To understand PrestaShop SEO, picture this: You own a stunning retail store. Everything about it is breathtaking. Nothing is out of place, from the eye-catching storefront to the immaculate interior décor. Even the product placement is functional and well-thought-out.
There's only one problem: Your store is in some remote part of town no one knows about. As it turns out, no one can find it.
What a waste, right? All that effort, and no one knows it exists.
Without SEO, your PrestaShop website is a little like that fabulous store in the middle of nowhere.
Why SEO Matters for Your PrestaShop Store
SEO draws people to your website. It relies on users' search queries to determine whether your eCommerce site is useful and relevant. Here are the top five reasons why you cannot afford to ignore SEO for your PrestaShop store.
1. To Boost Organic Visibility
A recent report indicates that the first page of Google's search results accounts for 91.5% of online search traffic to websites. That's pretty phenomenal if you think about it.
The average click-through rate of page-one organic search results currently stands at 32.5% compared to 17.6% and 11.4% for page-two and three results, respectively. Based on these statistics, you can safely conclude that if your eCommerce store doesn't feature among Google's first page results, it won't be visible to your target consumer base.
You might also be interested to know that Google's Featured Snippets feature is significantly more effective in driving organic traffic compared to the top-ranking results displayed on page one of search engine results pages (SERPs). A study by Ahrefs found that when a Featured Snippet appears above the top-ranking result, the average click-through rate of the site in the #1 spot reduces to 19.6%.
If these figures are anything to go by, they reveal just how important SEO is for eCommerce as far as boosting the visibility of your PrestaShop store goes.
2. To Ramp Up Sales
More than 80% of consumers search online when purchasing a product. 47% of prospective customers will first check out your company website before they contact a salesperson if they're interested in purchasing a product.
The bottom line is this: It doesn't matter how great a product you're selling. It doesn't matter how much time, effort, and resources you've invested into making your online store appealing to deliver the most optimum user experience for shoppers. If your eCommerce website isn't visible to prospective consumers, you'll never make enough sales to keep your business afloat.
SEO isn't just important for visibility; it builds customers' trust in your brand. Both these factors are critical for ramping up sales and boosting revenue.
3. To Minimize Marketing Spend
There's no denying that marketing campaigns cost money. Given the fierce competition out there, it's an inevitable reality that all businesses have to contend with. Unlike paid search campaigns that have a cost associated with every click, impression, and conversion, SEO strategies cost significantly less.
Granted, you will need to hire and retain SEO experts to create and implement a marketing strategy for your business. However, it won't cost nearly as much as PPC, influencer marketing, and other paid campaigns. You also need to keep in mind that paid campaigns only deliver tangible results if you keep spending. You can immediately see why this would be problematic if you have a tight marketing budget.
If you're looking to minimize your marketing spend and keep driving traffic to your online store in the long run without incurring any additional costs, SEO is the way to go.
4. To Leverage Multiple Ranking Factors
Google uses multiple criteria when ranking a website. Factors like the store's security, page loading speed, mobile experience, keyword placement, rich snippets, helpful content, etc., all play a role in where your eCommerce site ranks on SERPs.
With SEO, you can leverage all these ranking factors to ensure you deliver relevant content to your target audience in a way that resonates with them and ensures they have a positive brand experience.
5. To Rank for the Long Haul
SEO is a gift, and it keeps on giving. Organic search results yield long-term benefits for websites at the top. The longer your eCommerce store features among the top spots on SERPs, the higher your CTC and conversion rates will be.
On the flip side, if your marketing strategy centers around paid campaigns, your website will only feature at the top for the duration you're paying. Once the cash runs out, Google will roll back your store to its previous position.
If you're looking to rank for the long haul, SEO is the only marketing strategy that allows you to do that. Unlike paid ads that require you to start from the bottom every time you launch a new campaign, SEO allows you to build on your existing optimization efforts and fine-tune areas that require improvement to ensure you maintain your position at the top of results pages.
See also: The Complete PrestaShop Tutorial.
