Magento SEO Best Practices – Optimizing For Better Rankings!

Magento SEO is an integral part of your online growth strategy. But often, it can overwhelm you.

From search intent to keywords, backlinks, content, EEAT, technical SEO, and Google updates, you never get a chance to breathe. It is like learning a new language.

At the same time, you have many successful Magento stores that constantly ride the wave of SEO practices and mint money.

How do they make it work?

Well, they have mastered the art of Magento SEO for higher search engine ranks.

Can you do it? The answer is an enthusiastic yes.

With the right SEO strategy and implementation plan, you can also get qualified leads online.

In this blog post, let’s discuss the Magento SEO best practices that can rank your store higher and help generate more revenue.

What Are Top SEO Best Practices for Magento Store?

Here are 13 SEO best practices you need to master and consistently use to rank your Magento store higher.

1. Optimize your homepage for SEO
2. Add metadata for product pages & categories
3. Optimize URLs on the Magento store
4. Add Google Tag Manager
5. Optimize images for speed & user experience
6. Create content for SEO
7. Interlink your web pages
8. Optimize your Magento store for mobile devices
9. Create the best heading structures for your
10. Implement schema markup on your store
11. Improve Magento store speed
12. Add XML sitemap
13. Manage CSS & JavaScript

Let’s explore each of them here.

#1 — Optimize Your Homepage for SEO

Your store’s homepage is the most vital page in your store.

There are a few reasons for this.

1. Most of your visitors come to the homepage to navigate to other pages.
2. Your brand search traffic often reaches your store’s homepage.
3. Traffic from your social media profiles, like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, etc., also reaches your homepage.

Since your homepage gets most of the traffic, optimizing your Magento store homepage for SEO is necessary.

Here is how to do it.

1. Add a Strategic Title Tag

Many stores often keep the default site title given by the theme they use. This is a huge mistake that can cost you traffic and revenue. Without a proper site title on the home page, it is also hard for your store to stand out in the crowd.

Hence, ensure that you add a well-thought-out site title rather than the default one.

You can do this from your Magento store’s admin dashboard.

• Go to your Admin panel.
• Go to Content and then Pages.
• Now go to Homepage and Edit.

While adding the site title, make it descriptive with keywords related to your business. Also, make the title fall within 60 characters or 600 pixels. Or you can use a tool like Mangools to check it.

2. Add Selection of Keywords

Adding your primary keywords on the homepage is another way to improve your search engine ranks on the web.

You, at first, need to determine the most suitable keywords for your website.

To find these keywords, you can use popular keyword research tools like Google Keyword Planner, Semrush, or Ahref. You can also use ChatGPT to find the most popular keywords you can use on your Magento store.

Here is an example.

While these may not be accurate, this gives you a great place to start. Once you have finalized the keywords you want to use for your store, follow the steps below.

• Go to the Admin panel on your Magento store.
• Go to Content and then Pages.
• Now go to Homepage and Edit.
• Look for the Search Engine Optimization section.

Fill in the Meta Keywords and Meta Description fields with your target keywords and a concise summary of your store.

Keep the description within 120 and 158 characters or 680 pixels to avoid Google chopping it off. Again, you can use a tool to keep the description within this limit.

3. Improve Homepage Navigation

The homepage is one of the vital parts of the site. Users visit your homepage to go to other pages of your store. Hence, you need to create an easy navigation path for the visitors to follow.

Here are a few menu items you can add to your homepage to make navigation easier for your visitors:

1. Product category pages
2. Product collections
3. Discount pages

… And more.

Credit – Amazon

Apart from this, you can also create a search functionality on the homepage to make it even easier for users to search for products or services they are looking for.

All these improve the user experience of your site, which can help you rank higher on search engine result pages.

#2 — Add Meta Data on Your Web Pages

Magento offers built-in on-page SEO features to help customize metadata, such as titles, descriptions, and keywords for your product pages, categories, and other pages.

Optimizing the metadata for each of these pages improves the likelihood of your store ranking higher on search results on Google and other search engines.

1. Add metadata to your product pages.

Meta title appears on the search engine result page along with your site’s URL. It is what the searchers click to access your online store. And meta description is what explains the content on the page.

