An SEO’s Guide to Magento Commerce

By Paul RogersHead of Digital Marketing for GPMD

Title Tags & Meta Descriptions

Primary keyword targetSecondary keyword target • I always optimise title tags with a primary and secondary keyword target

• The focus should also be on providing a compelling proposition

• Include call to actions and selling points

• The objective for your meta description should be to provide a more compelling proposition than your competitors

Redirects & Rewrite rules

• Ensure that you’re using 301 redirects instead of 302 redirects

• Where possible, redirect pages to a relevant alternative

• Don’t redirect things for the sake of it• Remember to redirect query strings &

pagination too• Think about hooks for rewrite rules before you

need to

URL Structure

paulsmith.co.uk/shop/paul-smith-wallets-443/paul-smith-wallets-damson-saffiano-leather-billfold-waller-agxa-1032-w270-d/product.html

paulsmith.co.uk/shop/damson-saffiano-leather-billfold-waller-agxa-1032-w270-d.html

• Avoid duplicate variations of the same page• Top-level products• Use directories and file extensions to help with rewrite rules and GA

filters• Don’t overuse keywords for the sake of it

SHOULD BE:

THIS:

PaginationUse rel=next and rel= prev to prevent Google from indexing paginated versions of pages

You can use our SEOpack plugin to implement this.

Avoid Unnecessary 404s

• Apply 301 redirects to transfer value• Apply 302 redirects if they’ve been

temporarily taken down• 404s can significantly reduce rankings• Orphan redundant categories and products

Performance / Speed

• Jpeg Mini – super image compression• Minimizing CSS & JS• Using Mod_Pagespeed• We’re looking into full-page caching – Inviqa

have already done this so contact them for questions

Catalogue Search Pages

Disallow the /catalogsearch/ directory in the robots.txt file and do a removal requst for the folder in GWT

Dealing with layered navigation

Turning Dynamic Pages into Static

/brands/breitling-watches.html?gender=17052

/brands/breitling-watches/mens.html

/brands/breitling-watches/navitimer-collection.html

Turned valueless pages into static landing pages

Sitemaps

• Where possible, ecommerce sites should have xml & html sitemaps

• Video sitemaps• Brand / segmented sitemap pages

Link Building

• Link building has evolved post-penguin• Context is king!• Editorial links are safest and most valuable

Thank you for listening!

Feel free to email any questions to paul@gpmd.co.uk!

Our SEOpack Module:magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/gpmd-seopack-9820.html

I also wrote this blog post about Magento SEO: gpmd.co.uk/blog/a-guide-to-doing-seo-on-magento-websites