How to do Search Engine Optimization in Odoo

In our modern era, including a website is considered a wise strategy for businesses to reach a wider audience and compete in the market. However, just putting up a website is not enough, it’s important to optimize it for search engines like Google and Bing to ensure that it is easily discoverable by potential customers. This is where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) will be helpful for you.

SEO refers to the process of making modifications to your website in order to boost its ranking on search engine results pages (SERP). When done correctly, it can lead to an increase in organic traffic, better user experience and higher conversions. In this tutorial, we will dive into the world of SEO and learn how to optimize a website in Odoo, the popular open-source enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

Now, let’s not waste any more time and dive right into How to do Search Engine Optimization in Odoo with us.

Table of contents

• Reasons to do Search Engine Optimization in Odoo?
• How to do Search Engine Optimization in Odoo
  • Step 1. Meta Tags
  • Step 2. Content is King
  • Step 3. Use Social Networks
  • Step 4. Test Your Website
  • Step 5. URLs Handling
  • Step 6. Multi-Language Support
  • Step 7. Page Speed
  • Step 8. Search Engines Files
• Conclusion

Reasons to do Search Engine Optimization in Odoo?

There are numerous reasons why you should think about implementing SEO in Odoo. Some of the most important reasons include:

1. Increased Online Presence: As mentioned earlier, SEO is about increasing a website’s visibility on search engines. You may reach a larger audience and develop a good digital presence by optimizing your Odoo website.

2. Improved User Experience: Good SEO practices lead to a better user experience, which can result in higher engagement and conversions. For example, well-optimized websites load faster, are easy to navigate and have high-quality content that is relevant to the user’s search query.

3. Increased Organic Traffic: By ranking higher on search engines, websites can attract more organic traffic. This traffic is free, as it is not paid for through advertising. Additionally, organic traffic is often more valuable than paid traffic as it tends to convert better.

4. Competitive Advantage: With so many websites vying for attention on search engines, it’s important to stand out. By optimising your Odoo website, you can gain a competitive advantage over others in your industry.

5. Better Brand Reputation: A well-optimised website can improve your brand reputation by presenting your company in a professional and trustworthy manner.

6. Long-Term Benefits: SEO is not a one-time fix, but a long-term investment. The benefits of SEO can continue for years to come, as long as the website is maintained and updated regularly.

In conclusion, SEO is an essential aspect of running a successful website in today’s digital age. Optimizing your Odoo website allows you to reach a wider audience, establish a strong online presence, and gain a competitive advantage in your industry.

How to do Search Engine Optimization in Odoo

Now that we have gone through the reasons why you need Search Engine Optimization to help expand your business, it is time to get right into the actual process of integrating it into your website.

Step 1. Meta Tags

Meta tags are HTML tags that provide information about a web page to search engines and web browsers. They are placed in the head section of the HTML document and are not visible to the users.

In addition to providing important information to search engines, meta tags can also affect the user experience. For example, a well-written title tag can entice users to click on the search result and visit the page, while a well-written description tag can provide context and help users understand what the page is about before they visit it.

Title, Description

Two of the most commonly used meta tags are Title tag and Description tag:

1. Title tag: The title tag is the most important meta tag and appears at the top of the browser window. It provides a brief description of the page and should be between 50-60 characters in length. Most of the time, the title tag should accurately reflect the content of the page and contain relevant keywords.
2. Description tag: The description tag provides a brief summary of the page’s content and is displayed in the search engine results. It should be between 150-160 characters in length and include relevant keywords.

Remember that they are often generated automatically based on the page title and content, but you can modify them. On that note, always ensure that they are appropriate for the page’s content to avoid having your ranking reduced by search engines.

In case you want to change up the tags, here is a very simple way to do so. From your Accounting dashboard, locate the Website menu and select Website from the drop down list. When you do so, you will be shown an array of pages, and you shall pick out one that you want to edit the meta tags. Select the desired page and scroll down to the Website Meta section and edit the tags. After making changes to the corresponding fields, all you need to do is click the Save button to finalize everything.

