User guide: SEO

Magento 2 SEO extension was developed by Mageplaza is the best marketing tool in order to help you automatically optimize and greatly improve the performance of your Magento-based store in Search Engines. With a list of outstanding and effective tools, our Better SEO extension will bring to your store a great chance to own an amazing speed as well as gain the higher and higher rank in the popular and famous search engines such as Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

In order to install SEO extension on your store, you can learn and do it by yourself via Installation Guide or use Installation Service Package to request the specialist helps from Mageplaza Team.

In User Guide Document, Mageplaza divides into three main parts: Basic Settings, DashBoard, and Rules

1. Magento 2 SEO Basic Settings

Firstly, we will familar with the module via the list of the configuration. Login as Admin account, go to the path Mageplaza > SEO > Settings.

1.1. General Configuration

Open General Configuration section, you can see:

• To allow improve the connect between component URLs in a paginated series as well as move to another page easily, you can use Next/Prev tag if choosing “Yes” in the Enable Next/Prev tag field

• Add Nofollow meta in Search Result if you select “Yes” option
• Add Nofollow meta in Product Gallery if you select “Yes” option
• Setting Enable Sitelink Search Box to “Yes” means showing another search box that shows the more detailed search results on the destination site.

1.2. Duplicate Content

Continue with the next session - Duplicate Content, there are some configurations related to the duplicate content:

• To manage your content better and restrict the duplication, please set “Yes” for Add Canonical URL Meta
• In the Canonical points to https field, you can choose “Yes” or “No” option depending on whether you would prefer the https version of a page or not
• Also avoid the duplicate content, you can disable URL parameter as ?price=30-220&brand=abc in canonical URL, that means “No” option must be active

1.3. Social Shares

Social Shares provides the working fields that support for the better SEO on the social channels. Now expand that section and do the following:

• It is possible to show Open Graph that is a short description of your website whenever visitors publish on the social medias like Facebook, Google+, Pinterest and other social networks.

  If disable the open graph on the social network, please choose “No” to turn it off in Add Open Graph meta tags field

• You can also add Twitter Card Meta tags when the visitors share your website on Twitter

• Enter Pinterest Confirmation Code to verify your website. Follow the instruction here

• Enter Google+ Publisher Page if you need

1.4. Rich Snippets | Structured Data

Scroll down and expand the **Rich Snippet

Structured Data** section, you will:

• Include Rich Snippet in the search results right after enabling the rich snippet in the configuration

  Rich Snippet may be review stars, an aggregate rating value, and vote count, etc. You can learn it more at the link

• Disable Product Structured Data by selecting “No” if your theme or module implements it’s own product snippets.

• Allow applying Organization Information that describes the results in detailed. Furthermore, you can custom that data via this guide

1.5. Social Profiles

Mageplaza SEO extension permits to show Social Profiles when your website is searched on Google.

1.6. Business information

You can enable Business Information if choosing “Yes”. Just enter the information into the corresponding fields, then all of them will be show on the search result.

1.7. Breadcrumbs

Enabling Breadcrumbs is the way to show the exact position in the site hierarchy, for example: www.mageplaza.com > Magento 2 Extensions > Better SEO. If you really want to apply for your product page, under Breadcrumbs section, please select “Yes” in the Enable Breadcrumbs Rich Snippet field.

1.8. HTML Sitemap

This html sitemap configuration contains Categories Sitemap, Pages Sitemap, and Products Sitemap while all of them can be displayed in the footer of your page. You can see the settings in the following screenshots:

1.9. XML Sitemap

XML Sitemap is a .xml map of your website and the map will show a list of the page that the visitors can access.

Under the XML Sitemap section, you can:

• Create Homepage Optimization when choosing “Yes”
• In case you need additional links, it is required to set Enable Additional Links to “Yes”

1.10. Hreflang Tag

The Hreflang tag is the necessary tag if your website must approach multi-countries. The hreflang attribute tells Google which language you are using on a specific page, so the search engine can serve that result to users searching in that language.

In order to use the hreflang tag, you need to do:

• Enable the hreflang URL when selecting “Yes”
• Allow you to apply the hreflang for the product, category, and pages if you need.
• Assign X-default to the specific store view that means if the visitors come from another country with the language you don’t support, the assigned store view to X-default will be displayed in this situation.

2. SEO Checklist

SEO Checklist includes a list of the notifications: Success, Error, and Warning. Basing on this status of the notification, you will know whether your store is optimized and ready for SEO or not.

3. SEO Rules

Mageplaza SEO allows the store owner to create the specific rule information. To add new SEO rule, please follow the path Mageplaza > SEO Rules > Rules, click on Add New Rule button.

• Enter Rule Name
• The rule can be applied to Product, Category, Pages, Post. You can choose one of them in the Entity Type field
• Set Apply Template to “Skip if ready defined” and “Force Update”
  • “Skip if ready defined” means if admin manually adds meta tag: title, description, so it will not apply this template.
  • “Force Update” means auto-applying the template for all meta tags
• Apply SEO Rule for “All” or “Product Attribute Set” or “Specific Product” as you need
• Enter Meta Tile Template, Meta Description Template, and Meta Keywords Template
  • The Meta Title Template should be 55-60 characters. Use following syntax to add dynamic meta title: , , .
  • The Meta Description Template should be between 150 and 160 characters. Use following syntax to add dynamic meta title: , , .
  • The Meta Keywords Template should be between 3-5 keywords. Use following syntax to add dynamic meta title: , , .
• Select Robots Template from one of the options:
  • Index, Follow
  • NoIndex, Follow
  • Index, NoFollow
  • NoIndex, NoFollow
• Set Status to “Enable” for the active rule
• Choose Store View where the rule is applied
• Set Priority if need while 0 is the highest level.