Magento SEO Theme

We start off with using the Blank SEO Theme, which takes the blank theme (which we’d typically start from) and improves some items with more semantic coding, cleaning the header, and some no-following. We also go through the already detailed steps of:

• re-routing non www traffic to www
• 301ing /index.php to the root
• implement canonical URL extension
• generate XML sitemap

At this point, there are a few other recommended changes we make to the base theme that haven’t yet been detailed.  First, we remove the table-based layout for the product grid, we prefer using div blocks to organize our products and allows for cleaner code.  We also make a few changes to the semantics of the header tags actually used in that theme.  I’ve seen many SEOs do the same thing, they make the logo an h1 tag, title it with some keyphrases, and use it on every page of the site.  While this may semantically help keep your site structured, my opinion is that you’re doing yourself a dis-service by practicing this technique.  The h1 tag should be unique on every page, and should only be used when providing value to the user.  The blank SEO theme makes the logo an h1 on the homepage, and an h4 on all subsequent pages.  Which in itself is a comprimise, but does break the semantics of the page, because on subsequent pages, the h4 appears before the h1.  If you do not have a “natural heading” on the homepage, I might recommend wrapping the logo in one there and only there, but if you do, then, there is no purposed for the logo being wrapped in an h1.

In addition to this, we also go through and no-follow layered navigation links, sorting and paging links, wishlist, compare, as well as any other necessary links.

Magento Pagination

We wrote up a pretty exhaustive article on the issues of eCommerce pagination and a few methods to remedy any duplicate content issues that may arise from that.  Like most other eCommerce platforms, Magento’s pagination techniques presents the same set of issues.  Without redeveloping the entire pagination system (not yet at least), we make a few tweaks to how the existing pagination works in two primary ways.  First, we alter the title tag of each page to prefix “Page [2] of…” so that each page contains a unique title tag.  In addition, you may not even notice it, but there is actually a duplicate URL for your first page.  Follow me in this process, browse to a category with multiple pages, advance to any page greater than one, and notice the link back to page 1 – it appends a querystring parameter for page one instead of using the default URL.  For example, if we sell blue acorns (goodbye blue widgets), our page URL might be /products/blue-acorns where each subsequent page being /products/blue-acorns?p=2, the pagination actually links back to page one as /products/blue-acorns?p=1 – creating an exact duplicate of /products/blue-acorns.  We resolve this by adding a nofollow attribute to the page 1 link.  An even better solution would be to change the pagination model so that it does not use the p=1 querystring parameter.

SEO for multi-store Magento implementations

One of the great capabilities of Magento is its inherit ability to support multiple web stores. Through one administration and one interface, you can manage all of your orders, all of your products, everything.  Many online retailers setup multiple niche storefronts that may sell overlapping products, and Magento provides an excellent interface for doing so.  However, be careful in how you setup your product data.  If you sell the same products on multiple sites, and use the same exact information on each site, you’re walking a fine line between duplicating yourself, especially seeing that all of your multiple sites will most likely be setup on the same IP block depending on your host.  So it would be easy for a search engine to tell that these sites are not only related, but really, one in the same.

This is more of a tip for those of you running multiple sites on Magento than it is a Magento-specific tweak, but I highly recommend mixing up the data on each site.  Don’t use the same titles, headers, and descriptions and even price on each site.  I realize this takes a great deal of effort to maintain, but if the whole reason to run multiple sites is an attempt to achieve greater “reach” in the search engines, you’d be shooting yourself in the foot if you just used the same data on each site.  You’d be better off building up the authority of one single domain than setting up multiple sites and hindering each of them.

301ing disabled products

Consider this scenario.  You sell a great, useful amazing product, everyone loves it.  They love it so much that the product goes viral and you’ve got thousands of inbound links to it.  A year later, the product is no longer available, and you disable it from your website.  What then happens to users that click on those links?  What happens to search engines the next time they spider your site?  What happens to all that link juice being passed to that page?  The answer to all of the above is… 404

This is a pretty common issue we come across with eCommerce platforms, when products are disabled, and a user tries to go to that now defunct URL, they get a 404 error.  While we do recommend customizing your “not found” pages to at least include a search or related pages, what would be more effective from an SEO perspective, and a user’s perspective is if they got directed to another page that was related to the product that is no longer available.  What we do is actually create a means for which Magento administrators can setup a “redirect to” product (or category) so that when a product is disabled, instead of the user (or search engine) getting a 404, they actually get taken to a product that might have replaced it, a related product, or even the parent category if you no longer carry that product.  This will help retain any search engine positioning that product was getting, preserve any link juice that was being passed to that page, as well as creating a better user experience.  A win all the way around.

