Magento is an open-source content management system for ecommerce sites, and it is arguably gradually taking the market in that regard. This platform dominates the online market scene with a 26% share, powering over 150,000 online businesses, making more and more budding entrepreneurs to invest in the platform, boosting the market for experienced Magento developers. Certain statistics state that sales using Magento systems are higher than those using other content management apps.
And yet, the default Magento settings are completely useless when it comes to search engine optimization and online marketing. Search engine optimization (SEO) involves the processes behind maximization of the number of visitors to a particular site by ensuring the site appears high on the list of results turned in by a search engine. This is done with the use of tags and probable search words.
This is not to say that the Magento platform does not have settings, after all, it is the most popular and successful eCommerce app now, but the settings available are not optimized for SEO and online marketing. And so, leaving the default setting is the main reason why despite using the most popular platform on the market, your sales are not improving as they should.
So, we have put together the most likely settings that you may have ignored or left on default, which are probably affecting your online visibility.
Is your title tag still listed as ‘Home’?
The mistake most users make, especially those who are new to content management software development, is to leave the title tag as ‘Home’. This definitely reduces the chances of the site showing up on a search engine result page (SERP). Your title tags are optimized by changing it from ‘Home’ to a keyword that is not only unique to you and your brand but also identifies and directly represents whatever service or product you are into. An example is, if your store produces men’s accessories in Africa, a good title tag would be ‘Men’s Accessories| Buy Accessories for Men Online in Africa”. This way, a search result is more likely to turn up your store and would-be customers would understand immediately what you represent.
Have you optimized your logo and images?
The alt tag on your logo enables it to be recognized on SERPs and when managed properly, can help you redirect a viewer to your site. The default title from your Magento app would negate the possibility of that happening, which is why we recommend you:
Open your admin area:
- System
- Configuration
- Design
- Header tab
- And enter a new title in the default settings.
We suggest that whatever title you are putting in, ensure that it is not only search engine friendly – that is, word which are likely to be searched on a search engine, but that it is also descriptive. Many Magento clients and even SEO professionals include this for all product images found within the store, and while that is applauded, it should be noted that they often neglect to change the alt text for the logo.
Have you created or do you refresh your sitemaps?
On the Magento platform, ‘Google sitemaps’ does not hold for only the Google search engine, but for Yahoo! and Bing as well. Sitemaps function to inform web crawlers such as those used by search engines to locate recently updated site content. This is a major search engine optimization tool as areas of your store which may not be browsable such as those which can only be viewed using Flash players, hidden portions of your store, isolated pages and internal links can be accessed and show up on a search engine result page (SERP) when they have been sitemapped.
One must also remember to constantly refresh the sitemaps. One way to do this is to set up your Magento platform store so that is automatically refreshes the sitemap at regular intervals. To do this:
Go to admin;
- System
- Configuration
- Catalog
- Google sitemap
Do you have a cache solution?
Despite Magento’s many qualities, the page loading speed is definitely a minus on the platform as it is very slow. But with the features and capabilities, this hitch can be ignored, especially if the user optimizes the platform to overcome them.
Viewers have very little time to waste on a page, with the latest statistics given at 20 seconds per page, and the longer a page takes to load, the more likely a viewer would just leave the site entirely. This is a very necessary factor to be considered in retaining customers and can be handled by having a cache solution. The cache solution might include a server upgrade, code optimization or simple caching which would reduce page load time at very little extra costs.
Do you set up redirects after deleting old pages?
After deleting an old page or changing the uniform resource locator (URL) and not producing a proper redirect from that old page, you increase the chances of 404 mistakes on your site or store. While this may not affect your search engine optimization in the right sense, but it does affect your marketing. Viewers or would be customers are more likely to leave your page without completing a transaction if they encounter even a single 404 error message. This can be tragic if the particular search string which the potential customer had typed into the search engine was what resulted in the 404 on your site. This can mean that apotential customer could completely write off your store.
These are some of the more likely factors you may have glossed over in your installation that are most likely the cause of your low stats on search engine results or clicks. Others may include: titles which do not include keywords. This is evident by a store which specializes in Shirts and hats for men, that has ‘Haberdashery’ on its title tag. Except the internet is suddenly being used by the Amish, it is unlikely anyone would type in Haberdashery to locate an online hat store.
We hope this helps!