Understanding PrestaShop SEO Basics
There's no question about it – SEO is critical to the growth and longevity of your online store. Let's now explore some PrestaShop SEO basics:
1. Getting Your eCommerce Store on Google
You typically don't need to do much to add your online store to Google's index. It is sometimes as simple as launching your site on the web. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for sites to get missed despite the fact that Google crawls billions of pages every day.
If search engine crawlers miss your site, it is often due to the following reasons:
- No existing websites are linking back to your site.
- Your site is brand new, and Google hasn't crawled it yet.
- Google finds it difficult to crawl your store content due to your site design.
- Your site delivers an error when Google tries to crawl it.
- Your website is small, and Google simply missed it.
It would be in your best interest to review Google's list of Search Essentials to ensure your eCommerce website fulfills the criteria to feature on SERPs.
Additionally, you should make it a top priority to make sure all visitors to your online store have a great user experience. Ask yourself the following:
- Do prospective shoppers find your site content engaging, valuable, and unique?
- Is your store optimized to meet users' expectations as far as being helpful, reliable, and user-driven goes?
2. Understanding How Google Search Works on PrestaShop
Right off the bat, it is worth mentioning that if someone claims they can get Google to crawl your website frequently so it ranks higher, in exchange for a fee, you're being scammed. Here's why.
There's no guarantee that Google will crawl or index your page even if your PrestaShop store follows all the Search Essentials provided by the search engine giant. The only thing you can do is optimize your website for search engines and wait for Google to crawl it.
With that in mind, there are three stages to Google Search when it comes to indexing your PrestaShop pages. Some pages make it through all three stages, while others don't.
Phase 1: Crawling
First, Google has to find out what pages exist on the internet. Since there isn't a central registry that documents all web pages, Google has to keep looking for new or updated ones using automated programs known as crawlers. These crawlers then download images, text, and videos from websites and add them to their list of known pages.
Phase 2: Indexing
Once Google crawls a web page, it tries to decipher what the page in question is about using a process referred to as indexing. It involves analyzing and processing elements like the textual content of the page, the content attributes and tags, alt attributes, images, and more.
Google also checks whether a page is a duplicate of an existing one on the web or a duplicate of a canonical one. A canonical is the page shown on search results.
Google stores the information it collects on a web page in a large database called the index. Keep in mind that not every page that Google processes and analyzes will be indexed. Indexing issues may arise if:
- It considers the quality of the content on your web page poor or irrelevant to users' queries.
- You set a noindex rule on your website that prevents search engines from indexing your web pages.
- The design of your website makes it difficult for Google to index your PrestaShop store.
Phase 3: Serving Results
When users enter search queries on Google, Google responds by returning results it believes are the most relevant to the queries. This process is known as serving search results. Google uses several criteria to determine relevance, including the user's geographical location, the device they're using (mobile vs. desktop), language, and more.
3. The Role of Helpful, Reliable, and Relevant Content
Contrary to what you might believe, Google's ranking system is based on whether it considers the content on a website helpful, reliable, and relevant to users, as opposed to whether the content has been designed to rank high on SERPs. It checks whether people actually find the content beneficial.
The question then becomes: How do you know whether your PrestaShop content is helpful, reliable, and relevant?
A self-assessment of your website will help you determine how to tweak your content to ensure users have a positive user experience when visiting your online store. Some questions you can address include the following:
- Does my site content provide a comprehensive and substantial description of the products?
- Do my product pages contain the sort of information users would want to bookmark, recommend, or share with a friend?
- Would I expect to see my products and site content referenced by other sites with high domain authority or in print media and books?
- Does my store feature well-produced, high-quality content, or does it appear sloppy and hastily-produced?
- Does the content on my website present my brand in a way that makes it appear trustworthy to prospective customers?
- Will a visitor shopping on my website leave feeling like they've had a great experience?
The answers to these questions will go a long way in helping you create people-first content, and Google's ranking systems will reward you for it.
4. How to Help Google Find Your PrestaShop Store
You've launched your online store. Great! Now, all you need to do is help Google find it.
The easiest and arguably the most effective way to do this is by submitting a sitemap. An XML sitemap is a small file on your website that tells Google and other search engines of any new or updated pages on your eCommerce store. It provides information about the pages, images, videos, and other files on your website and the existing relationships between them.
