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Hi, Magefan customers. Welcome to the newbies of our blog.
August 2024 News & Updates digest is here!
Hot summer 2024 will be over in one day and we'd like to share our August updates to Magento 2 extensions and Shopify Apps.
Enjoy last summer days and this article!
New features of Magento 2 WebP Images Extension!
Features:
- Added an option allowing to upload images in .webp format via REST API. (Plus).
- Added compatibility with Magento 2.4.7 (Plus).
Fixes:
- Fixed an issue with uploading WebP images on production mode (Plus).
The latest available version is v 2.3.12
New features of Magento 2 Extended Product Grid!
Features:
- Performed significant speed and performance improvements.
- Significantly improved mass product update via grid inline editing.
- Added compatibility with Fusedship.
- Code refactoring has been made.
The latest available version is v 2.2.0
New
Making the most of your product pages usually comes down to a lot of aspects. You need to optimize for SEO to get to the top positions and write engaging content. All that on top of the speed optimization, user-friendly page structure and creating irresistible CTAs. Magento product page optimization can feed like a maze, especially for newbies.
Where to start? What to add at the top of your optimization to-do list: SEO or content?
What you should do first is STOP trying to work on all these things at the same time. Do it step by step, using the comprehensive product page optimization guide for Magento we've drawn for you.
You'll learn how to improve vital SEO aspects with the Magento SEO checklist, speed and product page elements to get the most out of your product pages.
Let's get started.
What is Product Page Optimization?
Product page optimization is a process of auditing and strategically improving your product page design, content and functionality to make it more "converting".
You've landed on this page while looking for ways to do your Shopify SEO better, most likely from Google or Bing. You came for answers and the search engine pointed you to the place where you can find them — our blog post.
That's basically how it works — you offer a solution and the search engines pair your solution with the searchers' query. But it's not really that easy. For your page to get lots of clicks you have to be at the top of SERP. Getting there requires more than just setting up a website and relying on the default Shopify features.
Here you'll find all you need to know about Shopify SEO — the things you need to optimize to generate more organic traffic and get indexed by Google faster. While it seems tedious, you don't need any prior experience with SEO.
But let's begin with the SEO basics.
Shopify SEO Basics
Before you start improving your Shopify SEO you must know how your website is doing and whether it's indexed at all. For that, you need a couple of free tools.
Create
If you've compared a few eCommerce platforms, like Magento and Shopify, before landing on the latter, you probably know that SEO is not Shopify's strongest point. Nonetheless, it does offer you a few critical SEO features.
You should know how to leverage them to get indexed by Google and other search engines to drive more organic traffic.
Today, we'll cover all the default Shopify SEO options and determine whether they're enough to rank at the top of the search results page (SERP).
XML Sitemap
Shopify sitemap is the first communication Google and other search engines ever have with your store. It's a directory they use to discover your website pages, crawl and index them. Shopify generates and updates an XML sitemap for you automatically. But unfortunately, you can't edit or add any custom sitemap.
You can find your sitemap by adding the "/sitemap.xml" to your domain, like in:
e.g. domain.com/sitemap.xml
Robot.txt File
Robots.txt is another automatically generated file Shopify offers.
You might have a website with a stunning loading speed, attractive design, well-crafted content and a unique variety of products. But it's all good as long as people can discover your store. That's what you need Shopify XML sitemap for — to help search engines discover, crawl and index your website.
While XML sitemap is a must for your Shopify SEO, it's not the only way to get indexed by Google. We'll get to that right after we cover what is an XML sitemap, why you need it and how to manage it in your Shopify store.
Ready to start?
What is a Shopify Sitemap?
Shopify sitemap is an XML file that contains all your website links — products, collections, pages, and blogs. It serves as a directory for the search engines where they can retrieve data about your pages (when they were last updated, whether there's an alternative page, etc.).
Note: XML sitemap is generated automatically in Shopify and can't be edited.
Here's what it looks like:
What's in the Sitemap?
Shopify categorizes the XML
Everyone wants to get to the top of SERP to receive tons of traffic. But a few realize that website speed plays a huge part in that. You can improve your meta tags, optimize structured data and write great content but still don't get the expected results. All because your Magento is slow.
