SEO for New Magento Site??!?

[nicc1976]

Hi All,

We have had a new site delivered by our developers (hurrah...the old one was to terrible for words) but we seem to be having a lot of issues with the new Magento platform. What they have done is used the community version and tried to customize it.

I came on to this project about a month into the build and although Magento does seem to do a lot things well there do seem to be some problems. From an SEO prespective we have seen some increase on some search terms and a drop of in others. I would be interested in hearing from other Magento users about their experiences with this platform and any ideas on how to crank up the activity. Our site is at www.nationwidepharmacies.co.uk . There are few odd bits including the side navigation which seems to be very clunky and not overly customizable in this version. Any useful criticism would also be well received.

Look forward to hearing

Nic

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey Nic

Magento is one platform where it is easy to create a lot of duplication. I am no Magento expert but the first thing I would look at is internal duplication, multiple URLs for products etc.

Can you drop a URL in here along with some specific concerns and I am sure the good folks at SEOMoz will dig in and take a look for you.

Cheers

Marcus

[nicc1976]

Hi Marcus,

The duplicate URL's is certainly one area of concern...as you say there are multiple paths to get to the same page. I did read somewhere that Google can cope with this issue as it understands how Magento works. Is that right?

One thing that really does bug me is that we have to create additional pages for products so we can get them to show in the side nav bar. The developers had issues trying to get the product pages to link from the navigation so we end up with a product info page e.g. http://www.nationwidepharmacies.co.uk/online-doctor/erectile-dysfunction/erectile-dysfunction-treatments/viagra/viagra-tablets.html and an extra page linking from the side nav http://www.nationwidepharmacies.co.uk/online-doctor/erectile-dysfunction/erectile-dysfunction-treatments/viagra.html which seems a bit labour intensive.

Nic

[Marcus_Miller]

Hey, I would not make any assumptions that Google can cope with anything like this and I would really want a canonical tag in place for those product pages for starters.

The sidebar issue sounds fishy, surely, you should be able to show links to anything you want anywhere. This sounds more an issue the developers are having with the myriad complexities of magento than anything else.

Given the industry you are in (pharmaceuticals / viagra etc) I would want to play this squeaky clean and get all my on-page-SEO ducks in a row.

Really, I can give you general SEO advice but am no Magento SEO so can't really comment on the other aspects (sorry).

Any Magento SEO guru's here?

[websearchseo]

deleted by Mark Johnson

[Marcus_Miller]

delete by Marcus Miller

[nicc1976]

Thanks Marcus,

Have been on to the dev guys re: Rel canonical.. It looks like Magento does have a config setting fro that which they missed. They are adamant about the navigation issue though which is a real bummer....although i would agree that it sounds more like they don't know how to do it.

Cheers

Nic

[nicc1976]

Definitely not a good start.... 'Are You Want To Seo Ranking'

[websearchseo]

Sorry Marcus, my account has been hacked. I did not write this.

I would certainly not do such a thing.

Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Regards

Mark

[l_taylor]

This article helped us with our Magento SEO:

http://yoast.com/articles/magento-seo/

I hope this helps.

[nicc1976]

Hi Ethan,

Thanks for that. That looks pretty comprehensive. Have you implemented the Yoast modules? Has it had any decent impact?

Cheers

Nic

[JoshAsteteWebFullCircle]

This post is deleted!

[harapartners93]

This is great article. I am trying to build video tutorial for Magento SEO, i think this could be helpful.