Google will read your sitemap so it can crawl the pages on your store more efficiently. It is worth mentioning that if the pages on your site are linked properly, Google will usually crawl your site, even without a sitemap. As long as the crawler can reach the pages you deem important through some type of navigation, you shouldn't have a problem getting Google to crawl your PrestaShop store.
That said, having a sitemap will significantly improve the ease with which Google crawls your website, especially if you have a larger store with more specialized files.
5. Should You Hire an SEO Expert for Your PrestaShop Store?
It depends. If you understand the ins and outs of SEO and can properly implement it on your own, then you probably don't need to onboard an expert. However, if your understanding of SEO is pretty basic – we're talking surface-level stuff – it would probably be a good idea to retain the services of an SEO agency and let them optimize your PrestaShop store for search engines.
Ensure that you do your due diligence to ensure the agency you're working with knows what they're doing. Working with an incompetent or inexperienced so-called "SEO expert" can end up causing irreparable damage to your website, so make sure the firm or individual you bring on board has a proven track record of optimizing eCommerce websites for search engines.
Some of the services a solid SEO agency can provide to online store owners include, but are not limited to:
- Reviewing your website structure and content
- Providing technical advice related to web development, such as error pages, redirects, hosting, use of JavaScript, etc.
- Keyword research
- Content development
- Developing and managing marketing campaigns
The best time to hire an SEO expert is at the point of launching a new website or if you're thinking about redesigning your current store.
See also: PrestaShop vs. Shopify – Which Is the Better Platform for Sales Growth?
PrestaShop SEO: Best Do's & Recommended Don'ts
If you've recently set up an eCommerce website, you might find the concept of optimizing your website for search engines complex, especially if you have no background in digital marketing. You might find terms like content marketing, link-building, keyword research, etc., confusing and downright intimidating.
The good news is that SEO isn't as complicated as you might think. Once you master the do's and don'ts, you'll be well on your way to optimizing your online store for search engines and have it feature among the top results on SERPs.
With that out of the way, there are four phases of PrestaShop SEO you must focus on if you're looking to increase the visibility of your online store.
Phase 1: Keyword Research
The first step involves doing keyword research. The idea is to identify the specific words or phrases your target shoppers are using to search for the products you sell. Here's how to go about it:
Come Up With a Keyword Strategy
Start by drafting a keyword strategy that includes a healthy mix of key phrases that generate both traffic and sales for your site. As tempting as it might be to go for low-competition, high-volume keywords, this approach might not get you the results you desire. They may drive traffic to your website but may not result in conversions.
On the other hand, high-competition keywords might make it extremely difficult (if not impossible) for your PrestaShop store to rank. A better approach would be to find a middle ground and choose short or long-tail keywords that your competition may have overlooked in their SEO strategy.
Identify Relevant Keywords
Use Google Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, Google Autocomplete, and other keyword suggestion tools to find relevant phrases your target shoppers are using to find the products you're selling.
You don't have to use every keyword provided, either. Narrow down your list to the specific phrases relevant to your business.
Phase 2: Initial SEO
This second phase involves preparing your store for the task ahead and resolving any glaring issues related to your PrestaShop SEO. Here's what's required:
Do a Google Mobile-Friendly Test
According to Statista, mobile users account for 58.3% of the global web page viewership. In other words, roughly half of your site visitors access your online store using their smartphone, tablet, or mobile device. If these numbers are anything to go by, it is now more important than ever to ensure your PrestaShop store is optimized for mobile viewing.
A while back, Google rolled out its mobile-first indexing criterion, stating that it would index the mobile versions of eCommerce websites before the desktop versions. It is, therefore, prudent to do a Google mobile-friendly test on your PrestaShop site to ensure you reap the full benefits of your store's SEO.
Set Up Google Analytics for Your PrestaShop Website
The next thing you must do is configure Google Analytics for your online store. It is a critical step to optimizing your PrestaShop website for search engines to ensure you have real-time data about your site traffic, conversions, and sales.
