SEO is everywhere because it matters. We’ll start right away by getting that on the table. Search engine optimization is still king, and may be so more now than ever before. Even in the world of eCommerce, and perhaps especially in the world of eCommerce, SEO is the key to success.
Magento is just one of the available online platforms for eCommerce today, but it’s one of the most popular. As such, we wanted to create a guide to help you get to know Magento SEO and what it can mean for you.
Magento is a powerful eCommerce platform, but only when properly configured. Essentially, this means that it is what you make of it. Shopify is a lot more plug-and-play and ready-to-go right off the shelf, but it doesn’t offer the dynamic features.
We’ll get into that more in a bit, though.
Magento currently has about 270,000 stores on the platform around the world, and while it does have a lot to offer, you have to make sure that you’re applying all of the best practices and using all of the best features of the platform in order to maximize your SEO efforts and successes.
If you’re here looking to maximize your eCommerce SEO, you’re in the right place.
We’re here to help with anything that you need when it comes to search engine optimization, but part of that comes in giving you the tools to empower yourself– let’s start by discussing whether Magento or Shopify is the best eCommerce platform based solely on the SEO aspect.
Magento vs. Shopify – which is better for SEO?
Of course, before you can begin on your SEO adventure, you’ve got to choose the best platform for your eCommerce store. After all, that could impact a number of elements of your shop’s overall success and the SEO efforts that you make.
For example, Shopify is notorious for its general ability to grow with organic traffic alone, but Magento is known for dynamic, open-source content that can create a killer online store and presence overall.
Basically, it’s less about which one is better for SEO and which one is better for you. Shopify is great for beginners and those starting with small stores. Those who need a simple interface will love it, and it still offers plenty of robust features and tools, including a host of SEO solutions.
Magento, on the other hand, is not hosted or subscription-based (open-source, remember?). However, it does offer advanced development and programming features for those who want a more customized option.
Ultimately, both will be better handled by the SEO experts. But if you’re using Magento, you definitely want an expert hand.
Magento is great because it is so customizable. However, that level of complexity is also what keeps beginners away.
If you’re on the fence about which platform to use, here are some of the reasons that people work with both platforms for their various marketing needs.
Magento
- Strong community support
- Open-source, meaning free to use
- Phone support is available
- The flexible platform features plenty of customization
- Magento commerce requires little to no coding knowledge
- Extensions available for Magento 2
Shopify
- All themes are SEO-friendly
- Comprehensive eCommerce store builder
- Ease of use
- Lost of payment and checkout solutions
- Tons of apps available to extend SEO efforts and overall functionality
Both sites also have good customer support and offer phone support for those who need it. Shopify does have a lot more costs attached, including a fee for every transaction outside of Shopify Payments.
However, Magento will take more effort to learn and more time to set up and integrate. It won’t be as “set it and forget it” as a Shopify site, but you should also see that as a positive thing– after all, the dynamic features and customization ability give this platform more opportunities to help you find success in SEO and other efforts.
The biggest downside to Magento is that while you can theoretically load an unlimited number of products, the load speed or server performance could be seriously affected depending on your host and domain.
On Shopify, everything is managed and hosted, so that’s never an issue.
Ultimately, each has its pros and cons to offer, but the sheer nature of the Magento platform that allows such unique customization makes it the far better choice for SEO in most cases. Up next, we’ll dig into just what the right SEO can do for your Magento eCommerce store.
What good SEO can do for your Magento store
The first thing that a solid SEO strategy is going to do for your Magento store is make it possible, and potentially even easy, for your customers to find you. Everyone asks about SEO and why it matters or if they need it as if we’re all out here creating these guides just for fun.
If you Google search something like “Magento SEO”, you’ll find dozens of guides, blogs, and other resources that are all going to tell you the same thing: it’s not whether it matters.
It matters. The thing that is important about Magento SEO is that when you do it right, it can have a number of benefits for your eCommerce store. Here are just a few of the biggest perks.
Increased Visibility
When you incorporate proper SEO, you’re going to ensure that you attract the right traffic and increase the visibility of your brand to those who matter.
With Magento SEO tools and optimization efforts, you will have a much better chance of being found and generating traffic that converts.
Easier Targeting
With search engine optimization, you can use keywords to target specific audiences or demographics. You can even customize a campaign for a specific product or product line so that you can drive sales in a specific area. It’s all about targeting the most likely prospects that want to buy what you’re selling. With the right Magento SEO strategy, that’s easy.
