When it comes to PHP open source ecommerce solutions, there are plenty of options to choose from such as Magento, osCommerce, OpenCart, Spree Commerce, PrestaShop, VirtueMart, Ubercart and CubeCart, amongst many more. Each has been designed with a different user in mind with different needs. However for most developers, Magento is their first choice because of its rich features and its ability to use key marketing promotional tools.
Magento is a key player in the competitive world of e-commerce platforms. One of the main reasons for this is because it is an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) friendly ecommerce solution which has the flexibility to design and develop optimised ecommerce websites. Here a few reasons why Magento is the best SEO friendly ecommerce solution:
Category Optimization
Magento allows you to add the category name to a path for a products URL. The most important fields to consider when doing this are:
Meta Description: A well written SEO friendly description should be used here because it will show in result listings of search engines.
Page Title: Keep this blank to use the category name including parent’s categories.
URL Key: This should be kept short with the key words in the URL.
These options can make a big difference to a SEO strategy. Details such as Name, Description, Page Title and Meta data can be specified for each store view, which is particularly useful for multi-language stores.
Product Optimization
In Magento, products can be optimised the same way as category optimization. The Meta Information can be set for the “Default Values” and for each “Store View”. When dealing with images, a good file name can create additional interest and improve SEO rankings. The images of product information can be labelled and can be used for the image’s alt and title tags.
CMS Pages
Magento is a very flexible and powerful CMS. It can control each aspect of every page easily. The page title, Meta keywords and the Meta description can be set for every individual page.
If a specific description isn’t given to each page in the CMS, the search engines will pick any string from the content automatically.
Canonical URLs
Canonical URLs are a big help for search engines to understand duplicate pages and can suggest the preferred URL for each web page, using the new canonical URL tag. To give a canonical URL to web pages, install the Canonical URL’s for Magento module.
XML Sitemaps
XML Sitemaps are Google sitemaps for providing information to search engines that shows where web content is. An XML sitemap never helps to rank well, but it is always useful to get indexed webpages faster in search engines. An XML sitemap can be created by going to Catalogue then Google Sitemap then Add Sitemap, choose a filename, path and store view, and then finally press “Save & Generate”.
It is essential to offer a flexible and SEO friendly ecommerce solution for any online business; this is why Magento is the best option for web site development.