Here is an example.

On your Magento store, you can either leave it as the name of the product or optimize it with your target keywords. Our advice is to optimize it with your target keyword to increase the click-through rates.

Here’s what you can do to optimize the title on your product pages.

Go to Admin and access Content. Click Pages, and pick a page you want to add the metadata to.

From the Action section, click on Select and pick Edit on the drop-down menu.

Scroll down to the Search Engine Optimization section where you will see the field to add meta title and description.

Add your optimized title and click Save Page.

2. Add metadata to your category pages

Similarly, you can also add titles and descriptions to your category pages.

Go to Admin and access Products. Go to Categories and choose the category you want to add the metadata to. Find the Search Engine Optimization section and expand it.

You will find the fields to add meta titles and descriptions as per your categories. After adding them, click Save.

While adding meta titles and descriptions, adhere to the character limits. Although Magento allows adding more characters–more than 120 for the title and more than 160 for the description–stick to what’s ideal for search engines.

If you have any doubts, use a tool to ckeck  the character length.

3. Add meta details to content pages in Magento

Adding meta details, such as title, description, etc., on content pages such as blogs is vital to help you improve search engine ranks. When your blog posts and other content pieces rank higher, it can bring you organic traffic with high intent of buying from you.

For example, a highly optimized blog post on ‘Top Constumes for Halloween’ can bring you people who are looking for halloween costumes.

#3 — Optimize URLs on the Magento Store

URLs often go unnoticed and unoptimized in Magento stores despite the option to optimize them. The URL of a product or category page helps improve user experience as users quickly understand where they are when navigating a store.

An optimized website URL needs to be short and clear. It must also be descriptive so that the users can understand what it says.

1. yoursite.com/blog/magento-optimization-tips
2. yoursite.com/?menu-2/pageid?12Z3TN1TFsz6rhekpF3u5cIZ.html

Which URL would you prefer? Obviously, the first one, right?

This is exactly why you need to customize and optimize the URLs of your Magento store.

Magento prefers to have the following URL structure for each of your pages:

    — For a product category: yoursite.com/category/

    — For a product subcategory: yoursite.com/category/sub-category/

    — For a product page: yoursite.com/category-sub-category/product-name/

When customizing your store’s URL, you need to consider a few important elements:

1. Create descriptive and short URLs that are easy to read and remember for both the users and search engines.
2. Add the most relevant keyword to the URL to make it easier for both search engines and users to understand what the page is about.
3. Remember to remove the .html extension from your URLs. This will help you avoid any migration issues down the line.

1. Enable SEO-friendly URLs on your Magento Store

Follow the steps below to enable SEO-friendly URLs on your Magento store.

1. Log into your Magento store and go to Admin.
2. Now, go to Stores > Configuration.
3. From General, choose Web.
4. Change Use Web Server Rewrites under Search Engine Optimization to Yes. Click  Save Config to save the changes.

2. Enable URL Redirects

After enabling SEO-friendly URLs, you need to enable URL redirects so that your old URLs redirect to the new ones that you have just optimized.

1. Go to Admin and access Stores.
2. Then click Configuration and go to Catalog.
3. Expand the Catalog section to find Search Engine Optimization.
4. Select Yes from the Drop-down menu on the Create permanent redirects for URLs if the URL key is changed field.
5. Save the settings by clicking Save Config.

3. Configure Product Page URL

To configure your product page URL, access Stores from your Magento Admin.

1. Now, go to Catalog and choose the product you want to change the URL for.
2. Go to the Search Engine Section and expand it.
3. Add the product URL key using only lower-case characters and letters.
4. Now, save the changes by clicking Save Config.

These will help you enhance user experience and improve search engine rankings while supporting better product visibility.

#4 — Add Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager (GTM) is a free tool from Google that lets you manage and deploy various marketing tags on your website without modifying code. In simple words, tags are small snippets of code to track user behavior, conversions, and more.

This unique capability of GTM makes it an essential tool for improving your site’s analytics and SEO.

