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

In the first part of this series we described how a search engine sees and evaluates a website. In this part, we will go into how web pages are displayed in the search results list and where the corresponding information can be stored in Magento.dieser Serie haben wir beschrieben, wie eine Suchmaschine eine Webseite sieht und bewertet. In diesem Teil gehen wir darauf ein, wie Webseiten in der Suchergebnisliste dargestellt werden und wo die entsprechenden Angaben in Magento hinterlegt werden können.

Since Google is indisputably the most frequently used search engine, its way of showing the search results is explained as an example.

We start with the snippet.

The snippet generally consists of three elements:

• title - blue headline
• URL – green link
• snippet – black text

The optimization of the snippet is particularly important, because in many cases it is the first thing a customer sees from a web store. Generally, the search terms entered by the user or synonyms classified as relevant by Google are displayed in bold in the snippet. Google does this to make it clear to the user why it is displaying a particular result.

Snippets are always dynamic, which means that Google can display a different snippet text for the same page using different search terms. More about this later.

In the following, the individual elements are examined one after the other and their special features are shown.

Title

The title is the first thing that catches the user's eye and is displayed the largest. As a rule, Google uses the HTML title tag for the display. This tag also plays an important role in the browser, as it influences the window title or newly created favorites, for example.

Please note that Google does not display more than 70 characters in the title. If the title is longer, Google tries to display as many whole words as possible. If a long word starts before the 70-character limit and was not specified in the search query, it will not appear in the snippet.

In Magento, the title of the product page is entered in the Meta Title field in the Meta Information group.

If you have not used this area in your product data so far, this is usually because Magento generates meta information for you from the product name and the category assignment by default. The option Generate Meta Tags in the General tab indicates whether this automatism is active.

Magento then fills the Meta Title with the product name after the new creation. In addition to the product name, the Meta Keywords and Meta Description also contain the names of the categories to which the article is assigned.

At first glance, this is a good idea. However, if this description is supposed to encourage the customer to visit your store, this automatism is not sufficient.

Please note

If a fixed text still appears in your store next to the desired product titles, this is most likely due to a general system configuration. Magento can write a fixed text in the title. You can change these settings under

1. System

2. Configuration

3. Design

in the HTML Head group at Title Prefix and Title Suffix.

URL

The URL plays a subordinate role for users in the presentation of the snippet. It should signal them where they are going when they click on the link. However, the URL should not be ignored completely, since it, like all other elements, highlights the relevant search terms and thus signals a high relevance to the user.

The product URL always consists of the base URL of the store and the URL key stored in the product.

If a product is assigned to multiple categories, the product page can be found via different URLs.

In these cases, Google usually selects the URL with the most relevant search terms for display in the snippet.

This circumstance seems positive at first, but exactly the opposite is the case. Google downgrades pages with duplicate content. Therefore, the same content in your store should only be found once by search engines.

Good thing Magento comes with this functionality for products and categories. These are called canonical URLs or canonical links, which tell the search engine which page to use for its index. To check if your store is already configured correctly, change to

1. System

2. Configuration

3. Catalog

There you will find in the Search Engine Optimizations group the options "Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Products" and "Use Canonical Link Meta Tag For Categories". Both should be enabled.

Snippet

Last but not least, we want to pay attention to the snippet. The snippet itself is probably the most important information for most users, next to the title, on the basis of which they decide whether to visit a page or not.

If everything is done correctly and the search terms match, the snippet displays the entry from the product's meta description.

Please note

When writing, remember that meta descriptions of less than 80 characters will only be displayed in a single line, and descriptions that exceed 156 characters will be cutted off.

As noted at the beginning of the article, the text displayed in the snippet is dynamic depending on the search terms used. We will illustrate this with an example:

In the Magento backend, the following meta description is stored for the example product MacBook Pro: "Apple MacBook Pro MA464LL/A 15.4" Notebook PC (2.0 GHz Intel Core Duo, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB Hard Drive, SuperDrive)".

If you use the search terms "macbook pro" on Google, the snippet looks like this.

As expected, the meta description is displayed as text.

However, if you use the search terms "engineering leaps hd 3d" instead, the snippet display changes.

In this case, Google uses different snippets that can be found on the product page and most closely match the search terms.

What does this mean for the maintenance of meta descriptions?

If the meta description contains only a few relevant search terms, this will most likely lead to an unpredictable display in the results list. This negatively affects the click-through rate, which is then reflected in lower visitor numbers and sales.

Summary

In order to bring potential customers from the results list into the store, all the factors presented must be intelligently combined. This includes first selecting the relevant search terms. Once these have been determined, all of the listed factors should be adjusted to them.