10 SEO Tricks for Prestashop Advanced guide for improving natural positioning in your ecommerce Prestashop
Contents Technical language sections 1. Defining your business's keywords 2. Product sheets, categories, description and hierarchy 3. Rich Snippets and Rel Author 4. Schema.org 5. RDA Data for Facebook 6. Responsive design (RWD) 7. The blog 8. Web Performance Optimization (WPO) 9. Dropshipping and copied descriptions 10. Rolling out: htaccess, robots.txt and sitemap.xml Plain language sections 1. Or rather, know where we're going 2. Or rather, laborious stuff 3. Or rather, stars and my face 4. Or rather, everything in order 5. Or rather, put the photo I tell you 6. Or rather, adaptable design 7. Or rather, feeding Mr Google 8. Or rather, page speed 9. Or rather, copy, no! copy, crap! 10. Or rather, what do I do with all this?
How it works You will find the following on each page Yes, the question is basically: take the spyglass and ask where's the dough? What this is Section heading Text Important text Chef's suggestions: 1- Good sense, you won't cover all the keywords 2- Analyse VERY CAREFULLY what your competition do Resources, tools, related articles Shameless advertising
Preliminaries If you are reading this I am assuming that you have or are going to have a Prestashop, so you already know what it is. It is also important to know what it isn't: - Prestashop is not a CMS prepared for putting content which you might use for SEO like a blog. - Prestashop is prepared for very basic SEO, but not the advanced type required nowadays. - Most of the Prestashop templates (themes), including those for payment, are not prepared for SEO. I am also assuming that you will want to position yourself on Google Spain (this ebook was originary intended to Spanish SEO), which has the most number of searches in Spain. Right, down to business.
1. Defining your business's keywords To reach port you must know which direction to follow. In other words, it's no use optimising your Prestashop for SEO if you don't have any keywords to position marked, especially if you don't know what return those keywords will give you. Yes, the question is basically: take the spyglass and ask where's the dough? It is important to define what type of keywords your business has. In this ebook we provide the example of a page specialising in selling tyres.
1. Defining your business's keywords The reason for defining our keywords in the world of tyres would be as follows: What do I sell? Tyres How will people find me? By category (tyres), by product (road tyres), by make (Pirelli tyres), by questions (which tyres are best for the road?) Can I position myself based on those criteria? It depends on the competition and the effort you have to make to compete with them If I get involved in the competition tyres battle Will I get a good margin on each sale? What matters is the money. If I don't think any of these keywords are viable, what should I do? Look for a viable market niche then, for example Pirelli Valladolid competition tyres
1. Defining your business's keywords Let us suppose that in answer to those questions we want to position ourselves in what we sell best: Firestone tyres and Pirelli tyres. I'm going to sell in Spain. Is there a market? Probably, yes, but is there demand on Google? To find out, we can use the Google keywords tool Adwords. We must focus on monthly local searches (Spain)
Defining your business's keywords Use the synonyms tool to see which keywords fall within your "type" of keywords.
Defining your business's keywords Let us suppose that the end result of our example are 5 keywords (working on and optimising more keywords may be considered suspicious by Google: optimising keywords is bad). Our type is, in order: 1- Pirelli tyre 2- Firestone tyre 3- Pirelli tyre price 4- Firestone tyre price 5- Pirelli scorpion tyres We have chosen the "price" option because we are price competitive. Think with your head: if you do not have a competitive price, forget about that keyword. Chef's suggestions: 1- Good sense, you won't cover all the keywords 2- Analyse VERY CAREFULLY what your competition do 3- https://adwords.google.com > tools and analysis > tool for keywords
Product sheets, categories, description and hierarchy The first thing we must do in Prestashop is tell both the user and Google who we are and what we do. Prestashop template developers have the blasted obsession of associating <h1> with the logo image. That is disastrous. What we should have in our home is: OK. <h1> Sale of Pirelli and Firestone tyres</h1> KO <h1><img src= {$img_dir}logo.jpg alt = page title ></h1>
Product sheets, categories, description and hierarchy In the product sheets and categories we must always bear in mind the criteria we want to position. For example, in the Pirelli Tyres category, we must consider our type of keywords in the title, description and keywords. Title: Online sale of Pirelli tyres Description: In elmundodelarueda you will find the widest range of Pirelli tyres at the best price. Free delivery costs in Spain. Keywords: Pirelli tyre, Pirelli tyre price, free delivery costs Pirelli tyre, Pirelli Spain tyre, cost of Pirelli tyre Rewriting URLs: Final step, don't forget to rewrite them by hand on the product sheet and remove the annoying product and category IDs with a module.