SEO and eCommerce Platforms

All in all, while you might be thinking to yourself, “wow, Magento really isn’t SEO friendly” – don’t let this article confuse you.  Magento IS search engine friendly, just as much as the next eCommerce platform.  The reality is, almost all eCommerce platforms we work with have the same issues.  And when it comes down to it, the platform itself only does so much for you.  A search engine optimizer needs a platform that allows them to have the freedom to exercise on-site optimization, and Magento does just that.  The biggest sales pitch by eCommerce platforms right now is that they are “the most SEO friendly” – yet I’ve yet to come across one that stands out any more than the rest.  In reality, most platforms have matured to the point that the tools needed to manage an SEO friendly site is all (or mostly) there, and there are only minor variances that separate one from the next.  But we’ll save that discussion for another time.

Related posts:

1. Magento eCommerce Customization, Custom Design Development
2. Changing Product Tabs from JavaScript to CSS
3. SEO for Magento Web Sites

<?xml version="1.0"?></pre>
<config>
<modules>
<ModuleName_Catalog>
<active>true</active>
<codePool>local</codePool>
</ModuleName_Catalog>
</modules>
</config>

Set up the module

Here, we set up our blocks and extend our Colletion class.

app/code/local/ModuleName/Catalog/etc/config.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<config>
<modules>
<ModuleName_Catalog>
<version>0.1.0</version>
</ModuleName_Catalog>
</modules>
<global>
<blocks>
<ModuleName_catalog>
<class>ModuleName_Catalog_Block</class>
</ModuleName_catalog>
</blocks>
<models>
<catalog_resource_eav_mysql4>
<rewrite>
<product_collection>
ModuleName_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Mysql4_Product_Collection
</product_collection>
</rewrite>
</catalog_resource_eav_mysql4>
</models>
</global>
</config>

Listcategories class

app/code/local/ModuleName/Catalog/Block/Product/Listcategories.php

class ModuleName_Catalog_Block_Product_Listcategories
extends Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List{

//same function from Mage_Catalog_Block_Product_List
protected function _getProductCollection(){

// get simple product collection
$this->_productCollection = Mage::getModel('catalog/product')->getCollection();
$this->_productCollection->addAttributeToSelect('*');

// if we receive categories parameter we filter with our custom function addCategoriesFilter
// currently there's a addCategoryFilter, but only accepts 1 category
// if no param is passed, simply show everything
if($this->getCategories()!="")
$this->_productCollection->addCategoriesFilter($this->getCategories());

return $this->_productCollection;
}
}

function addCategoriesFilter

Now, we have to extend Mage/Catalog/Model/Resource/Eav/Mysql4/Product/Collection class and add the addCategoriesFilter function:

app/code/local/ModuleName/Catalog/Model/Resource/Eav/Mysql4/Product/Collection.php

class ModuleName_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Mysql4_Product_Collection
extends Mage_Catalog_Model_Resource_Eav_Mysql4_Product_Collection{

public function addCategoriesFilter($categories){

$alias = 'cat_index';
$categoryCondition = $this->getConnection()->quoteInto(
$alias.'.product_id=e.entity_id AND '.$alias.'.store_id=? AND ',
$this->getStoreId()
);

$categoryCondition.= $alias.'.category_id IN ('.$categories.')';

$this->getSelect()->joinInner(
array($alias => $this->getTable('catalog/category_product_index')),
$categoryCondition,
array('position'=>'position')
);

$this->_categoryIndexJoined = true;
$this->_joinFields['position'] = array('table'=>$alias, 'field'=>'position' );

return $this;

}
}

Now on a CMS page you call your block this way:

{{block type=”ModuleName_catalog/product_listcategories”  categories=”14,16,18″
template=”catalog/product/list.phtml”}}

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1. Magento Menu Customization with Product List
2. Top 3 Solutions when your Magento Categories are not displaying
3. Secret feature of Magento 1.3: Sharing same route name for different modules!