# Benefits of GTM for SEO

Adding GTM to your Magento store can have several SEO benefits, such as better insights into user behavior, traffic origin, and more.

Here are a few more SEO benefits of using GTM in your Magento store.

• Enhanced analytics: GTM helps track detailed user actions for better SEO strategies. Based on the analytics, you can improve your SEO efforts. For example, it can tell you which channels have the highest conversion rate and how to adjust your SEO campaigns for better ROIs.
• Improved flexibility: GTM allows you to adjust tags without needing a developer and use diverse ways to track your app or website’s performance. The intuitive design makes it perfect for A/B testing and quick SEO tweaks.
• Version control: With GTM’s version control features, you can test different versions of tags before publishing them. If needed, you can also go back to the previous version.

# How to add GTM to your Magento store

It is quite easy to add GTM to your Magento store by following the steps below.

1. Create a GTM account.

• Go to Google Tag Manager and sign up for a free account.
• Log into your Google account, add the necessary details, and click Create for a GTM account.

2. Get the GTM code.

• The GTM code has two sections. One needs to be added to the header section of your Magento store, while the other needs to be added to the body section.

• Copy the codes for each section and add them to the corresponding head and body sections of your Magento store.

3. Add GTM code on the Magento store.

• To add the code, go to Admin and access Content.
• Click Design and go to Configuration.
• Now click Edit the Store View.
• Go to Other Settings and then HTML Head.

Similarly, move to Footer. Now, add the GTM code for <body> under the ‘Miscellaneous HTML.’

You can also use any GTM extension or plugin to add the same. After adding the codes, go to your site’s source code by clicking Ctrl+U and check if GTM is active.

#5 — Optimize Images for Speed and User Experience

Images are an integral part of your eCommerce store. In fact, images single-handedly convince your customers to buy your products. A survey by Slazzer found that 90% of respondents consider the quality of product images vital in their purchasing decisions.

That means images are not something you compromise with, even though they are the heaviest elements of your store and affect your site’s loading speed.

The next best thing to do is to reduce the size and optimize the image. A few tips that you can use are given below.

1. Choose the right image format

Different formats serve different purposes. Choosing the right format can make a lot of difference to your store’s performance and appeal.

    — Use JPEGs for photos

    — PNGs for graphics with transparency

    — WebP for the fastest load times with high quality.

Selecting the correct format can impact speed without sacrificing visual appeal. Hence, figure out what you want from the image and choose the format accordingly.

2. Reduce image size without losing quality

Images make up a large part of your Magento store, and reducing their size can decrease the load on your server, as well. It can lead to immediate improvement in your store’s loading speed.

However, reducing the size can often affect the quality of the images.

There are several ways to address this issue.

The easiest and fastest way is to use tools to minimize the file size of images without losing their quality. Tools like TinyPNG and ImagResizer are widely used to reduce size without noticeable quality loss.

This improves page load speed, enhancing SEO and user retention.

3. Add alt tags for better UX

ALT tags improve accessibility and SEO by describing images to both search engines and visually impaired users.

Include keywords naturally to improve relevance without keyword stuffing.

As accessibility is becoming a statutory requirement in many countries, having alt tags is a great way to expand your store’s reach to an audience that is otherwise not available to you.

Credit – Semrush

A better user experience can benefit you in search engine ranking, as well.

4. Add Descriptive & Keyword-rich File Names

Descriptive, keyword-rich file names help search engines understand image content.

For example, use “red-running-shoes.jpg” rather than “IMG12345.jpg.” This approach contributes to SEO and increases the likelihood of images appearing in search results. While naming your image, you can also add your top keyword to the name to make it more relevant to search engines and users.

#6 — Create Original, Semantic SEO Content

Creating original and semantic SEO content helps grow your brand’s search engine ranks. After all, it is content—whether about products or services—that people are searching for.

There are two types of content you can create for your Magento store.

1. Product descriptions on product pages to sell them.
2. Blog posts and how-to articles to attract customers.

Both are important for your site’s organic growth and conversion. However, creating content with no strategy or clear goal is ineffective.

Follow the tips below to create helpful content for your audience.

