Undoubtedly, SEO( Search Engine Optimization) is now a crucial component of any eCommerce website’s marketing and promotion. Look no further if you’re looking for ways to improve your OpenCart SEO but are unsure of where to begin. WebAllWays, India’s top Opencart optimization company, will walk you through the essential steps to help your store rise in search results in this blog. Gaining organic traffic and ultimately raising your sales will be made possible by these OpenCart SEO tips! Before we get started, we would like to tell you that you need enough time to perform these tips. Let’s move forward.
Set Up Effective Sitemap and Content Hierarchy – To make your content simple to consume, it should be organized effectively and internally linked. Pages should adhere to a logical organizational structure, from general content to more specific material. You provide details about the pages, files, and relationships that make up your site using a sitemap. Google will crawl your website more efficiently if you use the OpenCart SEO tip.
Optimize Search Intent – Search intent varies from person to person. While some people seek information, others seek out a particular website or page. You must first understand search intent, which includes the kind of content— a product page or blog post— that searchers are looking for, in order to decide what kind to create for a particular search phrase. This can be accomplished by simply entering a query into Google and reviewing the results. You should use these findings to assist you in producing content because Google has determined that they are the most pertinent to users through testing.
Do In-Depth Keyword Research – In order to learn how to do SEO, first you have to learn how to choose the right keywords. You can know what terms people use to find your products by conducting in-depth keyword research. Knowing these will help you include them( along with related search terms) in your content to increase organic search engine traffic. While ranking for the right keywords is very advantageous, you won’t see any results if you don” m on the first page of Google. To ensure that your website appears on the first page of search engine results pages, use these keywords in meta titles, meta descriptions, CTAs, and other content elements like product descriptions.
Don’t ignore long-tail keywords because they make up 70% of site traffic. For pages that aren’t as highly ranked as the homepage, long-tail keywords are great. Keep in mind that each page’s ranking will determine how well your OpenCart store performs. You will understand what an OpenCart keyword is and gain a lot from it if you follow the hints above for SEO.
Optimize Product Page URLs – Long URLs can undermine your chances of ranking highly on Google and other search engines. Therefore, you must shorten the URLs of your OpenCart websites. To put it more specifically, you should:
Avoid unnecessary characters
Use hyphen to separate words in URLs
Use only lowercase characters
Avoid using a, an and the
Include useful product details like product name, brand name, color or size
To do this, first log into your OpenCart Dashboard, then select “Yes” under “Use SEO URLs” and save your settings. The second step is to rename the file .htaccess.txt in your hosting control panel to .htaccess.
Optimize Homepage Title – The most crucial OpenCart SEO tip is the most straightforward one. Before performing any other challenging task for search engines, keep in mind to include a Homepage Title for humans. Your OpenCart store’s homepage will by default display your brand name. You can modify it by going to Edit Store General under System Settings. The ideal homepage SEO title should include one SEO keyword, a brand name, up to 50– 60 characters, and no keyword stuffing, according to this OpenCart SEO tip.
Optimize Meta Tags – Meta titles and meta descriptions are the terms used to describe the text found in search engine listings. These aren’t official ranking factors, but they do affect the SERP click-through rate( CTR), which SEO experts believe to be a key ranking factor.
Write Alternative Text and Image Description – We want to emphasize how helpful it is to write picture file names that are SEO-friendly in this list of OpenCart SEO Tips. Use a few words to describe the content of your image files when naming them, and then dash each word. Don’t push it, but it helps if you can include your target keyword in both filenames and alt text. Google might flag it as spam if it isn’t.
Optimize Product Images – Because they can greatly enhance your results, product photos should always be considered a key component of your store’s SEO strategy. To enhance the product images in your store, you should take into account the following three factors:
Image alt-text – Use the keyword from your product as the alt text for your image. To increase your chances of ranking, you can also include sub-keywords.
Image title – An image title like image-11079 PNG is categorically rejected in the SEO community. Your image title “image-11079 PNG” will be crawled by search engine bots, which will identify its meaninglessness. Save your product images with titles that accurately describe them at all times. Write “Apply-Watch” or any other phrase you want to rank for, for instance, if you’re selling an Apple Watch.
Image size – Large images can cause your website’s pages to load more slowly. Always submit an image of an OpenCart product in the ideal or recommended size.
Pay Attention to Page Load Speed – If the pages on your website load slowly, your rankings will suffer. Make sure your site loads quickly by selecting your OpenCart hosting wisely. Additionally, remember to choose appropriate OpenCart themes that complement your store and don’t degrade site performance in addition to being appealing and user-friendly.
Use Canonical URLs to Reduce Duplicate Content – Make sure you’re not copying anything from somewhere else by using Canonical URLs to Reduce Duplicate Content. Google will severely penalize duplicate content. If the same content appears on two different pages of your website, there may be problems with duplication. Canonical URLs give Google the main source page of the content and let them know that your website has multiple pages with the same information. Your rankings will suffer if Google doesn’t index that page!