”Optimizing Your MagentoStore for best SEO

Practices”

Ronald DodCEO/Owner of Grey Umbrella Marketing

Overview of Presentation1. Magento Store Basics2. Best On Page Optimization

Practices3. Best Off Page Optimization

Practices

Live Tweet Questions @

#Imagine2015SEOWe will be sure to answer right

after the presentation

About Grey Umbrella Marketing

Our agency, Grey Umbrella Marketing, focuses on driving more targeted traffic to eCommerce businesses through SEO & Social Media Marketing, which increases revenues.

The majority of our customers use the Magento CMS platform, and in our professional opinion, it is the best platform for search engine optimization.

Why We Prefer Magento

Keyword Rich URL Structure Advanced Features and Functionality

Flexibility and Ease of Use

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Magento is our CMS of choice for our client’s search campaigns.

Goals of this PresentationThe goal of this presentation is to give you actionable items from our

experience that will help you optimize your stores for search engines to gain valuable targeted search traffic and sales.

1 2 3Obtain a better understanding of how to use your Magento CMS to obtain a better search presence.

Learn how to use best on page SEO practices for your store for long term sustainability.

Learn how to use best off page SEO practices for your store for long term sustainability.

Magento SEO BasicsThese are the basic things many Magento stores can improve.

Redirecting the www. to non www. version

Site Speed Improvements

Allow Guest Reviews

Enabling Caching

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Superior Site Structure

Redirecting & Caching

1. We want to either redirect the www.example.com to the example.com or the other way around. We basically only want one version, not two, which is what happens when you do not have it redirecting to the “base URL”. Here are the steps you need to take:

Go to: System > Configuration > Web > URL Options > Add Shop Codes to URLs then Change Auto Redirect to Base URLs to “Yes”.

2. Make sure enable caching in each category. Go to System > Cache Management > And then enable all settings.

Site Speed Improvements

To obtain the most optimal performance, you want to check your page speed directly from Google. Go to Google’s Page Speed Application and analyze your website. Work with your development team/agency to increase your score.

Enable Reviews

You always want people to write reviews for your products. The reason being is it produces more content for your website, and more likely, your products can rank for a wide variety of search phrases. If you do not have reviews enabled, select it by going to:

System > Configuration > Catalog > Allow Guests to Write reviews.

Superior Site StructureSite structure is critical to your success. Make sure to use the standard site structure:

Good -http://example.com/category/subcategory/product1http://example.com/category/subcategory/product2

1st Common Bad Site Structure –http://example.com/products/product1http://example.com/category/subcategory

2nd Common Bad Site Structure –http://example.com/categoryhttp://example.com/subcategoryhttp://example.com/product1

#2 On Page OptimizationHow to use best on page (optimizing the website’s content) SEO

practices for your store for long term sustainability.

Get organized with spreadsheets and keyword research

Optimize your meta titles, meta descriptions, and body content.

Clean the backlink profile out

Importance of body copy

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#1 Get Organized with SpreadsheetsCreating spreadsheets for your category pages saves time and keeps

you organized. You can do this for products too.

Keyword ResearchOnce we have our categories, we will want to do the keyword research. We personally

use tools like Google Adwords Keyword Tool or you can use the SEMRush tool.

http://semrush.comhttp://adwords.google.com

Keyword ResearchFor Google Adwords, go to Adwords, go to “Tools”, “Keyword Planner”, and then in “search for new keyword or ad group” put your URL in there, or you can put two to three keyword phrases in there like “red dresses”, “red dress”, “red dresses for sale”.

Once we have it downloaded and opened, we want to whittle it down to 5 to 10 phrases we think will be best for our specific

category page. For our red dress example, we would want phrases like “Red Dresses”, “Red Dress”, “Red Dresses for

Sale”, “Red Dresses on Sale”.

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Keyword ResearchNow that we have our research, let’s put it in our category sheet. Put the keyword phrase, the monthly

search volume, and then the CPC (cost per click) next to your page. Note: We use CPC so we can estimate how competitive the phrase it is and estimate conversion rates.

#2 Meta Titles, Meta Descriptions, and Body CopyGoogle loves unique and fresh content. It is difficult, but it is necessary to have unique product

descriptions, body copy, meta titles, and more. We want to make sure all of our meta titles, descriptions, and body copy are aligned with best SEO practices.

Here are the things we look at when optimizing the category pages:

Meta Title Tags

Meta Description Tags

Body Copy & H tags

URL Structure

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Optimizing Meta TitlesOur rule of thumb is no more than one keyword per line item, so let’s say we are optimizing for “Red Dress”, “Blue Dress”, and “The best red dress”:

Good – The Best Red & Blue Dresses for Sale at My Company

Bad – Red Dress – Blue Dress – The Best for Sale at My Company

You want to optimize it for users and not just stuff keywords in. Also, keep it 70 characters at max.