Today, we'll uncover the reason why is Magento slow and talk about things you shouldn't do if you want to get to the Google PageSpeed "green" zone.
Let's get right to it.
1. Insufficient Hosting
Magento is a resource-based platform and has certain server requirements that need to be met. That's why the first and most common reason for Magento's slow performance is a poorly configured server and limited resources. Something your hosting provider is responsible for.
Your Magento must have enough disk space, RAM, and CPU power for your store to load fast. Besides, improperly configured web servers like Apache and Ngnix, MySQL, PHP, etc can lead to loading delays and other issues along the way.
Finally,
The Magento market is booming with thousands of stores trying to win customers with the best design, content, and products. However, only those who satisfy the customer search intent win the top positions in SERP. The key to success? Magento SEO guide.
Not only is it because Magento has a lot of built-in SEO features, but because top-ranking stores know how to apply the best SEO practices.
If you are new to SEO or trying to do search engine optimization for Magento, you've landed in the right place. In this Magento SEO guide, you'll learn about the default SEO features that help you to rank better. Besides, we'll also give you an insight into the best Magento SEO Extension that might come in handy.
However, let’s figure out what exactly Magento SEO is first.
What is Magento SEO?
Magento 2 SEO is a set of guidelines for Magento 2 stores to follow to get a better ranking, traffic, and conversions, just like SEO in general. Magento platform offers the following SEO features by default: robots.txt,
Whether you're just starting out or already have a running store, if SEO is not part of your strategy, you're missing out. You can definitely use paid search, social media and other channels to drive leads. But why waste the opportunity to generate tons of traffic for free? From a place where potential buyers already come to search for products — search engines.
While Magento is highly optimized for SEO, it's easy to get overwhelmed with the Magento SEO guide. That's why we've created an easy-to-follow Magento SEO checklist.
It's divided into three parts — technical, on-page and off-page SEO. But don't worry. You can cover a lot of these all by yourself with the ultimate
Extension.1. Technical SEO Checklist
To show your content on Google, search crawlers need to crawl and index your website. That's what technical SEO is responsible for.
It's a common misconception that "technical SEO" is hard to work with, especially if you're not a developer. It might be. But not in Magento.
Creating lots of keyword-optimized content makes it more likely for your to get into the top SERP position. But only on one condition — Google and other search engines can discover and index your pages. The faster that happens the higher the chances of ranking at the top.
Quite a few things contribute to that. Today we'll discuss how to get Google to index your Shopify store and what to do if it doesn't.
We'll cover the basic indexing methods and the advanced indexing API for those who want to get indexed faster. So, just skip the first steps if you've already submitted your website to Google.
Ready to start?
How Google Crawling and Indexing Works?
Before we cover the ways to index your store in Google, let's make sure we know how search engines discover your content in the first place.
- Step 1: Discover — Google discovers that your website exists through the sitemaps you submit to it or the backlinks you have from other websites.
- Step 2: Crawl — Google bot visits your website and downloads
Once you decide to create an eCommerce website you have to be ready to invest a lot of effort and time to get your website visible online and drive relevant traffic. There are multiple channels to achieve this, but Google Shopping stands out the most.
It is a product distribution channel that allows you to expose your products to a wider audience, increase conversion rates and sell more in a long run. However, how do you create Google Shopping Feed in Magento 2 if this feature isn't supported?
Moving products to Google Merchant Center one by one would be a tough call. So we introduce the Magento 2 Google Shopping Feed Extension to make your life easier.
And in this post, you'll learn everything about what is Magento Google Shopping Feed and how to set it up.
What is Google Shopping Feed?
Google Shopping Feed is a list of products along with their information like descriptions, prices, and other attributes that are used to export your products to different distribution channels. It
Hi, Magefan customers. Welcome to the newbies of our blog.
July 2024 News & Updates digest is here!
We'd like to share our latest developments and updates to Magento 2 extensions and Shopify Apps that we worked on this July.
Happy reading!
New features of Magento 2 SEO Extension!
Features:
- Added new option "Use Store Code in Default Store View Homepage Canonical".