With Google Analytics SEO metrics, you can learn who your audiences are and gain insights into their age, ethnicity, gender, and location. Armed with these metrics, you can curate their shopping experience based on how they respond to different calls to action and recommendations.
Configure Google Search Console
Google's Search Console is a must-have if you want to get your PrestaShop store indexed and verified. By signing up for the tool, you can keep track of your site's indexing status, crawling errors, search queries, and penalties. That way, you can take remediation and preventative measures to optimize your online store for search engines.
Optimize Your Website's Speed and Performance
Reports indicate that 40% of users will exit a web page if it takes three seconds or more to load. It means that the time it takes for the pages on your online store to load has a direct bearing on your site's bounce rate.
As you probably already know, a high bounce rate signals to Google that visitors are having a poor user experience on your store or they're exiting because it doesn't contain relevant information to their query.
The result?
Google will rank down your site and bump up others it deems relevant.
One of the easiest ways to enhance your website's performance is to restrict the use of JavaScript and minimize how much you customize your store through coding. Additionally, consider installing plugins and modules that allow you to cache your eCommerce website on external servers for faster page loading speeds.
Get Rid of Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is an SEO killer. Think – plagiarism, duplicate canonicals, duplicate intra-site pages, the same products featured on different storefronts, and so forth. These are all instances of duplicate content.
When Google is confronted with several versions of the same content, it has to decide which one to index, subsequently excluding the rest from its directory. To avoid getting penalized by Google, use canonical tags to make it known to search engine bots that that's the primary version of a CMS or product page. You can also go a step further and integrate the HTML attribute hreflang to specify the geographical and language targeting of your online store.
Use Structured Markup Language
Structured markup language, also referred to as Schema, is useful for helping search engines and end-users understand the content on your PrestaShop store. While integrating structured markup such as Rich Snippets may not directly impact your eCommerce website's SEO to bump up your store's ranking on SERPs, it will improve the user experience of shoppers browsing your site.
Google will, in turn, take this to mean that the content on your website is useful and relevant to users and will rank your store higher on SERPS.
Install an SSL Certificate on Your Website
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is a type of technology that secures internet connections to ensure that the data exchanged between a browser and a website or between two servers is encrypted. That way, hackers and unauthorized third parties cannot see or steal this information.
While installing an SSL certificate is a great way to secure your website, it doesn't boost SEO. Google doesn't consider it a ranking factor. However, given the fact that eCommerce websites deal with tons of sensitive personal and financial information from users, securing this data against hackers and other bad actors should be a top priority for every store owner.
Indirectly, the lack of an SSL certificate may have a negative impact on your PrestaShop SEO. Your bounce rate will inevitably increase when prospective customers exit your website the moment they encounter that glaring warning from Google. You know, the one that reads, "Your connection is not private." A high bounce rate is bad for SEO.
Generate an XML Sitemap
While it is not mandatory for SEO, we strongly recommend generating an XML sitemap to help Google understand your site content and structure. You can do this manually or using a plugin.
A sitemap provides Google with information on the product pages in your store, product placement, images, videos, files, and other content in your store, and the relationships between them.
Leverage Robot.txt
Robot.txt is a file in your website's root folder with instructions for search engine bots on what parts of your PrestaShop store it should crawl and index. While Google crawlers may crawl all the content in your online store, if you wish to leave out certain sections, you can also do it using robot.txt.
Ensure the file is valid and accurate and isn't blocking valuable content you would otherwise want to be indexed.
Phase 3: On-Page SEO
With the preliminary SEO preparations out of the way, it's now time to bring out the big guns: On-page SEO.
Also referred to as on-site SEO, this third phase of search engine optimization deals with the way your PrestaShop content is presented to search engines and site visitors. The whole point of on-site SEO is to help Google and prospective shoppers better understand what your online store is about.
Here's a checklist of things you can do to enhance your PrestaShop website's on-page SEO.
- Ensure your product page title tags are search-engine-friendly. To do this, limit the length to 55 characters, integrate the primary keyword into the meta title, and make it catchy to increase the click-through rate.