2. Product sheets and categories, description and hierarchy We can use this example, adapting it to each specific product, for product sheets. In particular, remember the home hierarchy for the product sheet: <h1>pirelli tyre model Imakeitup</h1> <h2>description</h2> blablablablabla <h3>characteristics</h3> <h3>user manual</h3> <h3>videos</h3>
2. Product sheets, categories description and hierarchy Ah! And be careful with the category, subcategory and product architecture of your stores. Whenever you can, associate a category with a product, not 7 categories per product. The more organised you are, the easier the indexing by search engines and the easier it will be for your customers to find things. And needless to say: minimise 404 errors and, if you delete pages, redirect them permanently with a 301 redirect Chef's suggestions: 1- Don't go overboard by putting 100 keywords, that's no use at all 2- Be patient, it's painstaking work 3- Use the Pretty URL module to delete URL IDs http://bit.ly/10uxigm 4- Have a look at Señor Muñoz Creating SEO architecture for ecommerce http://bit.ly/16sx7fl 5- More information: http://jordiob.com/2012/07/mejorando-el-seo-de-tu-ecommerce-prestashop/
3. Rich Snippets and Rel Author Rich Snippets are enriched fragments of text which we send to Google to better organise the search results information. What are they? They are for the worldly man, "he of the stars", as they allow us to integrate user reviews and ratings/votes in each of our Prestashop product sheets. Integrating the Rich Snippets allows us to stand out more in search results from the competition.
3. Rich Snippets and Rel Author Another way of standing out in search results is with rel author. The rel= author tag is linked to your personal profile in Google+ and allows you to do the faces thing. Ideally you should link rel author in your online store blog, not in your store. Chef's suggestions: 1- Rich Snippets Module for Prestashop http://bit.ly/14hcvez 2- Add rel= author in WordPress http://bit.ly/zhwuhd 3- How Optimizing My Ugly Google+ Pic Increased Free Traffic 35% http://bit.ly/11g2mcx
4. Schema.org Schema.org is a directive that helps Google, Yahoo, Bing or Yandex to classify web content. How? Telling the search engines what it is indexing through the itemtype tag. For our Prestashop homepage, we can tell the search engine that it is indexing a WebPage. The product pages, a product and the offers, offers. The search engines will therefore know that the information we are sending them refers to products, offers on our page or the page in general. Chef's suggestions: 1- How to integrate Schema.org in Prestashop: http://bit.ly/17vfqsr 2- List of types in Schema: http://schema.org/docs/full.html 3- FAQ on Schema.org in Google Webmasters http://bit.ly/16dsmbl
5. RDA Data for Facebook Raise a hand whoever is fed up publishing their products on Facebook with the logo photo associated with the link appearing. That is what we want to avoid with this RDA microdata which makes use of Facebook's Open Graph protocol. Yes, that thing you have seen occasionally in the source code of og:title, og:description. The microdata is telling the Facebook friend what title, description and image from your page it has to show when we share that page on Facebook. Not just that, as the microdata will also be sent to Mr Facebook every time someone shares or likes our content, improving our SEO in that social network. Chef's suggestions: 1- how to integrate Open Graph in Prestashop: http://bit.ly/17vfqsr 2- Open Graph Protocol https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/
6. Responsive design (RWD) This type of design approach allows you to craft websites. The grid adapts to all devices according to their width and height. Google likes your content to suit all users and devices so, whenever possible, you should strive for responsiveness in your Prestashop store, by making the theme responsive from the start, buying a template that is responsive (in 1.5 there are a lot) or acquiring a module that introduces a new theme that is only loaded when users come from smartphones or tablets. By default, Prestashop version 1.5 already includes a responsive theme, so the work is already completed. Chef's suggestions: 1- ThemeForest responsive Prestashop templates http://bit.ly/12kt4ty 2- Free Mobile Template Prestashop Module for Prestashop 1.4 http://bit.ly/15fbx9p 3- Google Mobile Meter http://www.howtogomo.com/en-gb/d/test-your-site/
7. The blog Developing a blog for your ecommerce is one of the key pieces for SEO. Adding new contents to ecommerce beyond products or categories is complicated, so it is always best to separate the part that gives life to the online store website. My advice is to set up a separate blog on Wordpress in a tutienda.com/blog type directory and fill it with contents each week Those contents should not only add to SEO, but also give users the impression that you are someone who knows what they are selling, which is very important in order to stand out from the competition in terms of service and experience. Remember that for the price anyone can compete. I can open a tyre store tomorrow and slash prices, but if I I have no idea what I am selling, people will notice.