Keywords

The keywords tag is used to list relevant keywords for the page. Although search engines do not use the keywords tag as heavily as they used to, it is still a good idea to include relevant keywords in this tag.

So as to maximize the SEO function, Odoo has a <keyword> finder to help you create high-quality content and increase traffic. The searches that you would want to direct toward your website are those using those exact keywords. You can view the Google-related searches for each term as well as how it is used in the content.

Additionally, you may use the Promote tool and set unique title, description, and search tags for each language of a single page on a website that supports several languages by doing so.

Step 2. Content is King

Having high-quality, relevant, and distinctive content on your website is one of the most crucial parts of search engine optimization (SEO). To determine the relevance of a web page to a user’s search query, search engines use algorithms, and one of the major elements in these algorithms is the page’s content.

Since Odoo is designed to assist you in growing your businesses with the use of high-quality content, they offer a variety of modules for you:

1. Odoo Blogs: Use the Odoo Blogs module to create engaging content. Writing blog entries that appeal to your target audience and are search engine optimized is simple.
2. Odoo Slides: Use the Odoo Slides module to publish all of your Powerpoint or PDF presentations. These presentations’ information is automatically indexed on the website, which makes it simple for search engines to find and index. You can find an illustration at odoo.com/slides/public-channel-1.
3. Odoo Forum: Use the Odoo Forum module to let your community produce content for you. This enables interaction between users and the addition of worthwhile information to your website. Odoo.com/forum/1, which makes up 30% of Odoo.com landing pages, serves as an illustration.
4. Odoo Mailing List Archive: Use the Odoo Mailing List Archive module to publish mailing list archives on your website. By doing this, you may easily make current material on your website accessible and repurpose it. Odoo.com/groups/community-59, which creates 1000 pages per month, serves as an illustration.

You can change the 404 page in Odoo just like any other page, for your information. In this manner, you may create a fantastic 404 page to route website users who encounter broken URLs to the most important pages.

Step 3. Use Social Networks

Social networking sites can be an effective technique for increasing website traffic and search engine results. You may reach a wider audience, raise brand awareness, and boost the number of inbound links to your website by actively promoting it on social media. For this reason, Odoo has a number of features that let you post your content on social media:

Social Network

At your company settings, in the footer of your website, you have the option to link all of your available social media profiles. Making it simple and accessible for people to find and follow your social media profiles is possible with this specific feature.

Social Share

Any page on your website that you want people to share can have a Share building block that contains links to your social media sites added to it. This way, any potential customer will be encouraged to share the website on their social network wall after clicking the symbol.

Most of the time, a photo is frequently used to embellish a social media post when it is shared. Odoo usually would use the website logo by default, but if you want to change it up, you can utilize the Promote tool to select any other picture from the page.

Facebook Page

It can be said that Facebook is very popular among a certain demographic, which can be used to make your business better-known if you play your cards right. When you use Odoo, you can add a Facebook Page widget to your website to display your business page and encourage visitors to follow it. The widget then will display your timeline, future events, and messages, which will allow visitors to easily stay involved with your brand.

Twitter Scroller

Twitter is a different popular social media platform that lots of people use, so you can advertise your company on this website as well. You may use Odoo to display your Twitter feed with client satisfaction on your website, increasing the amount of tweets and shares. This is an excellent approach to demonstrate your client interaction while also increasing your social media awareness.

Step 4. Test Your Website

Website testing is an important stage in search engine optimization. Regular testing shall help you identify opportunities for development and ensure that your website adheres to the most recent SEO best practices. Using WooRank’s free services at https://www.woorank.com/, you may assess how your website ranks against Odoo in terms of SEO. When testing your website, keep the following points in mind:

• Website Performance: Make certain that your website loads swiftly and efficiently. Slow page load times might harm your website’s search engine rankings and user experience.
• Mobile-Friendliness: As more and more people access the internet using their smartphones, be sure your website is mobile-friendly.
• Broken Links: Identify and repair any broken links on your website, as they can hurt your search engine rankings and user experience.
• Keywords: Make use of relevant keywords in your website’s content and meta tags. Keywords help search engines comprehend what your website is about and help it rank higher.
• Content Quality: Ensure that the content on your website is of good quality, relevant, and interesting. Search engines prefer websites with high-quality material, therefore it’s critical to maintain your content up to date.
• Analytics: Set up website analytics to track your website’s performance and make informed SEO decisions.

