» » PrestaShop - Your store's SEO guide

SEO guide for PrestaShop stores

PrestaShop incorporates all the basic elements necessary for good natural referencing. But to achieve this, you need to follow certain rules, which you should put in place as soon as you create your store, to get into the habit of "doing it right".

Define your business - Optimize categories - Optimizing the product sheet - Optimizing content - Notify search engines - Track your referencing - Conclusion

Define your business

Before jumping headlong into the SEO optimization of your PrestaShop store, I'd advise you to try and write down in black and white the exact definition of your business and therefore of your store.

This will enable you to highlight key expressions that you'll need to rework to integrate as effectively as possible into all the texts on your site.

For this store, for example:

Creation and distribution of templates, modules and services for users of the PrestaShop open source script. This store is mainly aimed at professionals and offers only products dedicated to PrestaShop.

Here, we clearly see keywords related to our business:

From this small list, we then need to develop the related expressions and synonyms to produce a list of 20 to 50 expressions:

  • PrestaShop Templates and Themes
  • Professional services
  • PrestaShop Professional Services
  • ...

From this list, you can then analyze the relevance of these queries to your business. Simply go to your favorite search engine and type in these expressions to see what comes up (number of links, competition for first results, correspondence with your business).

You can also ask Google to help you by indicating the best queries for your target using the Keyword generator.

After selecting your keywords, try to distribute them as evenly as possible in your texts and descriptions.

So, let's start with the Categories of your store.

Optimize categories

In the end, it's always a sub-category, since your store's main category is Home. It's made up of all the elements needed to make it stand out for your visitors and for search engines.

  • Name:
    This text will appear in the breadcrumb as well as in the page title above the products or sub-categories.
    It's imperative to use a short expression directly related to the type of products linked to this Category, because here you must clearly inform the visitor and also enable the search engine to understand the content.
    For example: "Gold Pendant", or "Tablecloth, Waxed Canvas".
  • Description:
    It's not compulsory, but it's important enough to create controlled content at the top of your page, which improves the positioning of certain words.
    It is also used by the category block (left-hand menu) in the title tags of links.
    You need to work on your content by broadening the key expressions used in the title.
    For example: "18Kt Solid Gold Pendant", or "Fancy Waxed Cloth Tablecloth".
  • Balise <title>:
    This tag is very important to differentiate your site in the search engine results. It's what's displayed at the top of your visitor's browser window, and it's also what's displayed as a link in the search engine results lists.
    You need to communicate, in a few words, the best possible tagline based on the keywords to be highlighted by the search engines, without forgetting that it's humans who will click, or not, on this link.
    For example: "Solid 18K gold pendant from your online jeweller".
  • Meta description
    Here, you can take your Description, but I recommend you rework it to include a catchy message for your visitors, as this text is displayed on search engine results lists and should make visitors want to come and visit your site. In addition, highlighting certain keywords doesn't do much for your ranking, but it does help to catch the eye of your visitors.
  • Meta keywords:
    They are no longer taken into account by Google, but some engines still consider them, so don't forget to place certain key expressions to satisfy this expectation, but don't waste your time either.
  • Simplified URL:
    PrestaShop will store the NAME in this field as standard, but you can modify it if you wish. We remind you that we can only enter lower-case letters, without accents, without special characters and with spaces replaced by hyphens (-).

Optimizing the product sheet

  • Name:
    Corresponds to the title of your product, which can be consulted on all the pages of your site. It must be concise and clear, so that the user immediately discovers what it's all about.
  • Summary:
    This is where you present your product to your visitors, but you should bear in mind that this element can also replace the meta description tag if it's not filled in. So you need to think about creating a description that is adapted to your site for search engines and Internet users, but with the idea that it will be picked up by search engines.
  • Balise <title> :
    As with categories, this tag is there to allow you to convey more complete information about your product without altering the layout of your site. So be as clear as possible when defining your product by limiting this tag to 80 characters.
    You can, for example, allude to the brand or manufacturer reference depending on the type of product.
  • Meta description:
    This field is limited by PrestaShop and I advise you not to modify it, as it allows you to remain consistent with the evolution of search engines.
    You can therefore explain to your prospects what product you're talking about, and above all why it's more interesting to order it from you than from the competition.
  • Meta keywords:
    As with categories, this field is obsolete, but you can still reference certain words in it.
  • Simplified URL:
    You'll need to use the title you've included in your meta title, but avoid making it too long (4 or 5 words).

Optimizing content

Content includes all information pages, as well as related pages dealing with your business. Prestashop's CMS functions enable you to create real information articles for your visitors, and this can become a significant entry point.
You can take advantage of this feature to present your corporate culture, your salary policy or your relationship with the environment in greater detail. It's vital to find a topic to highlight so that the buzz can build around it.

  • META Title
    The title is used for links on your site and on search engines. Here, you can't separate content from form in order to differentiate an editorial choice between the 2 media.
  • META Description
    Take the opportunity to write an eye-catching summary of the article, as it may be picked up by other sites.
  • META Keywords
    In the same way as for categories and products, you can set up a list of key expressions dedicated to the subject.
  • Simplified URL
    Work on it, because it's the one that will appear most often if forums and other blogs refer to your article.

Notify search engines

PrestaShop includes useful features such as sitemap generation. This means you can offer the major search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) regular retrieval of your sitemap to help them index your pages.

To do this, you need to sign up for their sitemap indexing service, and after you have integrated a verification code on your PrestaShop pages using our module, you can propose the address of your sitemap for indexing. This will be consulted regularly, so it's important to update it each time you create or modify your PrestaShop store.

Google Webmaster Tools - Bing Webmaster Live

Track your referencing

When you make major changes to your site's SEO, it's important to monitor the return on your investment over time, by analyzing the evolution of your positioning on the key expressions you've chosen to emphasize, the evolution of your positioning in relation to your competitors, and so on.

To do this, I recommend a free, practical software program WebCEO

Improve your "BackLinks

It's essential to work on your reputation with other websites. This represents the importance of your site in its field of activity, and the more targeted links you receive, the more important you'll be.

Attention, targeted links are clearly related to your business.

You can get targeted links using 2 techniques:

  • Forge partnerships with sites relevant to your business
  • List you in search engines

The two techniques don't produce the same results, and require a great deal of effort in terms of targeting if you don't want to be listed just anywhere on a site, or in a general directory that has no connection with your business.

Conclusion

The natural referencing of a website is long and tedious, but it's the one that will ultimately bring you the most customers. Don't neglect it.

If you would like further advice or assistance in setting up your SEO policy, you can do so on the site.