When you're designing a store on PrestaShop, SEO should be one of the directions for your website. This makes your website more likely to appear in the first search results, which in turn results in increased conversions and profits from the sale of goods and services. You can outsource the advanced SEO of your PrestaShop store to a marketing agency, but you can take care of many of the settings yourself. Learn about the basic SEO measures you can implement on your own!

What you will learn from this article:

Understanding the nature of SEO activities and their importance for e-commerce is of paramount importance for any online store. Read our article where we explain step by step:

1. Why SEO is important for your online store and without it you don't stand a chance against the competition.
2. How to optimize SEO from the technical side without knowledge of programming and whether it is even possible.
3. How to develop online store content effectively and without overpaying.
4. How long does PrestaShop SEO take.

PrestaShop SEO - why do you need it?

It is not enough to design a website to make it visible on the web. You still need to attract potential customers. You can use various forms of online advertising, but activities aimed at PrestaShop store positioning are among the most cost-effective. Why is that?

1. Higher search engine results - PrestaShop positioning allows you to be found higher in search results, so users find it easier to locate your online store naturally, without annoying pop-up ads.
2. Greater chance of conversion - Generating quality traffic increases the chance that a customer will actually make a purchase from your online store.
3. Improving UX - SEO activities have a positive impact on the overall user experience, so users spend more time on the site and are more likely to make purchases.
4. Low customer acquisition costs - Unlike paid advertising, SEO of your PrestaShop store will not always require financial outlays (not in every case do you need professional SEO tools and the help of a specialist).
5. Long-term profits - The traffic gained through SEO efforts pays dividends for a long time, as many people are eager to return to a store that is easy to find and where shopping is a pleasure.

Online store positioning is also about building awareness of a brand's online presence. Even if Internet users don't always visit your site, they see that it is present high up in search results. For many, this is almost synonymous with the quality of the brand itself.

Optimizing an online store on PrestaShop platform for search engines - where to start?

With PrestaShop software, you can start showing up in organic search results. All you need to do is use the ready-made tools built into Presta itself. Knowledge of basic SEO best practices will also come in handy.

PrestaShop technical optimization

Technical optimization is the foundation of a smoothly running website. It can be implemented in many ways, including:

1. increase page load speed - This is done by, among other things, various caching technologies, optimizing WebP images and limiting the use of external data (e.g., CSS styles),
2. Setting up friendly URLs that contain keywords - In PrestaShop, friendly URLs are configurable with one click in the "Set URLs" panel,
3. verification of the website's source code - In particular, the
   ,
4. internal linking management - A strategy referred to as Link Juice allows you to distribute SEO potential evenly through internal links,
5. Increase the security of the site by implementing an SSL certificate (English. Secure Socket Layer),
6. Uploading the sitemap to Google Search Console and properly configuring the robots.txt file,
7. preparation of RWD version of the website - Today, more and more users are accessing e-commerce on mobile devices,
8. Setting 301 redirects for products that have been removed from the online store - You can redirect the user, for example, to a related product category or to the store's home page.

By acting on the technical level, search engine robots will be able to crawl the site freely, navigating within its structure. This will reduce the time it takes to index individual subpages. This is especially important for large online stores, which should pay more attention to the crawl budgetthan a fledgling small e-commerce business. However, it is worth investing in SEO efforts from the very beginning, as correcting mistakes at a later stage can be costly and time-consuming.

Take care of the following right from the start Integration of your PrestaShop store with Google Analytics software. You can use a free plugin for this. With the insights from Analytics, you get clear feedback determining the traffic and its quality on your website.

Remember that regular updates to PrestaShop and installed modules are essential for maintaining a high level of site security.

Why do you need an SSL certificate?

An SSL certificate is one of the most important elements that shape the security of users' connection to your online store. This is nothing more than a protocol that stabilizes the secure connection between the server hosting the store and the web browser. Information about whether a site has a valid SSL can be found on the left side of the URL under the padlock icon. Buying and maintaining an SSL is a good idea not only for the sake of users, but also search engines. Its absence results in warnings from Google, higher rejection rates and can ultimately translate into a drop in Google rankings.

To enable SSL on all sub-pages of the online store, you need to go to the administration panel, then go to the "Preferences" and "General" sections, and there check the activation of the certificate.

Why is it important to keep "light" photos in mind?

On the surface, it may seem that the better quality photographs of your products you put on your website, the better. In practice, the opposite is true. As a rule, a representative photo of 1000x1000 pixels, or possibly 2000x2000 pixels, will be sufficient for users.. Such a website is still responsive, loads quickly, and the graphics are clear.

If you put very high-resolution product image files on the server, it will significantly increase the web loading time, and most users will not notice the difference anyway. If you want to speed up your site, reach for the LightSpeed Cache plugin, for example, and make sure to use the aforementioned WebP format.

Optimize the meta tags on your site

The function of meta tags is to inform crawlers and users about what is on a given website. Search engine algorithms distinguish different types of meta tags. They should be configured not only for the home page, but separately for each subpage as well. Pay attention to:

1. meta title - should be in 60 characters and unique for each subpage, is a ranking factor for Google bots,
2. meta description - Its length should not exceed 155 characters, although it is not taken into account by search engines, it allows you to prepare a marketing description,
3. alt attributes - The alt tag/alt description is the description of the image that displays when the image cannot be displayed properly.

You can configure all meta tags directly in PrestaShop. While the meta title is created automatically, the meta description should be prepared by yourself. For this, you can modify the page code and header.tpl file, or use one of the ready-made plugins, such as SEO Expert. It helps to create classic meta tags and their versions for social media.

