How to Audit Magento SEO for Enterprise Stores
Enterprise Magento stores typically feature thousands of products, categories, filters, regional pages, and CMS content pieces. As a result, there is much more potential for SEO success — but also much more potential for SEO issues. Even a single disorganized URL or improperly set up canonical link can dramatically reduce the value of a page and all of its variations.
An enterprise level Magento SEO audit thus goes beyond simple page-level SEO recommendations and examines the overall discoverability and organization of the site in order to highlight the issues that will benefit from improvement the most. Here are the key areas to focus on:
- Page-level SEO issues
- URL structure and canonical issues
- Duplicate content and thin pages
- Internal linking and linking architecture
- Structured data and CWV
Page-level SEO issues
An enterprise Magento store will have hundreds or even thousands of product, category, and CMS pages and each of them needs to be properly optimized in order to provide a positive UX and appear in relevant searches.
Begin the audit by analyzing the most common page templates and identifying optimization patterns. Enterprise stores typically lean towards stronger product focus, so product-related categories and pages in particular need to have compelling, unique content that helps searchers find exactly what they need.
Prioritize the most important pages for optimization, beginning with those that are most relevant to actual buyers and have the strongest potential for discovery. If the same product names keep appearing in page titles or product descriptions, it is necessary to replace them with more specific terms that will improve the visibility in the SERPs for the relevant search queries.
URL structure and canonical issues
Due to the nature of enterprise level e-commerce, Magento sites tend to have a large number of uniquely formed URLs. This can include category and product pages with various navigational filters, layered navigation options, search result pages, and other URL parameters. Use the URL structure analysis to detect any potential issues with site-wide URL duplication and identify which variations should be allowed for indexing.
Large-scale enterprises typically have tens of thousands of product pages with similar names and attributes. It is important to preserve the canonical product URLs whenever possible to prevent redirect chains and indexing issues. Use the URL audit to identify the types of parameters that have the strongest impact on the page appearance and eliminate the unnecessary ones.
Duplicate content and thin pages
Magento’s layered navigation can be an immense boost to the discoverability and conversion rate of an online store. However, the same feature can also greatly impact the quality of the site’s content architecture.
Use the filters audit to examine the navigation structure and determine which of the filtered combinations should retain their own URLs and content. Enterprise-level stores typically have thousands of irrelevant combinations that either do not provide any value to the searchers or only appear due to the navigational parameters. This is also an important point to remember when it comes to canonicalization.
Internal linking and linking architecture
Large product catalogs and enterprise-level Magento stores in particular require strong internal linking in order to improve the discoverability of their pages. Examine the most important categories and products to see if they are linked from the high-authority pages on the site. Check breadcrumbs, category depth, and the presence of internal links on every page.
If there are too many irrelevant or low-quality linking sources, it will be necessary to optimize the linking architecture in order to improve the authority of the most important pages. This is especially critical for deep product catalog pages since their linking potential is much lower than that of the landing category pages.
Structured data and CWV
A thorough structured data audit is a must for any enterprise level SEO project. Examine the markup consistency across thousands of product pages in order to ensure that all of the relevant attributes are properly displayed in the SERPs. Make sure that the specified information matches the actual contents of the pages, including the prices, product features, availability, and customer reviews.
Auditing a large Magento store manually can be time-consuming, especially when you need to review technical and on-page SEO factors across many URLs. The Brainito Magento SEO Audit helps streamline the review process, making it easier to identify potential issues and prioritize SEO improvements across an enterprise store.
Written by:
Brainito Intelligence
www.brainito.com