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Who needs SSL?
SSL is important for stores who want their customers to be sure everything they enter in the Account-area and Checkout-area is encrypted along the way from their browser to your server. Stores with payment-gateways where the customer type in their creditcard-information directly in Magento and is not transferred to a secure page at the creditcard-providers servers will also need SSL.

So what do I need to get started?
First of all, setting up an SSL-certificate can be complicated depending on your hosting-company’s facilities and it can also mess up the Magento-store – so make sure you know what you are doing at any time. We do NOT take any responsibility for the setup, blabla. You know the deal.

So, back to what you need. First of all you of course need a valid SSL-certificate. You also need a dedicated  IP-address on the server you’re running Magento on. And last, you need proper access to the Magento-server (SSH-access).

Step 1: Get the SSL-certificate and install it
There are many companies offering SSL-certificated. Some cost a lot of money (those displaying your company’s name in green text in the left side of the URL in the browser – which most Online banks use. The cheaper ones, which are just fine for your needs offer a plain, secure certificated. RapidSSL is a company who sell the cheap ones, which works perfectly well.

Installing the certificate is different on most hosting-systems so this you’d need to check with your hosting-provider or give Google a  try.

Step 2: Get your own IP-address
If you’re not very much into servers, Apache and hosting in general I’d recommend you just asked your hosting-provider to give you a dedicated IP address for your particular site. Tell you are going to use SSL and they should know what you’re talking about. Most hosting-providers charge a few extra bucks per month for a dedicated IP address and as long as they’re not talking about tens of dollars every month it should be fine.

One important thing with the dedicated IP address is that it makes thing much easier if you get the IP set up on your domain before  you install Magento, as you’d most likely need to move Magento to a new location on the server if you decide to add SSL at a later time.

Step 3: Adding SSL-support in Magento
Ok, this is maybe the easiest part. First you should, depending on your server-setup, symlink your “secure” directory to your “public” directory. SSH into your server and – if you are using DirectAdmin – go to the following folder:
./domains/yourdomain.com/

Now type “ls -l” and you should see a list of the folders. Now type the following command:
“ln -s private_html public_html”

This command might need be run as ‘root’ so make sure you have proper access to your box.

Alternative in DirectAdmin:
If you have the proper permissions in DirectAdmin you can go to Domain Setup -> Click your domain, and then enable “Make private_html symbolic link to public_html”. Click on Save and it should be symlinked automatically.

Now you must log into Magento Admin -> System -> Settings -> Web and make sure the Secure Base URL is set to https://www.yourstore.com (the Unsecure URL must not be changed to https).

Congratulations! If you’ve done everything correct you should now see that you automatically get https in the address-bar on both the Account-pages and Checkout-pages.

From silverthemes.com

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1. Installing Magento on GoDaddy Hosting
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Where Magento is becoming the dominant software for eCommerce websites, is WordPress already the most popular blogging software out there, and with good reason. WordPress can be used in a number of different ways but using WordPress as CMS plus blog engine is what is does best.

So if you’re serious about the online presence of your web shop you should want to take a look at combining Magento and WordPress.

Advantages of integrating Magento with WordPress

There are a couple of advantages of integrating Magento with WordPress:

- With WordPress added to your store you give your customers and regular visitors the ability to interact with you more than when you would just offer products.
- Instead of just offering products you have the possibility to offer extra value by providing interesting links of interest in your field, which in effect establishes you or your web shop as an authority on your subject.
- An added WordPress blog gives you the opportunity to work on your search engine optimization (SEO). Linking to your products in right way will not only make sure your visitors know what’s going on and what you find important but the Search Engines will know this just as well! To learn more about SEO visit this article on Magento SEO by Yoast.

