SEO in OpenCart 3: All the New Features You Need for Boosting Your Google Ranks
The newest version of SEO Backpack for OpenCart 3.0.2.x comes loaded with all the vital features you need to have your store’s basic search engine optimization covered.
Each website has minimum requirements for SEO configurations that need to be properly managed for the site to come up in the search engines’ results.
This determines your basic ranking capabilities and sets up the foundation for a more elaborate search engine optimization strategy as the site develops and grows.
Basic SEO properties you need to control in your OpenCart 3.x store:
- Title Tag
- Meta Description
- SEO URLs
- Semantic Headlines (H1 & H2 Tags)
- Search Engine Analytics
- 404 Redirect Management
- Robots Control
Luckily, with the new SEO Backpack, you have the power to manage all of these search engine optimization basics, and tons more!
Let’s explore all the new features that were released in the latest version of SEO Backpack for OpenCart 3.x.
New Feature: Added Automatic SEO URL Generation
When you create a new product, category or any other page in your OpenCart 3.x store, you are able to setup a keyword for the SEO URL, however it needs to be done manually from the SEO tab in the page creation section.
And since the SEO URLs in your OpenCart 3.x store are defined by the slug you create for each page, we have created a solution for that lifting the need for you to set it up manually each time.
With the Automatic SEO URL Generation feature, you won’t have to modify that slug, cause it will be automatically created by simply using the name of the page.
For example, if we’re talking about a product, let’s say the name of the product is “iPhone”.
SEO Backpack takes the data here and uses it to automatically generate the slug for your SEO URL.
This setting is now working for all of your products, categories, manufacturers and information pages in OpenCart 3.x.
The feature can be managed from SEO Backpack > URLs & Linking > Advanced Settings.
New Feature: Clean Home Page URL
The home page URL with index.php?route=common/home is now resolved and cleaned up with the new version of SEO Backpack.
This part usually appears when you refresh the page by clicking the main “Your Store” link in the home page.
You will just see your clean store domain every time you refresh, without seeing the common/home part.
Bonus: This feature works with multi-lingual stores as well!
New Feature: Unify URLs
The links for your products and categories will be unified across all pages, regardless if you are on the home page, the category page or any other page.
For example, let’s say you open a product from your home page...
OpenCart default URL: yourstore.cоm/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=40
Unify URLs enabled: yourstore.cоm/iphone
If you use the Product URL String setting in the Advanced SEO Links settings, you will be able to modify that and add any of the product details you want.
This will eliminate the duplicate content caused by the small changes in the URLs, which are generated by OpenCart.
New Feature: Language Folder Prefixes for the SEO URLs
Running a multi-language OpenCart shop?
SEO Backpack now comes with a setting for adding language prefixes in your SEO URLs.
This setting will add the language prefix after the .com part of your URL to the selected language that your customer prefers for the page.
For example: yоurstоre.соm/de/iphone5
The feature can be managed from SEO Backpack > URLs & Linking > Advanced Settings.
New Feature: Full Breadcrumbs in the Product and Category Pages
The breadcrumbs in the product pages are the navigation bar that contains full path to the product you have opened (home page, main category, subcategory, current product).
By default in OpenCart, if a customer opens a product in your store from an external link and doesn’t go through the path via your categories, they will not appear in the breadcrumbs.
With this setting, each product will contain the full breadcrumbs in the navigation, no matter where the customer came from.
This is useful for your customers, so they have the full navigation if they want to go back to one of the previous categories or pages.
It also helps the ranking, since the navigation comes out in the Google search results, underneath the link to your website.
New Feature: Filter in 404 Pages & Redirects
You can now easily sort through your reports for detected missing pages and the custom 404 redirects you create with the newly added filters to both sections:
Take Your OpenCart 3.x to Higher Rankings
You can use SEO Backpack to manage the basic SEO characteristics of your site and to measure the overall SEO performance. However, mind that by basic, we don’t mean they’re easy. You should do your keyword research and gather some data as to how all of them should be configured in order to boost your OpenCart 3.x site’s rankings as best as possible.