1. Develop a content strategy

Work with a content marketing manager to build a strategy for your business goals. The content strategy will dictate everything from what to publish, when to publish, how to formulate content, etc.

Having a content strategy also helps you understand what topics are driving your traffic and what are converting the traffic to sales.

Consider the factors when building your eCommerce content strategy:

• Create content based on the unique needs, interests, and pain points of your target buying persona.
• Conduct thorough keyword research to find a mix of keywords to attract diverse search traffic.
• Plan for a variety of content formats s to reach audiences across different content platforms.
• Create engaging, SEO-friendly content, such as descriptions, images, and reviews on product and category pages.
• Incorporate customer reviews, testimonials, and social media mentions. UGC builds trust and acts as social proof for potential buyers.

2. Canonical tags for pages with the same content

Duplicate content is a massive issue in Magento, as explained in research conducted by Raven Tools, where they found that 29% of crawled pages face duplicate content issues.

Duplicate content also affects your search engine ranks. Two pages with the same content but different URLs often confuse Google. It does not know which page to rank. This means that the same page with different URLs compete with each other, and they both lose.

The only way to address this issue is to add canonical tags to your preferred page. We recommend you use canonical tags for your product and category pages on your Magento store.

To add canonical tags for your store, go to Admin and then Stores.

1. Access Settings and click Configuration.
2. Click Catalog and navigate to Catalog.
3. Expand Search Engine Optimization.
4. Change the option Use Canonical Links Meta Tag for Categories and Products both to Yes.

Now, save the setting by clicking Save Config at the top-right corner.

3. Publish EEAT blogs and articles

EEAT stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trustworthiness. This is a core measure that Google uses to assess the quality of the content you publish to determine if they are rank-worthy.

You need to keep the EEAT criteria when creating content for your Magento store:

1. Create detailed, insightful product descriptions that reflect deep knowledge of your products.
2. Add UG content like reviews, testimonials, and product ratings for social proof and demonstrating real-world trustworthiness.
3. Publish buying guides, how-to articles, and FAQs that address customer concerns and questions.
4. Show trustworthiness by highlighting secure payment badges, shipping guarantees, and return policies.
5. Create a strong internal linking strategy to create topic clusters and content hubs to create complete reading experiences for users.

Creating content for your Magento store needs to be intentional and purposeful. Since 83% of internet users still read blogs, you need to create content that can help them solve their pain points.

#7 — Interlink Your Web Pages

Have you ever accessed a website and found it hard to go back to the previous page or a new category?

Don’t let that happen to your users.

If users can’t easily navigate across your site, they will click back and go to your competitor. This will affect your site’s SEO performance as it increases bounce rates. Instead, try to make it easier for your visitors to move around your site using internal links and straightforward navigation.

Here are a few benefits of using an internal linking strategy to improve navigation and user experience on your store.

1. Encourage readers to interact directly with the content.
2. Keep users in the reading experience without breaking focus.
3. Increase dwell time as users explore related links or products.
4. Prompt action while interest is high, improving conversion rates.
5. Offer contextually relevant actions that align with content themes.

Implement the steps below to improve crawling and navigation.

1. Create an internal linking strategy

Create an internal linking strategy to help users move across your store quickly. Keep the following elements in mind when creating the strategy.

• Identify top-selling products, high-traffic blog posts, categories, etc., and link to them.
• Structure your site with clear categories, subcategories, product pages, blog sections, etc.
• Use clear, relevant anchor texts to give users and search engines context about the linked page.
• Periodically review internal links to ensure no broken links and that links lead to live pages.
• Add links to related products, accessories, or blog posts within product descriptions.

2. Close the internal linking loop for proper link juice flow

Your internal linking needs to close the loop of internal linking.

It helps you retain the link juice within the relevant articles that are linked. Search engine crawlers also use internal links to understand the relevance between the articles and the links connecting them.

Credit – neilpatel.com

In this image, you can see that each post links to the other, and no link is open. This ensures that everyone gets the link juice when you acquire a new link.

3. Add internal links within the content and with inline CTAs.

Header and footer menus are the common places where internal links are added to an eCommerce store. You can also add internal links within your blog posts.