Better Logistics
The logistics of optimization often get overlooked by the average person. However, if you know SEO, you know how much these things can matter.
Magento is great at helping with things like page speeds, load speeds, and overall performance because of the dynamic coding features and integrated customization options. It also offers a better user experience than most optimized platforms when done correctly.
Flexible Content Management Solutions
Magento SEO tools also make it easy to manage all of your content. The optimization starts at the top and includes every single aspect of your site, along with adding new content to create value and a sense of authority.
Integrating this all into one platform and solution is going to save a lot of time and hassle.
Easy Monitoring and Analytics Tracking
When you incorporate Magento SEO into your eCommerce store, you’re going to get convenient access to analytics and monitoring tools that will help you manage your optimization efforts in every way.
These tools will be integrated with Magento for your convenience and help you stay on track and ahead of the competition in all areas of optimization.
Of course, this all comes back to the bigger picture and the whole goal of Magento SEO in the first place: increasing traffic to drive sales and increase your bottom line. If you do it right, that part comes easy.
How easy is it to improve your Magento SEO?
If you can perform a basic Google search and handle tasks like optimizing (or creating) meta titles and descriptions and writing optimized headers and titles for all of your pages, then Magento SEO is easy to improve.
If you can’t do these things, or simply don’t have the time, it’s still not difficult because SEO experts like our team are here to help.
Essentially, the process is only as difficult as you make it. So far in this guide, you’ve learned the value of and the benefits that come from optimizing your Magento store. Now, it’s time to actually talk about the optimization process and what it entails.
Spoiler alert: it’s a lot easier than you think. And even still, no one will judge you if you leave it to the SEO experts.
The Enterprise edition of Magento is actually super-easy to optimize because it was built with SEO in mind in the first place. It even auto-generates SEO-friendly URLs for your pages based on their headlines or titles and the relevant content.
Talk about a time saver, because optimized URLs are a must, but usually a pain to actually change on your own.
Magento is also open-source software, which means it is free to use and has a lot more extensions and plug-in options.
It also requires a little more computer skill and coding knowledge to make the most of all of the features, but that’s well worth it for what you get.
The easiest way to start optimizing your site is to perform a simple site audit and see what areas need improvement. This is like getting a cheat sheet for your SEO, guys, so pay attention here.
An audit will tell you where keyword density is off, whether titles and content are properly optimized, and so much more. It’s like the audit is writing your attack strategy for Magento SEO.
Magento is so customizable and there are a variety of tools out there that are designed to capitalize on this feature. As such, it quickly becomes one of the most valuable and easiest platforms to use for optimizing your eCommerce store.
Beginner’s guide to increasing organic traffic in Magento
If you want to increase your organic traffic, the first thing to do is address the “Three Pillars of SEO”: technology, relevance, and authority/trust.
Technology refers to the technical foundation of your website, and setting it up to be successfully indexed and discovered by search engines and users alike. Relevance is the optimization part that utilizes keywords and other research to create useful, value-added content for users.
Then, you have the most critical element for consumers today, and especially in the world of eCommerce: Authority and trust. These two elements are found in things like the quality of your content, including its length, links to your website, your presence outside of your website, and more.
These are all things that help determine just how trustworthy and authoritative your brand really is.
In order to start increasing organic traffic, you have a couple of big steps to take. In addition to performing keyword research and finding relevant keywords, you also need to make sure that you have the technical foundation of your site set up and ready to go.
This includes checking things like:
- URLs
- Headings and meta tags
- Navigation elements
- Site speed
- SSL security
- Sitemap crawling and indexing
If these things are in place, the rest of the Magento SEO tools and features are going to be easy to capitalize on.
You’ll also want to focus on keyword research and choosing the best and most relevant keywords.
This simple effort can do a lot to improve your visibility and your SEO efforts overall. As with any SEO strategy, it’s all about following the process and making sure that you capitalize on available tools and resources.
Take advantage of the analytics and reporting tools available. Then, as you’re starting to improve things and make changes to your SEO strategy, you’ll be able to monitor your efforts, see how successful campaigns are, and make necessary changes and adjustments along the way.
Keep reading to find out more about the best Magento SEO apps to help you accomplish these tasks.
Then, we’ll go through a quick tutorial and checklist to make sure that you’re absolutely ready to go with your Magento search engine optimization efforts.
