Magento 2 SEO for New Website: SEO Cheat Sheet for eCommerce SEO Audit

Users searching for the right product or service might bypass the first page of Google results. However, the vast majority of people come to the TOP 10 websites that they see in their Google search to the query.

In our article, we reveal the key points to consider for an eCommerce SEO Audit and SEO Magento options. Magento is a platform that was originally developed for the needs of small ecommerce businesses. However, today it’s considered a perfect option for creating and promoting an online store of any level.

Introduction: What is an SEO Audit?

The main goal of an online store is to ensure sales. Any web store owner wishes to increase orders and average cheque, improve customer loyalty and enhance repeat purchases. However, no matter how beautiful and convenient an online store is, ecommerce business owners are constantly faced with low traffic and low conversion levels.

Why is this happening and what influences online store traffic? The answer to these questions will be given by a full SEO audit of your online store.

What is SEO audit? Search engine optimization audit is a professional analysis aimed at identifying errors in the code in the structure negatively affecting the promotion of the online store. In other words, SEO audit meaning is in preparing recommendations for improving site ranking in search engines.

It is necessary to conduct an SEO analysis of your ecommerce website if: 

• Your web store is under development or has recently been launched;
• You have already invested in the website promotion, but it didn’t bring significant results;
• Your web store doesn’t get conversions for a long time;
• You wish to improve your online store development strategy.

Thus, we can say that a website audit is necessary for every business owner wishing to increase conversions and traffic of their website. Especially in ecommerce.

Below we review Magento SEO optimization, provide Magento SEO tips, and on-page optimization checklist.

Stay tuned.

Magento SEO Optimization: What are the Best SEO Audit Tactics?

Magento provides powerful and convenient control functionality, the flexibility of settings, and great SEO opportunities.

Before starting your website optimization, analyze your competitors. It is helpful to look at the top 10 websites provided by a search engine and define their advantages. Then it will be worth implementing these solutions on your website.

We have prepared an ecommerce SEO checklist to help you optimize SEO for new website and improve your existing solution.

Technical SEO for Magento: How to Improve SEO Results?

Technical SEO aims at identifying errors that negatively affect the indexing of a website in search engines and its correct operation.

In an SEO audit of a Magento-based online store, specialists use a checklist including many points. We consider only the key essential ones that are worth paying attention to.

1. Use Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool for webmasters and SEO professionals that shows how Google crawls and presents a website in search results.

With Google Search Console, you can resolve the following issues:

• Collect data about your target audience: requests used to navigate your website, in which countries the users are located, what devices they use;
• Analyze keywords used by your customers to navigate in Google: keyword position, number of impressions, clicks, click-through rates;
• Identify effective and ineffective pages in terms of loading speed;
• Find non-indexed pages and speed up their indexing;
• Determine the average position of your website on Google search, including the part of the site for a specific query;
• Identify problems in the mobile version: font size, value of the viewport meta tag;
• Analyze the link mass: external sources linking to your website and specific pages.

2. Opt for Amazon & eBay product search data

Google is one of the most popular search engines, though not the only one used globally. When customers search for a particular product, they usually search on a platform they can buy it on, like Amazon or eBay. Keywords used by these platforms would likely bring value to your web store and improve your search results.

Above you can see some of the most popular product niches people search online on Amazon and eBay. This is a general SEO overview by niche. However, through these infographics, you can identify the potential of your products for SEO exposure.

Below is the second part of the popular SEO products infographic:

Along with your individual research, you can also try searching for specific keywords through Ahrefs for Amazon tool (free) or Keyword Tool for eBay (from $69/month). These are helpful tools that will help you understand how users search for products that you offer in your web store. 

3. Install SSL certificate

SSL is a unique digital signature that verifies a website’s authenticity and ensures the security and protection of data transmission.

The presence of an SSL certificate has positively affected on-site security and ranking in search engines and user loyalty since, in 2017, popular browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Opera) began to mark sites with the HTTPS protocol as protected.

A website with an SSL certificate:

https://www.example.com

A website without an SSL certificate:

www.example.com  

You can check the SSL certificate in the SSL Checker service. After entering the site address, the service generates a detailed report.

The installed certificate is not a guarantee that everything will work correctly. It is essential to check the settings so that they comply with the SSL SEO requirements.

Make sure to check if:

• Your content on HTTPS links to images and videos, includes scripts, and is canonical.
• Your links to sitemap.xml in robots.txt file are on HTTPS.
• Your links in sitemap.xml are also on HTTPS, as well as 301-redirects.
• The HTTPS version of your website is added to Google Webmaster.