Credit – Healthxp.in

Internal links in blogs guide readers to related content, improving navigation, increasing session duration, and boosting SEO. It also helps distribute link equity across pages and enhances user engagement.

While adding internal links to your posts, keep the following elements in mind:

• Link to pages that add value and support reader goals.
• Add links to content that aligns closely with the current topic.
• Choose descriptive, keyword-rich anchor text for clarity and SEO.
• Check links periodically to ensure accuracy and avoid broken links.
• Avoid excessive links to maintain readability and prevent overwhelm.

Adding inline CTAs is another way you can provide internal links in your Magento store.

Credit – Sprinklr

Inline CTAs enhance the user experience by seamlessly guiding readers to take action within the content flow. They improve engagement, boost conversion rates, and maintain content momentum without distracting users.

However, keep the following tips in mind when adding inline CTAs to your articles and blog posts in the Magento store.

• Ensure CTAs align with the content and reader’s interests.
• Use a clear, in-line CTA that tells readers what the linked content is.
• Blend CTAs naturally into the content flow for a non-intrusive experience.
• Ensure that the in-line CTAs lead to relevant content that improves UX.
• Avoid using too many inline CTAs and keep content focused.

#8 — Optimize Magento Store for Mobile-friendliness

About 60% of eCommerce sales come from mobile devices amounting to about $2.2 trillion, says Statista report from 2023.

It is also expected to grow and reach a whopping USD 3.43 trillion by 2027.

The chart shows that optimizing your Magento store for mobile is no longer an option for your store to grow and sustain; it’s a necessity.

Besides this, making your store mobile-friendly also has several other SEO benefits.

Here are a few advantages.

— Google prioritizes mobile-friendly sites in search results, boosting visibility.

— Mobile optimization speeds up page load, which leads to better rankings.

— A mobile-friendly design keeps users engaged, lowering bounce rates.

— Easier navigation on mobile devices leads to more conversions.

Check out some of the tips you can use to make your Magento store more mobile-friendly.

1. Use a mobile-first theme

Picking a theme built for mobile offers the best experience for shoppers on mobile devices. It also helps improve page load speeds and search rankings. Google now prioritizes mobile sites for indexing. Hence a mobile-first theme also helps in faster indexing.

While the default theme in Magento, Luma, is responsive (but still sluggish), a mobile-first theme like Hyvä theme is better. The theme comes as a blank canvas where you can hire a Hyvä theme developer to customize it further as you need.

2. Make images and videos responsive

Images and videos are a vital part of the top user experience on Magento stores. You must make them responsive so they automatically fit the screen size of mobile devices.

It helps you avoid awkward layouts and slow-loading issues of Magento on mobile phones. Magento offers several ways to do it.

1. Determine the dimensions of images and videos in CSS to allow enough room for the content to load. You can use the code [max-width: 100%; and height: auto] in your stylesheet. This allows the images and videos to adjust dynamically without distortion.
2. Use the lazy-loading technique to improve the page-loading speed. Lazy loading delays loading images and videos until they are visible to the user. This method speeds up the initial page load time.
3. Use Magento extensions to make images and videos automatically responsive. These extensions resize and optimize images and videos for mobile devices.

3. Test site for mobile performance

Nearly 83% of online users want websites to load within 2 seconds. Even if you’ve optimized your store for performance when developed, test it regularly. It helps you understand where your site needs to improve.

Use a free tool like PageSpeed Insights to understand where your site needs to improve. Based on these insights, you can optimize the store for mobile performance.

Google loves sites that perform well on mobile devices, and testing your site helps you gain better search ranks.

4. Optimize your menu to be mobile-friendly

Simplify your navigation menu to make it easy for mobile users to browse. Use expandable menus or icons to reduce clutter. Make them clear and easy to use. You can also focus on key categories to streamline navigation.

Credit – Bloomingdales

This enhances UX and keeps customers engaged while making it easier to find products. This not only boosts performance but also makes browsing more intuitive.

Better user experience can improve dwell time and lead to better SERP ranks as Google prioritizes sites with better UX.

