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How to take care of search engine information in Magento (Part 1 of 2)

This is the first part of a series on "Maintaining search engine information in Magento". Many online shop owners know this situation: the store is designed, the ordering process works and the first product range is online. Since there is never enough time and in the initial rush other things were more important, the input of search engine optimized texts, headlines and URLs often falls under the table; true to the motto: "I will do that later".

But at the latest after the sobering rankings in the search results, it becomes clear: More has to happen here! Easier said than done, because the necessary adjustments can unfortunately not be processed in one go in Magento. So the task turns into a tiresome drudgery.

This series shows what information is processed by search engines, where it can be found in Magento and how it can be easily and quickly captured using Excel.

This post is not intended to be an SEO guide. It is rather about giving shop owners a general understanding of Magento settings and search engine results. Only on-page optimization topics will be covered. This generally refers to all measures that a website operator can perform on their own websites.

A good ranking in search engines is important for every store owner. However, one should not disregard the fact that an online store should not be designed optimally for search engines alone, but primarily for customers. The good ranking should therefore be achieved alongside.

How does a search engine see a particular web page and what is particularly interesting for it?​

  • frequency of the search term/keyword
  • position in the document
  • URL
  • title of the website
  • headlines
  • text placement within the website
  • Meta-description

Frequency of the search term​

When we talk about search term, it is equivalent to the often used keyword. To create a high relevance for the search engine, the content of the web page should contain the search term to about three to five percent.

A search engine processes texts statistically, which means, in simple terms, that it first looks at each word individually and counts its occurrences. Once all the words have been counted, it compares the number of occurrences with the total number of words. Words that occur frequently have a higher relevance. But beware: the artificially frequent use of the search term in the texts, in addition to poor readability, leads to the fact that the search engine notices this manipulation and "punishes" the website by giving it a lower rating. To avoid this, synonyms for the search term should also be used in a balanced way.

Position in the document​

Besides the frequency of the search term, its position on the web page is also important for the search engine. The four most important positions are briefly presented here. If a search term is included in all four positions, its relevance for the search engine increases.

URL​

The URL of a web page is an important element for customers as well as search engines to rank the relevance of a page. The URL should support the search term just like all other texts on the page. Optimization starts with the choice of the domain name. Since the domain is included in every URL, a search term used here has a high relevance for all associated pages.

Magento already comes with many features that are important for optimization. For example, the category paths are resolved in the URL by default when URL rewrites are enabled.

Website title​

The website title is another relevant feature for the search engine to assign search terms to the website. For customers, the title is at least as important, as it appears first in the search engine's search results lists and thus significantly influences the decision whether a customer visits the store or not.

Headlines​

Für den Kunden sind Überschriften ein wichtiges Element, um auf der Webseite zu erkennen, worum es geht. Überschriften unterteilen lange Texte und geben eine Zusammenfassung, was den Kunden im jeweiligen Bereich erwartet. Dies macht sich auch die Suchmaschine zunutze und gewichtet Suchbegriffe in Überschriften stärker, als Suchbegriffe in darunter folgenden Fließtexten.

Text placement within the website​

Similar to headlines, it is particularly important for the customer what is at the beginning of the web page. If the customers do not immediately find what they were looking for there, they quickly click on the next search result. The search engine also takes this into account and ranks search terms that are used at the beginning of the web page higher than those that appear at the end of a web page.

What does this mean for the store owner? If a product description is very detailed and cannot be shortened, it is advisable to first write a summary with the most important product features and place it at the front of the website. This not only helps the customer, but also leads to a better rating by the search engine.

Meta-description​

The meta description is the final element of on-page optimization in this post. It is a particularly important element, because Google, for example, uses it to describe hits in the search results list. If no meta description is specified, Google automatically forms a "relevant" short description, which often does not appeal to customers. When entering the meta description, attention should be paid to the length. Descriptions with less than 80 characters are only displayed in single lines and reduce the visibility in the results list. Descriptions that exceed 156 characters will be cutted off. It is advisable to choose a description that is between 80 and 156 characters long and self-contained. Similar to the previous points, you should also place the search term early in the meta description.

In the next part you will learn how this information is displayed in the search results list and where to maintain it in Magento.