But if you do not have an SSL certificate installed yet, and you are just planning to move from the HTTP protocol, it is also essential to consider the requirements below.

4. Set up a 301 redirect

To remove duplicates, the 301 redirect setting is often used. One URL address is redirected to another, as a result, the addresses are glued together, and only one address remains in the search.

5. Don’t miss out on the rel ‘canonical’ setting

Unlike 301 redirects, canonical links eliminate duplicate pages. They don’t redirect from one URL to another. The setting helps to specify which page to index for search engines. They are configured by adding a unique rel = canonical tag to the pages with the address.

It is necessary to check the rel = canonical setting on products located in several categories and on pages with parameters in the URL.

• One product in several categories

Such duplicates occur when one product is assigned to several categories and is available at several addresses at once. In this case, it is necessary to check if these pages contain a canonical link to the preferred address.

• Parameters are added to the URL

For example, when filtering or sorting goods, the following parameters might be added to the URL of pages: /? SORT_FIELD =, /? VIEW =, etc. These addresses must also contain canonical links to URLs without a parameter.

6. Apply pagination in the right way

If a lot of products are displayed in the product category of your website, then pagination appears. For example, page 2, page 3, etc. It is important to set them up correctly to exclude such duplicates.

For Google, it is necessary to check if pagination pages are marked with the rel = prev and rel = next attributes, allowing them to be linked together for correct indexing.

7. Check (and improve) page loading speed

If your Magento store takes a long time to load, not every user will wait until it is fully loaded. Low speed not only negatively affects user experience but also decreases conversions and search engine rankings. This is especially important for visitors who use mobile devices.

You can check the download speed through free online services like Google’s “PageSpeed Insights”. The service analyzes the content of a web page on a 100-point scale and offers solutions that will speed up its loading.

A high download speed is considered to be 80 and above. Medium speed is from 60 to 79, and low speed goes from 0 to 59.

8. Find and resolve any validation errors

Validation is checking HTML and CSS code for compliance with modern requirementsю The requirements include: no syntax errors, nesting tags, etc. Valid code allows the site to display correctly in all browsers.

• Check HTML validation at: validator.w3.org
• Check CSS validation at: jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/

The pages you control should be free of gross errors.

9. Use Magento SEO extensions

Magento is one of the most flexible and search engine-compatible online store management platforms. 

Key Magento features include:

• Selection of built-in functions

Languages, currencies, cost calculators – this is just the minimum set for an effective website promotion on Magento.

• Sitemap automatic generation

There is no need to manually edit the XML map: all changes on the site are automatically reflected in the file.

• Simple and convenient store management

Editing the posted information and publishing a new one doesn’t cause difficulties.

• Public access to HTML and PHP code

You can quickly adapt the system to your goals and objectives.

Magento-based website promotion is simple and convenient. The system independently creates an XML sitemap, allows you to add endings to the product pages addresses, and use meta tags in the process of resource optimization thanks to the open HTML code. 

However, Magento SEO has some nuances that can be improved. Below we suggest useful Magento SEO extensions to review if you wish to see your website on top of the customers’ searches.

• SEO Manager

This Magento SEO module offers a set of tools to improve your Magento-based online store SEO. It helps ecommerce business owners to show informative snippets and product categories.

The extension includes an SEO meter that provides suggestions and ways to enhance your website’s SEO even more. It allows an online store admin to preview the web and mobile versions of listings in the search engines. 

• SEO Suite Ultimate

With the help of this Magento SEO extension, you’ll avoid duplicate content, enhance the site architecture, navigation, and internal linking. It is useful to manage URLs of all types and big volumes of metadata.

This extension is your way to getting rid of manual work and enrich your product snippets or build effective cross-links.

• Search by Category

This Magento 2 module helps to improve navigation in your web store reducing the time that customers spend on finding the right product. With this extension, you can make your online store catalog clear and easy to understand, which also adds to the improvement of user experience.

By applying this extension, you will enhance the search options within your website and will get a better understanding of how the search engines work. As a result, you will be able to build a more detailed SEO optimization strategy for your web store.

Conclusion: In eCommerce, the New Website SEO Is a Primary Thing to Improve

Users searching for the right product or service might bypass the first page of Google results. However, more than 60% of people come to websites in the TOP 10 of their google search.

Engage in SEO optimization if you want to increase your website traffic and improve sales. Don’t know where to start, ask us. Magento development experts at NEKLO will find a solution for you.