Page 3 - Blog

You don't have to imagine how frustrating 503 maintenance pages and other error messages are. Everyone hates them — merchants lose potential customers while the latter get interrupted when shopping. It's a lose-lose situation. 

Every developer knows that errors on the page are a part of the Magento deployment, including the process. But very few actually know how to avoid it with the zero downtime deployment. 

So today we'll break down every detail of how the zero downtime deployment works and why you need it. You'll also learn whether can you actually achieve zero downtime without buying Magento Commerce. 

But let's start with the basics first.

How Does Magento Deployment Work?

Deployment is a method of building modules, patches and other code and delivering it to end users through different environments. In other words, it's pushing new code from one environment to the other.

These environment usually include:

• Local — where developers build the code.
• Testing — where developers review

Collecting customer data in your store is a must if you want to deliver a personalised user experience. While you can track some data with these are hardly enough to reach the goal.

That's when you resort to some services that help you collect more data and install extensions to deliver the message to visitors. But there is no need for so many resources if you can get all of these in one place — your admin panel — using the . 

So, today you'll learn how to configure, create and track cookie consents in Magento. On top of that, you'll enable compatibility with Google Consent Mode with only one button. 

Ready to start?

Create Magento Cookie Groups

Before you create any cookies in Magento, you should define the cookie groups you'll add them to. For that navigate to Marketing > Cookie Consent > Groups and hit the Add New Group button.

1. Specify the group Name and Description that will be displayed on the frontend.
2. Make the cookie group Active and assign it to Websites.
3. Set whether this group

The faster your website loads, the better — users love it and Google loves it. If you've been improving your website speed with Google PageSpeed Insights for a while and have seen no miracles so far, there's only one reason. You might have misinterpreted the report.

Google PageSpeed Insights checker provides reports based on real and "artificial" data. So, it's important to know what metrics to focus on to improve not only the technical side but user experience. 

In this guide, you'll find everything you need to excel in GooglePageSpeed Insights and finally take your website to the "green zone". 

What is Google PageSpeed Insights?

Google PageSpeed Insights (PSI) is a free tool that analyses your website performance in terms of loading time, responsiveness and user experience on mobile and desktop devices. It uses a 0-100 store scale to give feedback on how your web application is doing:

• Green — 90 and

When creating content for your store, you certainly want to make it user-friendly and easy to browse through. The visual appeal is as critical as the content. Thus, to liven things up you may need to add a block of products here or there or display some other .

Usually, you would need to dive into code to achieve this. But not in Magento 2 which offers you widgets instead.

Today, you'll explore Magento widgets in more detail and learn key features that will help you use them to the fullest.

What are Magento Widgets?

Magento widgets are pieces of code which allow you to place content in a specific place in your store. Widgets can feature various types of content from dynamic product blocks and to images, videos, text and other elements. In Magento, you can add widgets via the admin panel by setting specific display options.

Widgets are incredibly flexible, highly functional and easy to manage. You can place them at any block reference in your store and use them for various purposes. The

The process of consists of multiple stages: researching topics, looking for the right keywords, drafting a structure and creating content. Although our offers you the best blog management options, you still have to create content yourself. 

At least it used to be like that before we introduced the AI Writer that does all the heavy lifting for you. 

So, in this guide, you'll learn how to integrate it and create blog posts in Magento using AI in a few seconds.

Ready to start?

Configure AI Integration

Before you start creating blog posts using AI, you need to create the integration between the AI and Magento. In our Blog we use the Chat-GPT, so that's what we're going to work with.

Building the integration includes only two steps: retrieving the API keys and configuring the basic AI options. 

1. Retrieve API keys

First, create or sign in to your Open AI account and go to the platform.openai.com. Then click on the Create new

As a Magento 2 developer, you know how tedious performance debugging can be. Finding out is not as easy as it seems. So any tools that help you on the way come in handy. In most cases, the Magento 2 profiler helps with the performance-related debugging best.

While you may use some third-party extensions for the job it takes time to find an effective solution for your specific case. Thus, we'll look closer at the good old Magento 2 profiler and ways to improve it.

If you only start working with Magento, this is a great overview of the profiling functionality. Yet, adept developers can refresh their knowledge of the subject.

Let's get right to it.

What is Magento 2 Profiler?

Magento 2 profiler is a default tool for performance debugging. It gives insights into the loading time of various blocks as well as the amount of allocated and used memory to perform the task.

The profiler features a table with page blocks and resources used to load them. These details create a clear picture and allow

A blog is an invaluable asset to any online store. Not only do you establish yourself as an expert in some niche but you also create a free source of organic traffic. Once you create keyword-specific content you'll start getting traffic. But making it more targeted requires more than that.

When it comes to blogs, schema markup is one of the best ways to achieve that. Today you'll learn what the blog schema markup is and why you should use it.

Besides, we'll cover how to implement it in Magento and Shopify blogs to achieve ultimate results.

Ready to get started? 

What is Blog Schema Markup?

Blog schema markup is a snippet of code that specifies the key components of your blog post. The main elements of the schema include the post type, title, publication date, author, description, featured image, etc. The schema markup tells search engines what type of content you post and what components it is made of.

Thus, schema markup for posts tells search engines that this is not a regular website

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 , 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". Since your end goal

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 .

Here you'll find all you need to know about Shopify SEO — the things you need to optimize to generate more organic traffic and . 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 a Google Search Console

Google Search Console (GSC)

If you've compared a few eCommerce platforms, like , 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 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

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:

Robot.txt File

Robots.txt is another automatically generated file Shopify offers. It provides directives for the web crawlers on pages you

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 . 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.).

Here's what it looks like:

What's in the Sitemap?

Shopify categorizes the XML sitemap into logical

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 , 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 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, your hosting might be

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  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, meta robots,

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 . That's why we've created an easy-to-follow Magento SEO tips in the form of a checklist. 

They are 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 .

1. Technical Magento SEO Tips

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 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 reduces manual product management,

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 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.

 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 the More actions dropdown.

Request Indexing for Multiple Pages

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 . 

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, Google still recommends

Standing out in search takes a lot of effort beyond metadata. You also need to . But not just any snippets. Those that drive the most attention such as product 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 a while to figure out all the

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