Magento search engine optimisation.

Six questions you need to ask your web developer about search engine optimisation of your ecommerce website.

  1. Will I be able to choose my own page URLs?

    With some ecommerce websites the page URLs consist of a random sequence of numbers and letters (e.g. http://www.newclothes4u.co.uk/b684cbc1-7f7e-4dbf-920c.html). It is better for search engine optimisation if you are able to choose your own page names (e.g. http://www.newcloths.co.uk/pattern-shirt.html) as this can help search engines to decide on the relevance of your page to the search term. Magento website technology rewrites the page URLs and they can either be specified for each product or they can be based on the product titles.

  2. Will I be able to input heading tags?

    Search engines look for search terms in the heading tags and these should be optimised for each individual product. With a Magento website the page heading tags can be based on the product titles.

  3. Will I be able to add Meta tags to each individual page including page titles, page descriptions and keywords?

    Search engines look for search terms in the page titles and some search engines look for search terms in the keywords Meta tags. Page descriptions can be used by search engines to display search results and need to encourage web users to click on your search result. These Meta tags should therefore be optimised for each individual product. With a Magento website these Meta tags can either be specified for each product or the page names and page descriptions can be based on the product titles and product descriptions.

  4. Will I be able to add alt tags to the images?

    Image alt tags (i.e. descriptions associated with each image but not displayed on the page) are important for search engine optimisation as they help to make your website accessible and enable search engines to interpret your images and decide on the relevance of the images to the search terms. With a Magento website the image alt tags can either be specified for each product or the image alt tags can be based on the product titles.

  5. Will each page validate and conform to W3C rules?

    The way your website is built can affect your page ranking. If your website conforms to W3C standards (an important web standards committee) this will help to ensure that search engines can visit each page of your website more easily and reduces the risk of errors occurring when search engines are collecting information. Magento website technology is designed to conform to W3C standards and at Enterprise Web Builder every website is tested for conformity following deployment.

  6. Will my website have a site map and how easy will it be to update?

    A site map is a page with links to all the pages on your website to help search engines to find each page. Magento website technology includes an automatic site map generation feature which saves time compared with using a separate utility and means the site map is always up to date.

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Latest Entry 1 January 2010

Six questions to ask your web developer about Search Engine Optimisation of your ecommerce website.

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