7. The blog What an online store blog must not be What you must never do on your online store blog is produce a post on a product looking for an easy link and the people buy it. That is content because it has letters and images, but it is not value content. The content that you generate must provide value to the user, whether guiding them, resolving doubts, answering questions, talking about practical examples which could be theirs, etc. In the blog you don't sell. In the blog you talk and generate debate and indirectly get people to go to the store, which is where they will buy. I repeat: in the blog you don't sell.
7. The blog That value content will provide us medium/long-term visits and a certain degree of virality for our blog contents, as people will share them on other pages/blogs and social networks. Chef's suggestions: 1- The blog as an ecommerce accessory: a conversion and SEO tool http://bit.ly/mggprz 2- Feed Mr Google and prepare your ecommerce for SEO http://bit.ly/seiq3u 3- An ecommerce blog with posts which are an example to follow http://latiendadezinnia.com/blog/
8. Web Performance Optimization (WPO) Loading speed is another factor which might positively and negatively affect your positioning. The deduction is simple, the longer it takes to load your page, the worse the outcome. That is why it is critical to optimise your site so that it takes as little time as possible to load. More than 4 seconds for the homepage to load is bad. You must optimise your images to the full, use the caching options offered by Prestashop and use CCC compression, provided no functionality is loaded (some CSS and Javascripts can be problematic). Chef's suggestions: 1- Speed up your Prestashop http://jordiob.com/2012/03/acelerar-tu-tienda-prestashop/ 2- Google Page Speed Test https://developers.google.com/speed/pagespeed/insights 3- Pingdom Website Speed Test http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/
9. Dropshipping and copied descriptions Or rather, loading the CSV given to me by the provider and which ends up so wide. There is nothing worse for SEO than loading a whole page with 5,000 products in the catalogue and having the 5,000 descriptions each copied side by side. Copying/pasting content is frowned upon by Google, so it is very important that if you work in DropShipping you at least rewrite the product descriptions. It is gruelling task if so. But if you want some type of natural positioning, there is no other option. Chef's suggestions: 1- Plag Splotter Duplicate Content Checker http://www.plagspotter.com/ 2- Similar Page Checker http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php
10. Rolling out: htaccess, robots.txt and sitemap.xml Once you have completed all the above points, you are now ready to roll. There are only 3 things left to do first: Htaccess It generates htaccess through Tools > Generators (in Prestashop 1.4) or saving changes in the SEO tab and URLs in Prestashop 1.5 It generates the robots.txt file Tools > Generators (in Prestashop 1.4) It generates the sitemap.xml In modules > sitemap and send it to Google, Bing and Yahoo.
10. Rolling out: htaccess, robots.txt and sitemap.xml When you have everything online, verify site ownership in Google Webmaster Tools and follow the advice that the tool gives you on: - Optimisation / Sitemaps - Optimisation / HTML improvements (duplicate content) - Status / Crawl errors - And, if you do external SEO generating backlinks, pay careful attention to the warnings that they send you and Traffic / Links to your site. And if you need to remove backlinks, use the Disavow tool Chef's suggestions: 1- Google Webmaster Tools https://www.google.com/webmasters/ 2- Google Disavow Links Tool https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/disavow-links-main?pli=1 3- Bing / Yahoo Webmaster Tools http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster 4- Robots.txt generation tool http://www.mcanerin.com/en/search-engine/robots-txt.asp 5- Htaccess redirect generator http://bit.ly/16eeymj
About the author: Jordi Ordóñez I work in ecommerce consultancy and specialise in the Prestashop platform. ecommerce consultancy Analysis of statistics, abandoned carts, checkout process, user experience, conversions... Generating proposed improvements report Prestashop design Design of your custom Prestashop ecommerce from scratch or based on a template tailored to your needs SEO Prestashop Analysis of page positioning and improvements proposed both internally (improvements in catalogue and content) and externally (generation of domain authority, backlinks, social media outreach ) Development of Prestashop modules Development of custom modules for Prestashop 1.4 and 1.5 SEM Creation of Cost Per Click in Google Adwords, maintenance and optimisation. Content and social networks Generation and maintenance of content in your ecommerce, blogs and social networks. Generation of fans on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and LinkedIn and distribution of content. Blogs Design and development of WordPress based blogs. Here is my latest work http://jordiob.com/portafolio-de-trabajos/
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