The best Magento SEO apps
Part of any good SEO strategy is knowing which tools and resources to use. The same goes when you’re optimizing your Magento eCommerce store. You not only need to optimize, but you need to take the time to find the tools that will help you along the way.
Since Magento is so user-friendly and customizable, it also has a host of apps available to assist with various aspects of SEO and other marketing needs. The best of the best are listed here:
- Advanced SEO Suite
- Ultimate SEO Suite for Magento 1
- Advanced SEO by Activo
- Advance Sitemap and SEO Suite
- SEO Toolkit
- SEO Suite Ultimate
- Magento 2 SEO Extension
All of these apps will have a host of SEO tools and optimization resources that will help you improve your Magento search engine optimization quickly and easily. Plus, these tools may help you learn even more about the best practices for SEO in eCommerce and more.
You can use any of them, a combination of them, or even just invest in professional SEO experts that will decide which apps and extensions are best for you.
A handy Magento SEO tutorial
Now that you know a bit more about Magento SEO and how it works, it’s time to help you by looking at the actual implementation.
In addition to everything we’ve discussed thus far, we wanted to offer a little tutorial to kind of guide you through the beginning of the process.
Keyword Research and Site Audit
The most important part of this process is something we’ve already touched on- keywords and auditing your site. You can’t improve your SEO if you don’t know where it stands, after all, so an audit is a must. Get rid of all the bad elements and figure out what’s working.
An audit also lets you see what isn’t working so that you can make changes, integrate new apps, and update your SEO for the current eCommerce marketplace.
Once you’ve done this, you can start researching relevant keywords to help begin the optimization process.
Plan Your Strategy
Choose a strategy that works for your Magento SEO. whether this is the same strategy that someone else uses doesn’t matter. So long as it works for you, it’s the way to go. Come up with an optimization plan that includes measurable progress and actionable steps along the way.
You have to have a solid strategy in place before you can “dive in” to the optimization process. This is not a place where you can “wing it” and expect to get results.
Choose Your Tools
There are so many different optimization tools out there. With a platform like Magento, this is going to work to your advantage because of the customization features. Unlike Shopify and other hosted or managed solutions, this eCommerce platform offers much more customization.
You need to capitalize on the available tools to maximize your optimization efforts.
One of your tools might be the assistance of professional SEO services. We’ll give you the upper hand by taking care of all of this for you so that you can get back to your business.
Plus, we’ve got the inside scoop on the most effective optimization tools and resources for eCommerce platforms like Magento. If you’re ready to take your SEO to the next level, we’re ready to be one of the best tools in your arsenal.
Optimize, Analyze, Repeat
Once your strategy is in place and you’ve chosen your tools, you can simply optimize your content and start watching the results come in.
Optimization efforts are one thing, but making sure they’re right is another. That’s why you have to analyze your campaigns and follow the reports.
Google Analytics and other monitoring tools exist for a reason. Choose yours carefully so that you can monitor your SEO efforts and keep them updated as needed.
It’s an ongoing process and once you have the basics in place, you’ll want to make sure that you keep it going both now and into the future.
Magento SEO checklist
Now that you’ve got a better understanding of what you’re working with when it comes to your eCommerce platform, it’s time to recap and start thinking about building your own Magento SEO checklist.
Although it’s really quite a detailed process, here are some basics to make sure that you cover when building your own SEO strategy with Magento as your eCommerce platform:
- Utilize all headers, title tags, and URLs for keyword optimization
- Make sure to audit your site fully to find all issues and make necessary changes
- Get rid of duplicate content
- Optimize the homepage title– don’t just call it “Home”
- Create unique descriptions
- Perform keyword research for relevant keywords
- Set your sitemap and submit it for indexing
- Take advantage of Magento tools, apps, and professional SEO support
Speaking of professional SEO support, that’s exactly why we’re here. At Ranq, we understand the value of making the best of any search engine optimization efforts, including with Magento and other eCommerce platforms.
Contact us today to learn more about building an effective SEO strategy for your Magento site and how we can help.
Our team has years of experience in SEO, including optimizing for eCommerce, and knows how to get the job done. You’ve got a business to run. Let us help where we can.
We offer a host of professional SEO solutions, including Magento apps, tools, and other resources. We’ll have your eCommerce site ranking higher and looking better overall, using the tips and insight here along with other efforts.
Let’s get your eCommerce store optimized and get you on the fast track to success with Magento SEO today.