By testing and improving your website on a regular basis, you can ensure that it is optimized for search engines and provides a fantastic user experience.

Step 5. URLs Handling

Most of the time, URLs are overlooked when they try to figure out a way to make their website SEO-friendly. But it is possible to make your URLs more optimized for search engines as well, and these are some ways to do it:

URLs structure

A common Odoo URL will be something like this:

https://www.mysite.com/fr_FR/shop/product/my-great-product-31

With the following parts:

• www.mysite.com being your domain name -/fr_FR being a certain page language. If the visitor browses the website in its primary language, this portion of the URL is omitted. As a result, the primary version of this page is as follows: https://www.mysite.com/shop/product/my-great-product-31
• /shop/product being each module defines its own namespace (/shop is for the eCommerce module’s catalog, /shop/product is for a product page).
• my-great-product being the default slugified title of the item this page pertains to. However, you can modify it for SEO purposes. Pain carré will be shortened to pain-carre for a product. This could be a variety of objects depending on the namespace (blog post, page title, forum post, forum comment, product category, etc.).
• -31 being the product’s unique ID

Changes in URLs and Titles

When a page’s URL changes (for example, to a more SEO-friendly version of your product name), you don’t have to worry about changing all links since Odoo will automatically update all its links to the new URL. Furthermore, if your external websites still point to the old URL, a 301 redirect will be performed to send users to the new location of the page.

HTTPS

Websites that use the HTTPS protocol and have a valid SSL certificate rank higher in search engines. This is due to the fact that these websites create a safe environment for users, preventing data theft, manipulation, and other security issues.

Odoo has made HTTPS the default protocol for all Odoo Online instances, which means that all traffic between the website and the user is secured. If a visitor attempts to access the website through a non-HTTPS URL, he or she will be forwarded to the HTTPS equivalent via a 301 redirect. This not only improves the SEO of the website, but it also improves the security of the website and its users.

Links: Nofollow Strategy

The more external and high-quality websites connect to a page, the better it is for your SEO. Here are some Odoo link management strategies:

• Each link that you add to the website is “dofollow,” which means it increases the linked page’s SEO juice.
• Every link provided by a contributor (forum post, blog remark, etc.) to your own website is dofollow as well.
• However, any link a contributor posts that directs readers to an external website is marked as nofollow. As a result, you avoid the chance of users publishing links to third-party websites with a bad reputation on your website.
• When using the forum, keep in mind that contributors with a lot of Karma can be trusted. In this instance, their links will lack the rel="nofollow" element.

  Step 6. Multi-Language Support

  Multi-Language URLs

  For websites with numerous language options, the same content can be accessible via several URLs depending on the language selected. For example, the English version of the website can be seen at https://www.mywebsite.com/shop/product/my-product-1, while the French version can be found at https://www.mywebsite.com/fr FR/shop/product/mon-produit-1.

The language code (e.g. fr_FR) is appended to the URL to distinguish between different language versions of the same material. In some circumstances, multiple varieties of the same language, such as Portuguese from Brazil (pt_BR) and Portuguese from Portugal (pt_PT), may be available.

Language Annotation

Odoo will include an HTML link element in the header to notify search engines about the many language versions of a webpage. Odoo automatically inserts a link to the translated versions of that web page in the HTML head> section of the main language version, as demonstrated below:

<link rel=”alternate” hreflang=”fr” href=”https://www.mywebsite.com/fr_FR/shop/product/mon-produit-1”/>

By doing so, search engines can send users to the appropriate language version based on their chosen language, and there will be no penalties for having pages that have not yet been translated, as they are regarded as separate versions of the same information.