Optimizing Meta DescriptionsOur rule of thumb is just like the meta titles. Make it readable, one keyword per line item, and make it built for users:

Good – The best red and blue dresses for sale at My Company. We offer the best selection from our women’s wear and offer free shipping for orders over $100.

Bad – Red Dress and blue dress for sale at My Company. We offer the best red dress you can find on the internet and the best pricing on blue dresses.

Optimizing Meta Body Copy & H tags

• The same rules for meta tags applies to body copy, but this is a little more subjective.

• You want less than a 1% keyword density on your website and only one keyword per page title.

• The same rules applies to your page title as your meta title.

• Make sure your keywords are less than 1% on your body copy.

• You want your targeted keyword phrase in your first H tag whether it is an H1, H2, H3, etc…

Optimizing Your URLs

Since Panda 2.0, we noticed with a large content distributor, they were taking a hit in their Google search traffic because their URL was the same as their H1 tags. We fixed it by shortening their URLs.

For example:

Example.com/how-to-quit-eating-apples was the URL for an article called, “How to quit eating apples”. This was causing his website to be “over optimized”, so we changed the URLs to example.com/quit-eating-apples. This increased his traffic 100% in 5 months alone.

We want to make sure our URLs are different from our H tags, but still contain valuable targeted keyword phrases. Make them shorter, longer, or different.

#3 Clean Out The Backlink ProfileWe want to go through our backlink profile and make sure we disavow backlinks that can be hurting our rankings. We use tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, SEOProfiler, Majestic SEO, and, of course, Webmaster Tools.

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You also need to use your judgment on what a good link is. Links with a high risk score (SEO Profiler Tool) called “risk” and low “lis” should be disavowed. 2

3 Next, take your complete list of links and disavow them using the Google Webmaster Tools Disavow tool. Usually, the links you want to disavow are spam and cannot be contacted to remove them.

#4 Importance of Body CopyThere is a large fear and resistance to body copy on category pages. They think it will hurt the look

and ultimately conversions. There is also a belief that putting copy below the products does not help. Below is a ranking chart. It went from “not in the top one hundred” to page two. The only

different was a 300 word blurb.

#4 Importance of Body CopyOn average, our client’s organic impressions and sales increase by 45% with body copy on their

category pages underneath their products.

If you cannot put body copy on the category pages, you can write great blogs and interlink them to your category pages. This creates a solid site structure.

#2 Off Page OptimizationHere is how to use best link building and social media marketing to gain authority so Google will value our website over our competitors for our

different keyword phrases:

Power Page guest blogging

Social Signals

Build content on your site.

Forum Posting, Blog Comments, & Social Bookmarking1 4

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Power Page guest bloggingPower pages are gigantic or awesome pieces of content. These can be ultimate guides,

reviews, lists, or blogs that are very popular. To create them, we want to research the industry and content.

Power Page Guest BloggingNow that we have our topic, we

need to write it. Either have a writer do it or your internal marketing

team.

Once it is written, it is time to pitch! Make a spreadsheet of different authority websites your content

would be aligned with their audience. Then contact the content

editors and pitch your content.

Power Page Guest BloggingHello [Name],

I saw you published work about [keyword here] on [URL here]. My team and I spent a great deal of time putting together an in-depth article on [keyword here] and think your audience would absolutely love it. Can we send it to you and would you consider it for your next position on your content calendar?

Thanks,[Name][Company][Contact info]

Social SignalsPost your content on your social media platforms, and, more importantly, all of your

backlinks/blogs you have written. Use social advertising tools to really get it out there to your target market.

Build Content on Your Site.Using the same methods for power pages, create compelling and awesome content for

your blog and share it on social media.

Once you have the content built, you can also build links to it from popular social book marketing sites like Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, and more. You can also use your

justreachout.io tool and tell content editors about your piece of content.

Things to Keep In Mind1) Quality over quantityIt is difficult to focus on quality because everyone wants instant results for their efforts but be patient. It works, it just takes time sometimes 6 months to a year.

2) Tier your link buildingWhen you get an awesome guest post featured, tell the world about it. Go out and post it on social media and post it on social book marks. This creates a tier system and Google values your higher level backlinks more.

3) Do not spam anchor textWhen you include hyperlinks, do not include your targeted keyword phrases. Make sure you only use your company name, your domain, or something non-related like “click here”, “visit it here”, etc…

Download Our GuideWe went ahead and put together this presentation into a more detailed PDF and the spreadsheets we discussed in this presentation. Visit the URL below to download it all!

Imagine.gumarketing.com

Conclusion

Thank you for hearing our presentation.The next steps are either connect with uson our social platforms, give us a call, or send us an email.

Twitter - @Gu_MarketingFacebook – facebook.com/greyumbrellamarketingEmail – rdod@gumarketing.comPhone – 470.428.1436