Magento 2 SEO (out-of-the-box features, extensions, tips)

- Magento 2

Magento 2 SEO features

Among all e-commerce platform, Magento is the most powerful in terms of SEO. It provides the ability to optimize site URLs, page titles, meta and ALT tags, headings, and other website elements out-of-the-box. Besides, there is an impressive selection of various third party Magento 2 SEO extensions designed to improve the default SEO capabilities. As for Magento 2, it provides even better SEO options. The new version of the popular e-commerce platform has been fully revamped, therefore we’d like to introduce you to Magento 2 SEO. Below, you can find a list of Magento 2 SEO extensions and features. You can find some more tips on SEO improvements here: DIY SEO. And don’t this Product Page SEO Checklist.

Magento 2 SEO Modules

First of all, let’s explore some complex solutions that enhance all key Magento 2 SEO areas. The most reliable tools are gathered below. If you are looking for the best Magento 2 SEO extension, you’ve come to the right place, since below we shed light on the leading SEO solutions from the ecosystem.  Complete SEO suites are gathered here, but if you are looking for some specific extensions, follow the link below this section.

Mirasvit Advanced SEO Suite

Mirasvit Advanced SEO Suite Magento Extension overview; Mirasvit Advanced SEO Suite Magento 2 Module Review

This is an all-in-one solution that heals all key areas making a Magento 2 website SEO-strong. The Mirasvit Advanced SEO Suite module is capable of improving the following areas:

  • Sitemap – you get total control over both HTML and XML sitemaps, making your store more friendly from the perspective of both store visitors and search engines;
  • SEO Templates – with the help of Mirasvit Advanced SEO Suite Magento 2 module, you can essentially simplify your work related to SEO improvements of layered navigation, category, and product pages. Fully leverage SEO templates, and you will save tons of time, making your website more SEO-friendly;
  • Redirects – there is also a neat interface for managing redirects. You can easily turn visitors who got in “404 Not Found” to your homepage or sales;
  • SEO Rewrites – SEO rewrites are another time-saver in SEO improvements. In case of Mirasvit, you can manage rules for SEO rewrites and choose how to apply them;
  • Rich Snippets and Open Graph – you also get the ability to fully leverage Schema.org standards and add more options then you competitors even know. Thus, you can display product price, availability, and other parameters right on a search result page; add Breadcrumbs and improve user experience even more; additionally, Mirasvit allows you to integrate store pages into social graph, adding meta tags for logos and images;
  • Canonical URLs – With the help of the module, you can control multiple versions of the same content. The feature works due to the ability to use canonical tags for
  • Configurable, grouped, and bundle products as well as cross-domain content;
  • Cross-Linking – this is another vital aspect of the Mirasvit Advanced SEO Suite for Magento 2. Create autolinks and add them to selected words and phrases rapidly choosing the density of your cross-links;
  • Robots.txt – this is a built-in Magento 2 feature, but Mirasvit writes that you can edit your robot.txt doc from the extension.

Mirasvit Advanced SEO Suite Magento Extension overview; Mirasvit Advanced SEO Suite Magento 2 Module Review

As you can see, Mirasvit provides the impressive coverage of Magento 2 SEO settings. Buy installing a single module, you can improve the existing store ranking enhancing its weakest points.

Download / Buy Mirasvit Advanced SEO Suite Magento 2 Extension

Mageworx Magento 2 SEO Suite

Mageworx Magento 2 SEO Suite Extension Review

Another complex solution that covers major SEO needs is developed by Mageworx. Meet Mageworx Magento 2 SEO Suite. This is not only a reliable Magento 2 extension designed to make your store more search engine-friendly, it is also a great time-saver that automates time-consuming manual processes. Let’s have a look at core extension’s features and different ways how it improves Magento 2 SEO:

  • Canonical URLs – of course, the extension is powerful enough to make magic in the area of canonical URLs, so you will forever forget about any duplicate content problems. We completely describe this functionality in our review, or you can go right to the extension’s official page (link below);
  • Crawling and Indexation – help search bots better understand your store and hide all unnecessary pages from them. Mageworx Magento 2 SEO Suite lets you set up robot meta headers for secure HTTP page (HTTPS), extra pages, pages without content, and layered navigation pages;
  • Sitemap – both HTML and XML sitemaps can be created and customized via Mageworx Magento 2 SEO Suite, so don’t waste your chance to make your e-commerce website more appealing to customers and search bots;
  • Cross-Links – as in case of the previous tool, it is possible to fully manage cross-links. There is no need to replace targeted keywords with cross-links manually!
  • SEO Templates – Mageworx offers separate SEO templates for categories and products. Thus, you can easily optimize your store pages, making them more SEO-friendly without spending hours of time on each one;
  • Hreflang Tag – another feature that prevents duplicate content issues;
  • Rich Snippets – easily create rich snippets for product and category pages, displaying such information as rating, in-stock availability, price SKU, reviews, etc;
  • Open Graph – there is also the Open Graph support for a more convenient social sharing;
  • Breadcrumbs – this important element can be included as well;
  • Pagination – even pagination pages can be optimized: you can add SEO-friendly URLs, set a pager URL key format, use Pager Var, as well as add page numbers to meta information;
  • Layered Navigation – Mageworx lets you make layered navigation pages more search-engine friendly. It is possible to add extended Magento 2 meta title and description with any attributes in the meta description tag, manage Canonical Tags, fully leverage NOINDEX and FOLLOW, etc;
  • Redirects – this feature is represented in the extension as well. Check our overview for further information or go straight to the extension’s page.

Mageworx SEO Magento 2 Extension

Mageworx Magento 2 SEO Suite is also a complex solution that will essentially improve the default Magento 2 SEO. If you don’t know what to choose, we recommend you to read our Magento 2 SEO Suites Comparison (Mirasvit vs Mageworx). In the article, we strike both Magento 2 extensions together.

Download / Buy Mageworx SEO Suite Magento 2 Extension

Amasty SEO Toolkit

Magento 2 SEO Suite

We should also mention the Amasty SEO Toolkit module here. It is another robust Magento extension designed to improve all important areas of Magento 2 SEO. The module provides the following core SEO features:

  • Meta Tags Templates  – optimize your meta tags without headaches;
  • HTML Site Map – create an attractive HTML sitemap for your buyers;
  • XML Google Sitemap – provide search engine bots with their own sitemap;
  • Import Product Tags – miracles with product tags;
  • Google Rich Snippets – the aforementioned rich snippets and everything you can do with them;
  • Product Reviews – SEO enhancements related to product reviews;
  • Unique Product URL – forget about duplicate content issues!

Amasty SEO Toolkit should be another reliable all-in-one SEO solution, so we are waiting for its release.

DOWNLOAD / BUY AMASTY SEO TOOLKIT MAGENTO 2 EXTENSION

And this is a list of more specific Magento 2 SEO extensions:

Magento 2 SEO Features

Now, let’s figure out the default Magento 2 SEO features:

  • Product Page: metadata, canonical tag, product URLs
  • Category Page: meta tags, SEO-friendly category URL key
  • Pagination: canonical tag
  • Layered Navigation: canonical tag
  • XML Sitemap: priority and frequency for each page type, robots.txt file integration
  • Rich Snippets are the most anticipated Magento 2 SEO feature
  • Robots.txt is now editable from the Admin panel
  • Schema.org is added to a default Magento 2 Template
  • Product Image Labels is another Magento 2 SEO feature
  • Related products, Upsells, and Cross-sells are also optimized for Magento 2
  • Universal Google Analytics, E-commerce Tracking, and AdWords Conversion are available out-of-the-box
  • Google Tag Manager is a unique feature of Magento 2 Enterprise Edition

Below, we describe all the aforementioned Magento 2 SEO features for more details.

Product Page Optimization

Since Magento 1.X offered quite robust product page optimization, only a few things have been added in Magento 2. Every product page still has the same meta tag settings with the ability to set up such standard tags as meta title, description, and keywords. As a Magento administrator, you can do this per each Store View; the same is the Product URL Key.

As for new Magento 2 SEO features related to product page optimization, it is Product Fields Auto-Generation. The new option is can be utilized to form the product meta tags with the aid of available product attributes and predefined templates. You can find the Auto-Generation feature under Stores/Configuration/Catalog.

MAgento 2 SEO: Product Fields Auto-Generation

The way you set up Canonical Link meta tag for your products in Magento 2 is the same as in 1.X. For instance, http://yourstore.com/samsung-2511.html?referal=13457 is referred to http://yourstore.com/samsung-2511.html. You can change your canonical link options under  Stores/Configuration/Catalog/Search Engine Optimization. To create SEO-friendly URLs in Magento 2, you can include their categories path like in Magento 1 under the same options.

