
6. Independent Page Titles
You may have seen texts appearing on the browser top, and that is the Page titles. It is also useful for defining the bookmarks that users save in their browsers. Magento lets the users make independent page titles for all the site pages.
7. Customizable H1 Tags
On any web page, the H1 Tag is still the visually notable content. That is why SEO experts and digital marketers pay importance to it. So, it can be hard when you find H1 tags for your pages are auto-generated, and they can’t be changed easily. This does not happen with Magento. It enables H1 tag customization.
8. Integrated Content Pages
In SEO, the number and quality of links in a site are important. However, getting quality links to your site also depends on the type of platform you use, to an extent. In Magento, using engaging and shareable content is easy, and these help in attracting useful backlinks.
9. Faster Load Times
In SEO, site loading speed is very important. Online shoppers hate waiting for websites to load, whether they are using PCs or mobile devices. Studies have shown even a delay of 1 sec in page loading can make your site lose approx—7% of prospective customers. So, Google pays importance to site load speed for SEO. Using Magento’s inbuilt settings, it is possible to accelerate the loading speed of a site. These settings are available under configuration.
Apart from Customization options, Magento’s architecture is equipped to cope with huge site traffic better than many competing platforms. That is why so many large companies rely on Magento.
Ensuring you get the most out of Magento from an SEO perspective.
While Magento is by default an SEO-friendly platform for eCommerce site development, it is possible to obtain better results by adopting some policies.
10. Updating to the newest version
Magento keeps updating the software from time to time. You should check if your site is running on the latest version of Magento or not. Upgrading to the newest version ensures you get new features, including new SEO features.
11. Performing content optimization
To ensure the ranking of your Magento site is improved, it is necessary to optimize the content. This includes every type of content, including dynamic content, text, and images. Optimizing the product images and giving them alt tags make things better for SEO.
12. Checking for duplication of content
Ensure your Magento site does not have any duplicate or similar-looking content on some pages. This can bring down the ranking.
13. Hiring the right developer and SEO agency
To get the most out of Magento, ensure you hire an ace Magento developer or agency. A veteran agency specializing in Magento e-Commerce site development can fulfill your needs the best. It is likely to have the expertise to utilize the platform in the best way. It is better if the agency also offers SEO services. It is necessary to check the portfolio of such agencies and go through their client feedback before signing up for services.
Summing it up
Magento is a popular eCommerce site development platform that comes with lots of SEO-friendly features embedded. While some of these SEO-centric features are enabled by default, the users need to tweak some settings to get the best outcome- in terms of site ranking and conversion. The good thing is making these changes is simple. However, you can obtain the best experience in this regard by hiring a Magento development agency that is well versed in SEO too.