Thing to consider when looking at integrating Magento with WordPress

Let’s say you’re still working on releasing your Magento website, or better yet when you have yet to install Magento. You will have to figure out what to do with your url and your installations of Magento and WordPress. Here are a couple of things to consider:

- Depending on the size of your shop you could install your Magento installation in a subfolder (http://www.yourdomain.com/shop) or sub domain even(http://shop.yourdomain.com) and let WordPress handle the root of your domain with it’s static pages and have the blog functionality work as your news section.
- When you have a larger shop you might want to install Magento in the root of your domain and use WordPress as a subfolder called /blog, /news or something of your choosing.
- Try and go for matching themes on your Magento and WordPress installation as much as possible.
- When you really want to create a large community combined with your web shop, do consider a variation of WordPress called BuddyPress. BuddyPress enables you to have your own social network combined with a large site. Although this may seem like a step too far in most cases this is definitely worth checking out when you are building a large online store.

How to integrate WordPress into your Magento store

Straight out of the box Magento can not communicate with WordPress and vice versa. So it’s up to you to make them share information. Right now there are two ways of going about that.

The first is immediately the easiest one. Lazymonk wrote a Magento extension for WordPress integration. This extension allows you to integrate WordPress into your Magento installation if, and only if both your installations are installed in the same database. For installation details check out the plugins page.

The second way of going about this involves you tweaking a bit of code in your Magento Theme. We’ll use the RSS import function of Magento to import the latest articles via your WordPress feed output.

What we need to do is create a file which will contain the code used to import the RSS. Let’s give that file a name something like import_blog.phtml and the following code into that:

< ?php $channel = new Zend_Feed_Rss('http://www.yourdomain/feed'); ?>
<div class="block block-latest-news">
<div class="block-title">
<h2>< ?php echo $this->__('Latest Articles form the Blog') ?></h2>
</div>
<div class="block-content">
<ol id="graybox-latest-news">
< ?php foreach ($channel as $item): ?>
<li><a href="<?php echo $item->link; ?>">< ?php echo $item->title; ?></a></li>
< ?php endforeach; ?>
</ol>
</div>
</div>

Place this file in your themes folder so it will look like so: app/design/frontend/default/name_of_your_theme/template/callouts/blog_import.phtml

All you would have to do is call for this newly created file in your Magento theme. Most themes have a column on the right so let’s assume that’s where you want to import your latest blog posts. You would need a code similar to this one:

<reference name="right">
<block type="core/template" name="right.permanent.callout" template="callouts/right_col.phtml"/>
<block type="core/template" name="right.latest.news" template="callouts/blog_import.phtml"/>
</reference>

Be sure to add this code to your catalog.xml located in app/design/frontend/default/name_of_your_theme/layout/catalog.xml

Please note that in the code you can change things like Latest Articles from the Blog to anything you like. Also, for better handling and tracking of your feed you can use Feedburner to deliver your feed. You would then use the feed url specified by Feedburner in the first code.

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Adding your logo to Magento is probably one of the easiest procedures there are.

You will need to have your own logo, whether its a .GIF, .JPG or .PNG. We will recommend you use a .PNG as its transparency works great for the web.

All you will need to do is overwrite the current logo (if your using a .GIF image) in ‘skin/frontend/default/images/logo.gif’.

If you are however, using a .PNG image or any other format then just place it in ‘skin/frontend/default/images/‘.

Once you’ve done that go ahead into your Magento Backend, for example: ‘http://yourdomain.com/admin/‘ and go to System > Configuration. Select the ‘Design‘ tab and scroll down and select the ‘Header‘ tab. You will see something that looks like this:

Change ‘images/logo.gif‘ to ‘images/logo.png‘. Logo Alt Image represents the text that will display when you hover over the logo image. Type in your store name, this is good for Search Engines.

Hope that helped and stay tuned!

From hellothemes.com

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<ul id="nav">
	<li><a href="<?php echo $this->getUrl('')?>"><span>
        <?php echo $this->__('Homepage') ?></span></a></li>
        <?php foreach ($this->getStoreCategories() as $_category): ?>
        <?php echo $this->drawItem($_category) ?>
        <?php endforeach ?>
</ul>

<ul id="nav">
	<li><a href="<?php echo $this->getUrl('')?>"><span>
        <?php echo $this->__('Homepage') ?></span></a></li>
        <?php foreach ($this->getStoreCategories() as $_category): ?>
        <?php echo $this->drawItem($_category) ?>
        <?php endforeach ?>
        <li><a href="http://yourdomain.com/"><span>
        <?php echo $this->__('New Link Here') ?></span></a></li>
</ul>

<ul id="nav">
        <?php foreach ($this->getStoreCategories() as $_category): ?>
        <?php echo $this->drawItem($_category) ?>
        <?php endforeach ?>
</ul>

From hellothemes.com

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Another major question people ask is how to add a Category Products on the homepage. This again, is a very simple task and I will once again explain how it all works.