- Use descriptive URLs and make sure they're readable. Steer clear of system-generated codes, numbers, and special characters.
- Write eye-catching meta descriptions that make users want to click on the search result. Incorporate the target keyword and limit the entire description to no more than 160 characters.
- Add target keywords to product images and accompanying alternative (alt) text with an accurate description of the visual content on your PrestaShop site. If your site has several images, consider using the SEO Images (Alts Tag) module to automate the process and save time.
- Content is king and always will. Invest in compelling, high-quality on-site content to highlight your products and what makes them stand out from the competition. Incorporate the focused keywords at the beginning of the first paragraph, highlight the product features, ensure product descriptions are at least 300 words or more, and incorporate internal and external links organically into the content.
Phase 4: Off-Page SEO
Once you have your store's on-page SEO down, you can now embark on off-page optimization. As the name suggests, off-page SEO is the off-site marketing outreach activities designed to position your website as a credible and trusted authority in your sector by getting reputable, high-authority websites to link back to your store.
Acquiring these "backlinks" can be challenging, especially for new businesses. There are two ways to go about it.
On the one hand, you can earn backlinks from high-authority websites by creating and sharing high-quality content that catches the attention of notable individuals and agencies in your sector. If they like your content, they will likely mention it in theirs. This approach is passive and may take quite a bit of time, so you will need to be patient.
On the other hand, you can take a more proactive approach by reaching out to high-authority sites, telling them about your latest post or product launch, and asking them for a link back to your PrestaShop store. Focus on business directory sites, magazines, news websites, and popular non-competitor blogs in your niche, which you can identify using Ahrefs or similar tools.
PrestaShop SEO: What Not to Do
Now that you know what to do to optimize your PrestaShop store for search engines, here's a list of what not to do:
- Don't link to irrelevant websites.
- Don't be focused on gaining a high number of backlinks. Focus on quality over quantity.
- Don't stuff your content with keywords or overuse the target keyword.
- Don't publish plagiarized or poor-quality content on your PrestaShop website blog.
- Don't add your website to blog networks.
- Don't use cloaking techniques.
- Don't get backlinks to your homepage. Get links to high-value content on your site.
See also: The Complete Magento to PrestaShop Migration Checklist.
Final Thoughts
The world has shifted online. Old-school marketing methods just won't cut it. SEO is an integral part of getting your eCommerce business noticed, and no digital marketing campaign would be deemed complete without it.
You can't afford to ignore SEO any longer. The survival and growth of your business depend on it.
Use the tips we've highlighted in this guide to propel your PrestaShop store to the top of Google search results.
Are you thinking of transferring your online store from your current eCommerce provider to a different platform? Cart2Cart can help with that.
Our automated shopping cart migration solution removes the guesswork to help you switch from your current provider to an eCommerce platform of your choice with no downtime and no risk of data loss.
Want to see Cart2Cart in action? Sign up for a free demo today.
FAQ
Is PrestaShop good for SEO?
No single eCommerce platform is inherently "good" for SEO. You would have to do a lot of the heavy lifting yourself to ensure your online store is optimized for search engines. That said, PrestaShop does have some built-in modules you can leverage to improve your site's positioning on search engines. Popular ones include SEO Images (Alt Tags), SEO Expert, and Page Cache.
What are the best SEO practices for PrestaShop?
Some SEO best practices you can implement in your PrestaShop store include:
- Optimizing your online store for mobile
- Optimizing your website's speed and performance
- Getting rid of duplicate content and utilizing canonicals as and when needed
- Using structured markup language
- Installing an SSL certificate on your website
- Generating an XML sitemap
- Leveraging robot.txt
How do I optimize my PrestaShop website?
To optimize your PrestaShop store for Google, consider focusing on on-page and off-site SEO practices such as:
- Making your product page title tags search-engine-friendly
- Using descriptive URLs and making sure they're readable
- Writing eye-catching meta-descriptions
- Incorporating target keywords into product images and accompanying alternative (alt) text
- Creating compelling, high-quality on-site content to highlight your products and what makes them stand out from the competition
- Getting authoritative websites to link back to your store
April 25, 2024 