Language Detection

When a visitor initially visits a website (for example, yourwebsite.com/shop), they may be forwarded to a translated version of the page based on their browser language settings (for example, yourwebsite.com/fr_FR/shop). A cookie is placed to remember the language that was previously selected, so that subsequent visits to the website do not require redirection.

If you wish to force visitors to utilize the default language, include the language code in your link. Visitors to yourwebsite.com/en_US/shop, for example, will always be directed to the English version of the page, regardless of their browser language preferences.

Step 7. Page Speed

Introduction

The time it takes for a page to load is a significant factor for search engines. A quicker website not only enhances the experience of your visitors, but also helps your page ranking. According to several research, dividing the time, it takes to load your pages by two (e.g., 2 seconds instead of 4 seconds) reduces the visitor desertion rate by two. (25% to 12.5%).

Odoo, fortunately, does all of the magic for you. The strategies Odoo employs to speed up page loading time are detailed below. You can use these two tools to compare how your website ranks:

• Google Page Speed: https://pagespeed.web.dev/
• Pingdom Website Speed Test: https://tools.pingdom.com/

  Images

  Odoo automatically compresses new photos to make them smaller when you upload them (lossless compression for .PNG and .GIF and lossy compression for .JPG). However, if you choose to maximize image quality over efficiency, you can choose to keep the original image untouched from the upload button.

Furthermore, please be aware that Odoo compresses photos when they are submitted to your website, not when they are requested by a visitor. As a result, if you use a third-party theme, you may receive photos that are not adequately compressed. However, all pictures in Odoo official themes will have been compressed by default.

For your information, Odoo will display the Alt and title attributes of the <img> tag when you click on a picture. You may set your own title and Alt attributes for the image by clicking on it.

When you decide to click on it, the following window shall pop up:

In addition, Odoo’s pictograms are created with a font to make your website more lively and approachable. As a result, you may use as many pictograms as you want on your page without having to make additional requests to load the page.

Static Resources: CSS

All CSS files are pre-processed, concatenated, minified, compressed, and cached (server-side and browser-side). As a result:

• Only one CSS file request is required to load a page.
• This CSS file is shared and cached between pages, so that when a visitor clicks on another page, the browser does not have to load a single CSS resource.
• This CSS file has been optimized to be tiny.

Static Resources: Javascript

Javascript resources, like CSS resources, are concatenated, minified, compressed, and cached (server-side and browser-side). Odoo has provided three Javascript packages for you to utilize to make the process go more smoothly:

• One for each of the website’s pages (including code for parallax effects, form validation, etc.)
• One for shared Javascript code across the frontend and backend (Bootstrap)
• One for backend-specific Javascript code (interface of the Odoo Web Client for your staff who utilize Odoo)

Another important thing to remember is that the majority of website visitors will only need the first two bundles, therefore a page can only be rendered with a maximum of two Javascript files loaded.

CDN

When the** CDN option** in Odoo is enabled, static resources (Javascript, CSS, pictures) are loaded from a Content Delivery Network. There are three benefits of using a Content Delivery Network:

• Download files from a nearby server (the majority of CDNs have servers in the world’s major economies).
• Effectively cache resources (no computation resources usage on your own server).
• Divide the loading of resources among services so that you can load more resources concurrently (because Chrome only supports a maximum of six parallel requests per domain).

The Website Admin app’s Configuration menu allows you to customize your CDN parameters. Here’s an example of a possible configuration that you can utilize:

HTML Pages

HTML pages can be compressed, although normally this is handled by your web server (NGINX or Apache).

Odoo Website Builder has been optimized to ensure clean and concise HTML code. Building blocks have been created to generate neat HTML code, typically with Bootstrap and the HTML editor.

For example, if you use the color picker to alter the color of a paragraph to your website’s primary color, Odoo will generate the following code:

<p class="text-primary">My Text</p>

Most HTML editors (including CKEditor) will generate the following code:

<p style="color: #AB0201">My Text</p>

Responsive Design

Responsive designs are essential in SEO because they enable websites to give a consistent and optimized user experience across various platforms such as desktop computers, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

A responsive website adjusts its layout and content to fit the screen size and resolution of the device being used, giving the user an optimized viewing experience and easy navigation. Not only does this improve the user experience and lower the bounce rate, but it also indicates to search engines that the website is mobile-friendly and provides a great user experience.