- Updated Rich Snippets to v2.0.16 (SEO Plus & Extra)
- Updated Hreflang Tags to v2.2.7 (SEO Extra).
The latest available version is v 2.5.1
New features of Magento 2 Rich Snippets Extension!
Features:
- Added Organization Schema Markup Widget.
- Minor code improvements
The latest available version is v 2.0.16
New features of Magento 2 Translation Extension!
Features:
- The Admin Gws on Magento Enterprise is now not applied to the translations grid. This allows merchants to create users for translations,
Ranking in Google takes more than keyword-optimized meta tags. Website navigation, speed, design and customer experience count too. That is exactly what Mibike had to go through to get a favourable search position, increase organic traffic and automate their SEO efforts.
Today, we'll explore the story of one of the biggest Ukrainian motorcycle gear stores and see how Magefan helped to shape its SEO profile into what it is today.
Let's get right to it.
Background
Website: mybike.ua
Industry: Motorcycle gear
Location: Ukraine
Optimization tools used: Magento 2 SEO and Magento 2 GTM Extensions
This journey started with a small retail store in September 2013. "Our store offered just a small number of helmets, jackets, gloves, etc. But that wasn't a Mybike store yet... Let's call it an experience.", say our clients.
The Mybike store appeared almost 4 years later. Today it is an official retailer of all the world's most famous brands in terms of motorcycle equipment. There is a brick-and-mortar
Although it was enough to submit an XML sitemap to Google to help it discover your website links, now you need more than that. Especially if your website is new or doesn't have a ton of backlinks.
That's when the
comes in handy. It helps you connect your Shopify to Google Indexing API and send content to Google directly (without having to go to Google Search Console for every single URL).Thus, today, you'll learn how to get your Shopify store indexed by Google faster by employing this technology.
Important: before we start sending pages to Google directly, you need to set up Google Indexing API and connect it with your store.
Once the API connection is established, you can move to the indexing step.
Request Indexing for Individual Pages
The app works with products and collections. So you can send indexing requests directly from the admin pages.
Just navigate to Products and choose a product you want to send for indexing. Then hit a corresponding option in
Whether your store is new or long established it usually takes days and even weeks to see changes appear in search. Why? Because the majority of websites rely on a sitemap that is not the fastest way to get indexed by Google.
That's why Google offer a solution — Google Indexing API. It helps you bypass the crawling key and sends your changes directly to Google so they are reflected in SERP faster.
Eager to find out more? Today you'll learn how to set up Google Indexing API for Shopify and discover reasons why you need to do that.
Since Google Indexing API is not as simple as it sounds, let's define what that is first.
What is Google Indexing API?
Google Indexing API is a technology introduced by the platform to help you notify Google directly about new, updated or deleted pages. When you send an indexing request through the API, Google schedules a fresh crawl bypassing the crawling key. Since changes are sent to Google directly, content appears in search results faster.
However,
Standing out in search takes a lot of effort beyond metadata. You also need to add rich snippets. But not just any snippets. Those that drive the most attention such as product snippet, howto snippet and organization snippet. All of them make you eligible for rich results and make searches more likely to notice you.
Today, we'll talk about the latter — organization snippet and how you can add it in Magento.
What is Organization Schema Markup?
Organization Schema markup is a standardized structured data in HTML format that tells both search engines and humans about your organization or company. While it's not a ranking factor, it helps Google to understand your website better and show it for relevant queries.
Organization schema also makes you eligible for a number of rich results and knowledge panels which allows users to quickly notice and engage with you.
How to Add Organization Markup in Magento?
You can try the coding way. But if you're not a technical person, it's going to take
While the ultimate goal is to get your blog to the highest positions, not all blog pages need to be visible in search results. In both cases though you need meta robots or robots meta tags.
So, today you'll learn what meta robots are and how to add them without any coding, using only the
.But first, let's define what these robots are and why you need them.
What are Meta Robots?
Meta robots or robots meta tags are the directives added to the HTML of the page. They tell web crawlers what they can or can't do on a certain page. In other words, they tell web crawlers how to crawl and index a page in search results.
