How to rank higher on Google using OpenCart SEO pack
As an OpenCart store owner a reasonable amount of your clients get to you through Google, Bing or some other search engine, so it is really important to have a search engine friendly website. That is why you need to constantly improve your site’s pages content. Or simply put use SEO techniques.
SEO combines two major group of factors which are essential in order to get search engines better understand your website. These are On-page optimization and Off -page optimization. Off-page optimisation, as the name suggests, is not directly connected to the actual HTML content of your website and it is not entirely in your control. On-page optimisation, on the other hand, refers to the text and content of your webpages and is entirely up to the developer of the website.
Some of the On-page success factors are:
- Search engine friendly URls
- Optimization of your meta tags (keywords, titles and descriptions)
- Easy to read sitemap
- Rich snippets
- Avoiding duplicate content
Running an online store with lots of products means that you need to perform all these changes to each of its pages. That doesn’t sound as a productive approach. So you need the right set of tools to get the job done. Meet SEO Pack Pro - easy to work with, feature rich OpenCart extension which has the power to optimise your online store with a few clicks.
Behind the success of SEO Pack Pro lies the understanding of the key components and activities which a search engine optimisation requires. The module comes with powerful content generators for meta keywords, meta description, related products, product tags, SEO-friendly URLs, custom titles, custom H1 tags, custom H2 tags, SEO-friendly image names, custom image title and alt tags. What that means is that you can easily populate your web pages content with meaningful and search engine friendly content.
This is the default content of the <head> section product in an OpenCart based web store.
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/static//lang/bg.js"></script>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Desktops : Apple Cinema 30"</title>
<base href="http://yourstore.com/">
<link href="http://yourstore.com/image/data/cart.png" rel="icon">
<link href="http://yourstore.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=42" rel="canonical">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="catalog/view/theme/default/stylesheet/stylesheet.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/colorbox/colorbox.css" media="screen">
<script type="text/javascript" src="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/ui/jquery-ui-1.8.16.custom.min.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/ui/themes/ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.8.16.custom.css">
<script type="text/javascript" src="catalog/view/javascript/common.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/tabs.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/colorbox/jquery.colorbox-min.js"></script>
</head>
After navigating to catalog-> SEO -> SEO pack in your web store admin panel and using the extension's content generators this is how the same web page <head> section looks like
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/static//lang/bg.js"></script>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Mac : iMac</title>
<base href="http://yourstore.com/">
<meta name="description" content="iMac - Just when you thought iMac had everything, now there">
<meta name="keywords" content=" imac mac">
<link href="http://yourstore.com/image/data/cart.png" rel="icon">
<link href="http://yourstore.com/imac.html" rel="canonical">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="catalog/view/theme/default/stylesheet/stylesheet.css">
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/colorbox/colorbox.css" media="screen">
<script type="text/javascript" src="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/jquery-1.7.1.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/ui/jquery-ui-1.8.16.custom.min.js"></script>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/ui/themes/ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.8.16.custom.css">
<script type="text/javascript" src="catalog/view/javascript/common.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/tabs.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="catalog/view/javascript/jquery/colorbox/jquery.colorbox-min.js"></script>
</head>
It is easy to notice that the module has added meta description, keywords and title which are the entry point to the web page from search engine’s point of view. Also the complicated and hard to read url has transformed from href="http://yourstore.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=42" rel="canonical"> to <link href="http://yourstore.com/imac.html" rel="canonical">.
Duplicate content
Avoiding duplicate content is another major problem which SEO Pack Pro will help you solve. It does that with two different approaches.
- First - Smart pagination - the module will add rel=“next” and rel=“prev” to indicate the relationship between the individual URLs in a pagination. In addition to that it makes the pagination URLs SEO friendly such as - yourstore.com/category/page/2
- Second - SEO Pack pro will add canonical links for categories, brands, specials, informational pages, home page and others.
Add structured data.
Including structured data markup in your website such as Rich snippets and Breadcrumbs will enhance its search results. And that is a tip from Google! SEO Pack Pro comes with built-in functionality which will create rich snippets based on the Product, Offer and Rating schema.
Customizable and automated
The best part is that the module allows you to fully customize all of the content you wish to generate. You also don’t have to worry about adding a new product and starting everything all over again. The Instant SEO feature will automatically generate the desired content when adding or editing a product.
In conclusion
Search engine optimization is most often a really hard task, but nowadays it is more important than ever. Having the right tool to execute your On-page optimisation sometimes can be the winning card in your hand. SEO Pack Pro provides you with simple yet effective way to make your web site a search engine’s first choice.
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