Category Page Optimization

Magento 2 SEO features related to category page optimization include the same standard meta tags as title, meta description, and meta keywords, and you can set them up per each Store View. The same is a category URL key. But unlike 1.X, Magento 2 does not include available filter options, so the category page URL always remains the same.

Magento 2 SEO: Category Page Optimization

Pagination Optimization

Pagination in Magento 2 is optimized with a canonical tag. As a result, URL points to the category itself. For example, such URL as http://yourstore.com/products.html?p=3 is pointed to http://yourstore.com/products.html. This is how the platform improves Magento 2 SEO.

Magento 2 SEO: Pagination

Layered Navigation Optimization

Layered navigation optimization in Magento 2 also based on a canonical tag. As a result, URLs of layered navigation pages point to their categories, so selected attributes are not added to meta tags. Thus, http://www.yourstore.com/t-shirts/mens-t-shirts.html?color=black&manufacturer=nike&price=10-50 is referred to http://www.yourstore.com/t-shirts/mens-t-shirts.html improving Magento 2 SEO.

XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap now has a bunch of improvements. Thus, you can specify the priority and frequency for product, category, CMS, and other pages separately. Furthermore, the new Magento 2 SEO functionality provides the ability to add your XML sitemap to a robots.txt file automatically. Besides, the new version of the platform provides the ability to add images, use the Sitemap Index, and define parameters necessary for splitting items between various XML files.

Magento 2 SEO: XML Sitemap

Rich Snippets

The ability to add rich snippets is the most anticipated Magento 2 SEO feature. With its help, you can easily show structured markup data from your e-commerce website within Google results. The new improvement helps to improve both SEO and CTR. And it is enabled by default.

MAgento 2 SEO features: Rich Snippets

Robots.txt

Another important Magento 2 SEO feature is the ability to edit a robots.txt file in the admin panel under Stores/General/Design.

Magento 2 SEO features: Robots.txt

Alternatively, you can utilize our optimised robots.txt for Magento 2 Community Edition and Magento 2 Enterprise Edition. Grab the extension for free from GitHub: magento2robotstxt.

Schema.org Integration

Schema.org is now added to a default Magento 2 template. It’s vocabulary is used for marking up website content with metadata about itself. This improvement helps search engines get a better understanding of your Magento website. Thus, Magento 2 SEO is improved even more.

Magento 2 SEO: Schema.org integration

Product Image Labels

Another crucial Magento 2 SEO feature is the ability to use product labels. Now, you can not only draw your customers attention but also improve SEO by applying labels to product images. Such options are available in 1.X, but only via third-party extensions.

MAgento 2 SEO: Product Image Labels

Related products, Upsells, and Cross-sells

Related products, Up-sells, and Cross-sells are three types of product relations in Magento. Up-sell for example is a product that you’d like your visitor to purchase instead of the one that is already chosen, so it appears in the shopping cart. Such product is always pricey and has better quality. Related products appear on the product page and can be purchased additionally to the product that the customer is viewing. As for cross-sells, they appear on product pages and in the cart being products related to an impulse buy. All three types are optimized so you get better Magento 2 SEO.

Magento 2 SEO: Related products, Upsells, and Cross-sells

Universal Google Analytics, E-commerce Tracking, and AdWords Conversion

Universal Analytics adds a set of options aimed at collecting and organizing data for better understanding of your customers’ behavior and consequently improving current Magento 2 SEO. But before Google Analytics can report e-commerce activity for your Magento store, it is necessary to enable e-commerce tracking for your website which is significantly simplified in case of Magento 2. As for conversion tracking, it can help you find out how effective your keywords engage your customers to perform certain actions. Therefore, it is another important SEO improvement introduced in Magento 2. All three features are available by default, which is a great SEO improvement introduced in Magento 2.

MAgento 2 SEO features: Universal Google Analytics, Ecommerce Tracking, and AdWords Conversion

Google Tag Manager

Google Tag Manager provides the ability to create and update tags for your Magento website any time you want, so you get better Magento 2 SEO opportunities. Please note that this feature is available only for Enterprise Edition merchants.

SEO configuration

It is also necessary to mention that all SEO settings from 1.X are still at their usual places under Stores/Configuration/Catalog/SEO.

Conclusion

The default Magento 2 SEO capabilities have been essentially improved in comparison to the first platform version, so it is more powerful than its predecessor. If the default SEO options are not enough for satisfying your business needs than you can use various third-party solutions. Note that the extensions listed above are the most robust in the whole ecosystem and cover lots of different areas. At the same time, there are lots of standalone Magento 2  SEO modules designed for solving special needs.