#9 — Create the Best Heading Structure for Your Site

A site with a clear heading structure is easy to navigate for both users and search engines.

Search engines like Google look at the heading structure to understand the content and its importance. So yes, creating the best heading structure improves your site’s indexability and navigation.

The following tips will help you optimize your store for search engines.

1. Ensure a clear hierarchy of pages

Your site structure needs to have a clear hierarchy.

From home pages to categories, sub-categories, collections, to product pages, the category must be easy to understand and navigate. The site structure is vital to SEO as it helps search engines find, crawl, index, and rank stores effectively.

Here is an example of a simple yet clear site structure.

Credit – Ahref

2. Ensure structure in your content pages

The structure also needs to be maintained within your product and content pages as well. It helps search engines understand the content and its relationships with headings and subheadings.

Besides adding different headings, you must also optimize the heading with keywords to make it more relevant to users and searchers.

    —Optimize the H1 with your most crucial primary keyword

    —Optimize the H2 with close variations of the primary keywords

    —Optimize H3 and H4 with related keywords and other variations.

A crucial element you need to check in the Magento store is the default H1 generated in Magento when a new page is published.

#10 – Implement Schema Markup on the Store

Schema markup allows you to provide more information to your potential visitors than a standard search result.

Besides providing more information to the searchers, schema markup plays a huge role in SEO. Google says that Nestle has observed an increase of traffic by 82% for pages with schema markup against pages that did not have them.

Here are a few benefits of using schema markup in a Magento store.

• It allows product details like price, availability, ratings, and reviews to appear directly in search results to make listings more informative.
• Magento stores can show rich snippets that highlight product features like name, price, SKU, and reviews. It improves the traffic quality and CTR.
• Local businesses with Magento stores can use schema to display their business address, phone number, and opening hours for better visibility.
• It helps Magento stores optimize for voice search by providing structured data that answers common questions.
• Schema enhances how your Magento store appears on mobile search results and helps users find product details faster in mobile searches.

You can work with a Magento developer to add relevant schema markups for your store.

Alternatively, there are many extensions available in the Magento marketplace that you can use to quickly add them. Once you add them, you can also use the Rich Snippet Testing tool from Google and test if they are working as expected.

#11 — Improve the Site Speed of Your Magento Store

Users love to use stores that load fast and respond to their clicks immediately. 47% of users think that 2 seconds is more than enough for a normal website to load.

And they will leave if your store fails to live up to that expectation.

Also, remember that Google has consistently listed page speed as a criterion for search engine ranks. The best solution to address this issue is to improve your store’s speed.

1. Reduce the time taken by the site to load

The first way to do this is to separate CSS files for mobile and desktop when loading the store. Doing so ensures that each group of CSS files works on only devices intended for them, like mobile or desktop.

Another way to improve speed is to use the Cache Management intelligently with your Magento store. For this, go to System > Cache Management, and choose Flush Cache.

You can also merge the CSS and JavaScript files to reduce the load on the server when your store loads and improve the page-loading speed.

2. Use PageSpeed Insights to check speed

Google’s PageSpeed Insights is a tool that helps you check the speed and performance of your store on both desktop and mobile devices based on web vitals.

Here is how Amazon.com performs on PageSpeed Insights.

It allows you to assess the performance on a range of page speed and performance-related criteria called web vitals, as given below:

1. First Input Delay (FID)
2. Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
3. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
4. First Contentful Paint (FCP)
5. Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
6. Time to First Byte (TTFB)

Work and improve the core web vitals in the Magento store based on the suggestions given by the PageSpeed Insights tool can improve your store’s performance and speed.

3. Remove products that you don’t sell now

You may often have pages for products that you don’t sell now. These pages increase the overall size of your store. An easy way to improve the speed of your store is to remove these pages altogether.

If external links are coming to those pages, then you can redirect the page to relevant pages or categories, as well.

While removing or redirecting these pages, take care of the UX, as well.

#12 — Add XML Site Map

An XML site map is a document containing all the pages of your Magento store. Magento has an excellent sitemap capability that makes Magento better than many other eCommerce platforms and can considerably help your SEO efforts.

