Magento is a very SEO friendly e-commerce system and Magento 2 adds up new features that are not available in Magento 1 for adding more value to the website and thereby enhancing the probability of getting found and listed in the famous search engines. It is only that the store owner should get to know these options available and make the right configurations in order to make their Magento site SEO optimized.
Let’s get down on each of these features for Magento 2 SEO Optimization:
Masks for Product Page Optimization:
Go to System -> Configuration -> Catalog -> Catalog -> Product Fields Auto-Generation
These configurations can be used to specify the default placeholder values that can be populated when adding new products. Keywords that are generic to every page of the site can be specified here so that you need not have to get these data populated each and every time you create new products. Or if you want to have the name and description of the products to be auto-populated based on the values that you enter into the fields, you can specify it within curly braces as specified in the above image. This will help us ease the job of populating SEO related keywords and descriptions for each product that is created.
XML Sitemap:
Navigate to Stores -> Configuration -> Catalog -> XML Sitemap.
These options can be used to specify the frequency, priority and other configurations for the generation of each and individual page sitemaps like Product, Categories, CMS, and others. These enhancements are brought about in Magento 2 and such detailed options are not available in Magento 1. Also that Magento 2 allows us to automatically add XML Sitemap to robots.txt.
Robots.txt:
Magento 2 facilitates store owners to edit their website’s robots.txt file from the Magento Admin Panel and can be edited for each of their websites. In Magento 2 robots.txt file is being dynamically generated and the content of the robots.txt file is stored in the database and not in the file. This options is available in Content -> Design -> Configuration -> Click Edit on any website -> Unfold the Search Engine Robots
Canonical Meta Tags:
Canonical tags help resolve the duplicate content issue in the website and are one of the most important features for SEO ranking. Canonical Meta Tags can be configured from the Magento Admin Panel through the following menu items: Stores -> Configuration -> Catalog -> Catalog -> Search Engine Optimization. To index the Category pages and Product pages, uncheck the “Use system value” in each of the options and set the value to Yes.
Rich Snippets:
Rich Snippets helps with the listing of your products in Search Results and gives an edge over your competitors. It helps to list your product with Star Ratings, price, etc in the search results page which would be much more appealing to customers and thereby enhance the Click through rates. Good news is that the rich snippets in Magento 2 sites are automatically generated and hence the store owner need not make any configurations for this to work.
Schema.org:
Schema.org maintains schema for various type of structured data thus adding more meaning to the information in each website. Schema.org integration is added by default to the template files making it easy for store owners to add semantics to their Magento web pages.
Labels for Product Images:
The usage of labels (alternative text) for images is inevitable and has been an SEO practice for ages. Magento 2 makes it easy for store owners to specify the labels for each product images. So the next time you add images to your products, make sure to add the labels too as it is a key element not only for enhancing SEO but also to improve the accessibility of your website’s content. Just imagine a blind user using screen readers to access the webpage and the alt images would give them more information about the content present. Once you have uploaded the product image, click on the image to add Alt Text.
Upsells, Cross-sells, and Related Products:
Configuring these options add more value to your website by adding more relevant content to the product pages. Upsell products are mostly products that the customer is likely to purchase instead of the currently selected product. Cross-sells are products from other categories that are related to the current product in the cart. Related products are add-on products that customers are likely to buy to accompany the current products eg. a mobile case/cover can be purchased along with mobile. All these product listings can be configured from the Magento admin panel product edit page. Just make sure you have the right products selected.
Google API Services:
Magento 2 integrates with Google Services like Google Analytics and Google Adwords by default. Once you have the account settings configured, it would add more value to your website. Google analytics provides customer activity tracking, sales conversions, behavior reports and lot more features that you can get to know about your site from the analytics panel. Google Adwords help manage ad campaigns for your website. The Google Services can be activated and configured at: Stores -> Configuration -> Sales -> Google API.