Creating headlines in PrestaShop

Understanding the basics of SEO also requires the inclusion of H semantic headings (e.g. H1, H2, H3) in the content of specific subpages. They inform search engines about the structure of the site, so to speak, showing the hierarchy of the site's content. Remember to follow a few simple rules when formulating headings.

First and foremost, every page should start with an H1 header. It is followed by H2 headers. The presence of H3 and deeper nested headers depends on the content of the page, they may or may not appear. It is important to use relevant keywords, desirable from the point of view of your business, in the headline content. It is worthwhile to weave in there the so-called long tail phrases (long tail keywords), but without "stuffing" them by force. Note that PrestaShop allows you to create headers for different types of content - product descriptions, category descriptions, blog articles. Take advantage of this to improve user experience. Clear content structure supports effective SEO.

Create product and category descriptions

For online stores, product and category descriptions are a manifestation of a comprehensive approach to SEO efforts. They allow for an even distribution of general keywords, and also serve an informative function, supporting the movement of the user within the "sales funnel.". When using PrestaShop for content creation, reach for good practices known from other text editors. Adding bolding, listing, hierarchy of headings makes the description more readable and useful - both for users and search engines.

When creating descriptions, pay attention to convey valuable information in them. Avoid duplicating entire passages, as this can lead to duplication of content, and consequently to cannibalization. The web browser will begin to get lost in which content to display in response to a user's query.

While this type of content can now be prepared by tapping into AI tools, consider outsourcing the task to a marketing agency, which will outsource the development of product sheets to copywriters familiar with the industry. Artificial intelligence will certainly speed up the generation of content, but it is unlikely to be of sufficiently high quality.

Content development vs SEO optimization of PrestaShop

In the world of e-commerce, it is very important to stand out with interesting and valuable content. This can be tutorials and blogs, FAQ sections, reviews, customer feedback and publications posted on social media. Store on PrestaShop software allows you to develop the SEO process by "housing" your website with content. This is not only a way to use key phrases, but most importantly to reach your target audience.

Blogs and tutorials allow you to cover a wider range of key phrases, and they also make it easier to fill in the so-called "key phrases". Content Gap, which is the difference between the content that is already on the site and that of the competition.

There are quite a few plugins that allow you to blog. Among the available options, it's worth mentioning the free SmartBlog, or the free SimpleBlog with the option to purchase a premium option. Still another option is PrestaBlog. They support content organization and make it easy to manage.

How long does PrestaShop SEO take?

Positioning e-commerce platforms is a time-consuming and engaging process regardless of what technology you base your store on. Due to the multitude of factors that significantly affect a website's position, it is difficult to clearly define the timing of SEO efforts. A strategically wise approach is to carrying out cyclic evaluations to assess the effectiveness of the activities carried out For example, once a month or once a quarter. It is worth remembering that the indexing of subpages itself is a process that can take quite a long time, and this is true even when all SEO activities are carried out correctly. Unlike Google Ads campaigns, SEO brings the greatest benefits in the long term, although you usually have to wait for results. What influences this waiting time?

Site condition

First of all, this is the baseline of the service. While it may seem like it doesn't make much sense for an online store to implement SEO efforts, it will be much better to start a campaign right away and gradually scale it up than to ignore it and implement extensive efforts months later.

Competitive environment

Another factor is competition. The more there is in an industry, the harder it will be for your site to appear for certain key phrases. Therefore, it is important to assess the business environment. In all likelihood, we can say that in most cases it will be easier to promote a store offering niche technology solutions, for example, than children's toys.

Develop a positioning strategy

The foundation of positioning is key phrases, as they have a direct impact on shaping the content on the site. Selecting phrases in terms of search and intent helps determine their potential for a given project. However, it will not always be intuitive.

For product positioning, it is also important to keep your content updated. It is important that the information you post is credible, based on reliable sources and as recent as possible. By doing so, you are implementing Google's EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust) guidelines, which are used to verify the quality of content.

Remember that Presta SEO is an ongoing process. It cannot be carried out once and close the whole subject, because the requirements of search engines for websites are constantly changing. Sites that do not keep up with these changes, as well as the actions of competitors, will gradually lose their hard-earned position. Therefore, while you can carry out the initial activities on your own, SEO audits, as well as the development and implementation of a development strategy, are worth entrusting to professionals.

The timing of positioning is also affected by many different kinds of external factors. This could be, for example, the seasonality of the industry (e.g., garden power tools sell primarily in the winter-spring period, when garden owners plan their first activities). As an e-commerce store owner, you should keep track of this seasonality in order to respond to it accordingly.

Grab the user's attention with a unique design

The PrestaShop platform is open source and highly customizable. Take advantage of this to design a store that will attract your customers, like a magnet. We encourage you to familiarize yourself with our portfolio. The 4Pixel agency creates unique e-commerce projects by combining the work of programmers, designers and marketers.

PrestaShop Positioning. What can we do for you?

If you're looking for comprehensive support for creating and maintaining a PrestaShop store, we encourage you to learn more about 4Pixel offers. For more than 15 years we have been creating modern, transparent and effective online stores. We will design a site for you, with which you will achieve better results in browsers, and we will take care of its development. We combine developer, design experience with SEO strategy.

Our team implements on-site and off-site activities tailored to the client's specified needs. We never operate in the dark, but are based on specifics and hard data. In this way, we will help you win and maintain your position in the organic results. We have advanced tools and years of experience that allow us to act effectively.