When you purchase one of our themes you will see a folder name called “code” and inside that folder a file called “homepage_code.txt” this can by the way be ignored if you aren’t actually using one of our themes.

This piece of coding is what should be added in your “Content” area by going to CMS > Manage Pages > Homepage:

<h2>Your Homepage Title Here</h2>
{{block type="catalog/product_list" category_id="3"
template="catalog/product/list.phtml"}}

Go ahead and copy and paste this piece of coding in your content area. As you can see the number “3″ is marked red as an example, due to the fact that this is the only thing that needs to be changed when showing a specific categories product.

Now go ahead and go to Catalog > Manage Categories, select one of your categories from the left hand side of the page. When selected you will see an ID number show up for the category, for example “Your Category (ID: 10)“. As you can now see the ID number of this category is “10″. Now go back to CMS > Manage Pages > Homepage and in your content area change “3″ to “10″:

<h2>Your Homepage Title Here</h2>
{{block type="catalog/product_list" category_id="10"
template="catalog/product/list.phtml"}}

Now save your page and check out your homepage!

Hope that helped!

From hellothemes.com

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But I was still feeling that something is missing! And that missing thing was provision for sharing of route names which is now available since Magento 1.3 released yesterday. Now, the first question may arise here that “what is sharing of route names?”. ‘Sharing of route names’ is not a functional feature. So if you’ll try to find it in Magento features list, you may be disappointed. Actually it is a feature for developers. It is not even mentioned in Magento 1.3 Release Notes. I found this secret feature in newer version of Magento when I was roaming inside the code to search the difference between 1.2 and 1.3. Let me explain this feature in more detail.

Sometimes, I was supposed to develop extensions which required extra pages or forms in existing modules. For example, adding extra features to Admin Panel. I needed some extra controllers and actions for Admin Panel. This seems OK. I could easily create a local module for it as explained in this Wiki. But an uncomfortable part in this way is this configuration:

<admin>
 <routers>
   <sintax>
     <use>admin</use>
     <args>
       <module>Mage_Sintax</module>
       <frontName>sintax</frontName>
     </args>
   </sintax>
 </routers>
</admin>

Here, all URLs of my additional pages will be started by /sintax/ while all other admin panel pages will be started by /admin/. I am forced to use other routes for my additional modules. I cannot just add more URLs to ‘admin’ route! This can be fare for Admin Panel pages as they will never be visible by public. But what if I want to add more pages to frontend? If I add any extra page to ‘catalog’ module, I can’t define URLs for my pages starting with /catalog/. I have to define a route something like /mycatalog/ which I don’t like!

One solution for this to use URL rewrite from /catalog/mypage/ to /mycatalog/mypage/. But unfortunately, URL helpers will still generate URLs like /mycatalog/mypage/.

The problem with the older version of Magento was mapping one to one relationthip with module front name to module real name i.e. ‘catalog’ => ‘Mage_Catalog’, ‘admin’ => ‘Mage_Adminhtml’ etc. So I could not map my additional module to existing front name. But Magento 1.3 allows to map additional modules to existing front names. How? Just by changing router configuration for module shown above to the following:

<admin>
 <routers>
   <adminhtml>
     <args>
       <modules>
         <sintax before="Mage_Adminhtml">Mage_Sintax</sintax>
       </modules>
     </args>
   </adminhtml>
 </routers>
</admin>

This configutation will add Mage_Sintax module to admin frontname. An attribute before can be added to give more priority then existing module in finding controllers. For example in this case, /admin/catalog/ URL will call a controller class Mage_Sintax_CatalogController, if it is defined and if not then it will call Mage_Adminhtml_CatalogController. Similarly, after attribute will assign less priority then the existing module. We can add as many modules as we need to the same front name using this way.

Sounds good? Then try it yourself…!

From web-magician.blogspot.com

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