Therefore, websites that are not mobile-friendly suffer in rankings on search engines. As a result, you’ll note that all Odoo themes rely on Bootstrap to render efficiently regardless of device: desktop, tablet, or mobile.

Browser Caching

Browser caching is a technique used by web browsers to cache frequently requested resources on the user’s device, such as photos, stylesheets, and JavaScript scripts. This enables the browser to access these materials quickly without downloading them again on subsequent visits to the same page.

The URL for Javascript, pictures, and CSS resources changes dynamically as their content changes. All CSS files, for example, are loaded via this URL: localhost:8069/web/content/457-0da1d9d/web.assets common.0.css. If you change the CSS on your website, the 457-0da1d9d portion of this URL will change.

This shall enable Odoo to set a very high cache delay (XXX) on these resources: XXX seconds, although the resource is updated quickly if you update it.

Scalability

Scalability in Odoo can have a big impact on the SEO of your website. When a website is scalable, it can manage a huge number of visitors while still maintaining rapid page loading speeds, especially during peak traffic periods.

Odoo is not only faster, but it is also more scalable than other CMS and eCommerce platforms (Drupal, Wordpress, Magento, Prestashop). Here is an illustration of the scalability of Odoo Website & eCommerce.

Step 8. Search Engines Files

The SEO approach for this step is to submit sitemaps and search engine files to the main search engines. This stage assists search engines in understanding your website structure as well as the pages on your site that should be indexed and displayed in search results.

Site Maps

For your information, Odoo creates a /sitemap.xml file for you automatically. This file is cached and updated every 12 hours for speed reasons.

By default, all URLs are to be stored in a single /sitemap.xml file, but if you have a large number of pages, Odoo will automatically build a Sitemap Index file, which follows the sitemaps.org protocol standard and groups sitemap URLs into 45000 pieces per file.

Structured Data Markups

Rich Snippets in search engine results are generated using Structured Data Markup. It allows website owners to transmit structured data to search engine robots, which aids them in understanding your content and producing well-presented search results.

Google provides rich snippets for the following content types: reviews, people, products, businesses, events, and organizations.

Odoo incorporates microdata in accordance with the href=”https://schema.org/” target=” blank” rel=”nofollow noopener”>schema.org/a> specification for events, eCommerce products, forum posts, and contact information. This enables your product pages to be displayed in Google utilizing additional information such as a product’s price and rating:

robots.txt

The robots.txt file is a standard that websites use to inform web crawlers (such as search engine bots) about which pages or sections of their site should not be scanned or indexed. It’s an essential feature of SEO since it allows you to select which portions of your website are displayed to search engines. When you use Odoo, those files will be automatically generated for you. Its content is:

User-agent: * Sitemap: https://www.odoo.com/sitemap.xml

It signifies that all robots are permitted to index your website, and there are no extra indexing rules other than those mentioned in the sitemap.

In developer mode, you can configure the file robots by going to Settings -> Technical -> User Interface -> Views (exclude robots, exclude some pages, redirect to a custom Sitemap). One thing to note is that you should make the view’s Model Data Non Updatable to avoid resetting the file following system upgrades.

Conclusion

Search Engine Optimization is an essential component of digital marketing and website creation. It entails various strategies and techniques to increase a website’s exposure in search engine results pages. Keyword research and optimization, on-page optimization, link building, and technical SEO are all important parts of SEO.

By applying these tactics, businesses may enhance their search engine position, drive more organic traffic to their website, and eventually boost their online visibility and reach. To remain competitive and obtain the desired outcomes, keeping up with the current SEO trends and best practices is critical.

Now that we have looked into the process of How to do Search Engine Optimisation in Odoo together, we hope that you find this article helpful, and that you can refer to it in the future!