You can't see meta robots since they are added to the page's <head>, code part.
Nonetheless, you need them to define:
- whether a page appears in the search results
- whether crawlers should follow links on a page
- whether a snippet of a page should be displayed in SERP
- whether images on a page are indexed
Note: Shopify blog meta robots are always INDEX, FOLLOW by
While your store URLs constantly undergo different changes one thing often gets overlooked — URL rewrites. When you change the page location or start using higher-value keywords according to the Magento SEO checklist you need to direct visitors to a new URL.
That's exactly what you need the Magento 2 URL rewrites for. Today you'll learn everything about the topic and discover how to automatically handle URL rewrites in Magento.
What is Magento URL Rewrite?
Magento URL rewrite is a default SEO tool that allows you to change any product, category and CMS page URL and redirect visitors from all old URLs to new ones. It's also a great way to customize page URLs with keywords to make them more SEO-friendly but not lose any traffic or potential of the old URL.
There are two types of Magento URL rewrites that are different in the number of rewrites you can create at once.
Single URL rewrite
Single URL rewrite refers to the process of creating a rewrite for a specific page. It helps you to make
Very often the reason for the slow page loading is either a disabled cache or a cache generated every time a page is loaded. While you can enable the disabled cache notifications, it doesn't fix the issue ultimately.
You need a solution to keep your full page cache warm regardless of the circumstances. That's exactly what the offers. It imitates user behaviour to make sure a "fresh" version of the page is always loaded from the cache.
So, today, you'll learn how to set up the cache warmer in Magento. The process basically comes down to a few options since the rest of them are already filled out for you.
Step 1: Install and Enable the Extension
The first step to better cache management is the installation of the Page Cache Warmer. After that, you just need to enable it and review the default settings that are already set up.
For that navigate to Stores > Configuration > Magefan Extensions > Page Cache Warmer > General.
Step 2: Create Warmup Combinations
Hi, the Magefan customers and welcome to the newbies of our Magefan blog.
June 2024 News & Updates digest is here!
The hot summer is in full swing! So it's about time we shared even hotter updates to our Magento 2 extensions and Shopify Apps. Let's get right to them!
New features of Magento 2 Google Tag Manager!
Features:
- Improved Data Layer Values and JSON Container file for Google Ads Remarketing (GTM Plus and Extra).
- Security improvements. Use Magento SecureRenderer to whitelist an inline script.
- Rearranged extension config. Removed the "Server Side Tracking" section and moved the options to the "Server Container" section.
- Added an option to disable purchase event (Order creating) in the admin panel (GTM Extra).
- Added ability to track first visit and session start, session count in Server Side Tracking via GTM Server Container (GTM Extra).
- Improved the Server Container (Server Side tracking) for Google Ads.
Fixes:
- Fixed the JS "require is
Days, when you had to translate products and categories in Magento one by one manually, are gone. The
makes things a lot easier. You can add translations through one simple form or review all of them via the translations grid.But there's more. Thanks to the Google Translation API, you can now add translations for products and categories automatically.
So let's explore all the options you have once you set up Google Translation API for Magento.
Translate Attributes
Just navigate to any product or category you want to translate and find attributes that have the "Translate" link under. Click on it to open the standard translation popup.
The fields you can translate through Google are marked with the Google Translation logo. Just hit the logo or the Auto Translate button at the bottom of the popup to translate an attribute to all languages automatically.
Don't forget to Save a product once you review the translations.
Note: none of the auto translations
Although Magento doesn't provide nearly as much translation power as the do most of the translations yourself. But right until now.
tool, you still need to put in some work. You need toToday, you'll learn how to set up Google Translation API for Magento to start doing translations automatically. It's easier than it sounds. We promise.
What is Google Translation API?
Google Translation API or Cloud Translation API is a machine translation technology that allows you to translate texts in a website or application dynamically, through the API. It uses the same machine learning it uses in search results and Gmail when it encounters a language different from yours.
In other words, it allows you to do translations automatically.
Google Translation API Pricing
Google offers you two editions — Basic and Advanced — with a different set of features. Both are paid. However, the first 500,000 characters sent for Translation API to process per month are free.
That's about