You can enable XML sitemap in Magento the following way:

• Login to your account and go to Stores.
• Access Settings and choose Configuration.
• Pick Catalog and then XML Sitemap.

Update the settings as needed on the drop-down menu for various options for pages, products, and CMS pages.

Now, open Generation Settings and update the fields as given below:

• Enabled: Yes
• Start Time: Insert a time anything other than 00:00)
• Frequency: Daily
• Error Email Recipient: Leave blank.
• Error Email Sender: Check ‘Use System Value.’
• Error Email Template: Check ‘Use System Value.’

Now, on the Search Engine Optimization settings on the same page, give Yes to Enable Submission to Robots.txt.

Click Save to make the changes into effect.

#13 — Manage CSS and JavaScript

One element that adds to the size of your overall site is the code for CSS and JavaScript. Realizing this, Magento offers a range of options to optimize CSS and JavaScript code to improve the store’s speed and performance.

Here are a few ways to manage and optimize CSS and JavaScript in your store,

1. Merge and minify JavaScript and CSS files.

Merging and minifying JavaScript and CSS files help reduce the number of requests that your server needs to respond to when users access your store. Doing so helps make your site faster.

Here is how to do it.

1. Log in to your Magento store and go to Stores
2. Choose Configuration.
3. Now, click Advanced from the left-hand menu.
4. Go to Developer.
5. Now, update the setting to Yes on Enable JavaScript Bundling, Merge JavaScript Files, and Minify JavaScript Files.
6. Scroll down and change the option to Yes on Move JS Code to the bottom of the page, as well.

2. Merge CSS Files and Minify CSS

As you have done in the case of JavaScript, you can also improve the site’s performance by enabling Merge CSS files and Minifying CSS on your store.

For this, from the same window, go to CSS Settings and update the options to Yes for both Merge CSS Files and Minify CSS Files.

Regularly following these SEO best practices can help you improve your store’s performance and traffic. However, there are more advantages to optimizing your Magento store than just making it perform well.

Let’s discuss them in the next section.

Why Optimize Magento Store for SEO?

Optimizing the Magento store helps it gain better search ranks and drive targeted traffic for better conversions. However, that’s just one part of it.

Here are some of the crucial benefits of optimizing your Magento store for SEO.

1 — It increases organic traffic to your site

Optimizing your Magento store for SEO naturally boosts organic traffic. With relevant keywords in the site content, you will attract more visitors from search engines. Organic traffic is more likely to engage with your content and ensure higher conversion.

Organic traffic also helps establish your brand as an authority in the field and makes SEO a valuable investment for long-term growth.

2 — It enhances your store’s user experience

SEO goes beyond keywords—it’s also about creating a seamless experience. It includes faster load times, intuitive navigation, and relevant content, as well. These factors keep visitors on your site longer.

A well-optimized Magento store helps make shopping easy for users for better engagement and brand loyalty.

3 — It enables you to stay ahead of competitors

Effective SEO keeps you competitive. By ranking higher on search engines, your store becomes more visible to potential customers. This is vital for your growth, even above competitors who may offer similar products.

This competitive advantage can set your brand apart and help you draw visitors to your site.

4 — It helps your store’s boost search engine rankings

Search engines reward well-optimized sites with better rankings. Refining content, technical structure, and mobile performance help improve your store’s search ranks.

Higher rankings improve your brand’s credibility and make it easier for customers to find what they need.

5 — It guarantees higher conversions and sales

SEO isn’t just about bringing in traffic—it’s about converting them.

The users you attract through SEO are more likely to convert as they’re already searching for similar products. So, investing in SEO will eventually improve your revenue and profitability.

With optimized product pages, your Magento store can transform visitors into returning customers too.

6 — It improves site visibility and brand awareness

Higher search rankings mean increased visibility. When users see your store often on search results, they become more aware of your products or services.

As they see your brand constantly, you get a chance to be on top of their mind each time when they think about products or services you sell/offer. This leads to your brand becoming an authority in the market.

7 — It ensures better mobile performance for conversion

SEO optimization includes mobile performance, which is crucial for conversions. Improving load speed, mobile navigation, and responsive design creates a smoother mobile shopping experience.

As more shoppers prefer to buy from mobile devices, mobile SEO for your Magento stores can increase your store’s sales potential, as well.

These are the reasons why it’s necessary to optimize your Magento store for search engines.

Again, your Magento store can enjoy all these benefits only if you comply with the best SEO practices for Magento we have just discussed. However, along with these best practices, you also need to avoid making a few critical mistakes as well.

In the next section, let’s discuss these mistakes and how to avoid them.

5 Most Common Magento Store SEO Issues to Avoid

Some of the SEO mistakes can prevent your Magento store from ranking higher, even if it deserves to.

They can reduce the traffic to your site as you rank lower down the SERP, and the click-through rate can drastically decrease as given in the graph from Semrush.

Credit – Semrush

So, if you’re caught up in some issues, this means that anything that stops your store from effectively climbing up the ranks is bringing your business down. But there is good news. You can fix them all.

Here are the most common SEO issues in the Magento store and how to fix them.

1. Indexing Internal Search Pages

When a user performs a search on your Magento store, it generates a new URL for each search query.

Google may index these dynamic search result pages, leading to a significant increase in the number of indexed pages on your site. This is known as indexation bloat, which can consume a valuable crawl budget and dilute the authority of your important pages.

To prevent this, it’s recommended to use the noindex meta tag to instruct search engines not to index these search result pages.

This will help maintain a focused index and ensure that your most valuable content is prioritized by search engines.

2. Usage of Default Homepage Title Tag

The role of your site’s homepage title is to let the audience and search engines know what you are doing.

In Magento, it is created by default and may not reflect what you are selling in the store. Failing to update the homepage title may lead to confusion among users and search engines and low click-through rates.

Therefore, update your Magento store’s homepage title by going to Admin> Content> Pages> Homepage> Edit and update the title to the one you want for your store from default.

3. Broken Internal Links

Links help users and search engines to navigate from one page to another. They are vital for user experience as strategically placed internal links help improve user experience.

When browsing your store, users can find related products and content they may be interested in buying or exploring further. However, if these links are broken, users are stuck on a page, and they don’t have any idea where they must go next.

In such cases, users may go to your competition. The best way to avoid this issue is to regularly check internal links and ensure they lead to the intended pages.

4. Low-quality Content

The content on your Magento store–images, videos, blogs, audio, and more–is important to attract customers to your Magento store. Low-quality content is counterintuitive and will repel customers from exploring your site.

Poor content includes low-quality images, unoriginal and poorly written descriptions, blogs, articles, low-quality videos, etc.

The best way to address the issue is to create strategies and systems that help develop high-quality content that can:

• Engage visitors and reduce bounce rates.
• Increase brand trust and customer loyalty.
• Boost organic search rankings consistently.
• Meet customer intent and solve their queries
• Drive conversions with relevant, targeted messaging.

5. URL rewrites

Magento users often complain about URL rewriters in the platform. This can lead to the automatic creation of duplicate pages and URLs that may affect your store’s search engine ranks and user experience.

The best way to address this is to block them from being indexed and crawled in multiple ways:

• Configuring URL rewrites correctly
• Using 301 redirects
• Monitoring for broken links
• Clearing Magento cache

Also, consistently monitor URL writes to ensure they don’t affect your site’s indexibility, as well.

Conclusion

Building and managing a Magento store is difficult as it is.

Failing to optimize your store for search engines is the last thing you want to do for your site, as it will tank your ranks and traffic.

The best way to address this is to pay attention to the SEO best practices for Magento we have discussed in this blog. We are sure that the detailed, actionable SEO best practices we discussed in the blog will help you optimize your store for SEO and drive high-quality traffic.

At the same time as following these strategies, Magento SEO requires a smart strategy and a perfect execution too.

If you are unable to manage it, hiring a Magento SEO agency is ideal.

We at Aureate Labs also provide Magento store performance optimization services with the experience to work with some of the biddest brands in the eCommerce market.

In case you have any doubts or queries, need help with SEO, or with any technical aspect of your Magento store, we can help you the best.

Speak to our Magento team for a free consultation call.