How to Do SEO for PrestaShop?

Prestashop is one of the most widely used CMS (Content Management System) for creating and managing e-commerce, alongside WordPress, Shopify, Joomla, or Magento.

As we have explained in other articles about SEO, simply creating the online store and uploading products will not position you; you will have to work for customers to find your products.

If you apply an SEO strategy that improves the online store's presence in search engines, you will achieve more web traffic and more sales.

By reading this article, you will learn all about SEO for Prestashop so that both the home page, categories, and product sheets... rank.

Let’s get to it!

Prestashop What is it?

In 2007, PrestaShop was born from the hands of Igor Schlumberger and Bruno Lévêque, a free open-source PHP solution for e-commerce. It serves to create and manage online stores intuitively.

It works through modules, which allow you to add additional functions such as, for example: SEO module, abandoned cart module, Google Analytics module….

Currently, PrestaShop is used by 300,000 e-commerce sites (source: Prestashop). And with this platform, any user can sell their products online.

Let’s see how:

SEO for Prestashop

As in the article about SEO for e-commerce, optimizing SEO in Prestashop will improve the visibility and performance of your online store.

This optimization aims to analyze the areas for improvement so that your e-commerce ranks in the top results on Google.

To this end, ideally, before starting to work, especially if the project has been around for a while, is to conduct a SEO audit to correct possible errors.

On-Page SEO for Prestashop

On-Page SEO refers to the optimizations we make within our e-commerce.

Before we start, we must analyze the competition in the sector and the target audience we aim to reach.

Competition and Audience Analysis

Knowing the profile of your ideal customer (buyer persona) and their interests will help you better define and plan SEO strategies.

And to understand them better, by listening and communicating with them to offer the ideal products and content.

Regarding the competition, you should analyze what SEO strategies they are implementing. For this, you have AI tools for SEO.

Keyword Analysis for E-commerce

This is the process of searching for relevant keywords for your e-commerce. This keyword analysis should be done before any other action, as it will determine the other SEO strategies.

You must analyze and identify what keywords are used to search for the products you want to rank and sell.

Website Architecture

Based on this initial analysis and the needs of the target audience, we will design the architecture (structure) of the online store in Prestashop.

We must prioritize usability and ease of navigation for the user.

To do this, we need to define different categories to include the products.

The goal should be to facilitate search engines in crawling and indexing the website, making it easy for users to navigate from one page to another to find what they are looking for.

We should prioritize accessibility to the most profitable and priority products and enhance the internal linking between the different sections of the online store.

Content for Categories and Product Descriptions

Once we have the keywords and the structure of our e-commerce, we will create content to target the searches that interest us.

This content can be created for the texts of your online store, for the texts of each category, in the product descriptions, and for the blog.

Text that must be well written, without spelling mistakes, with bold text, including images and videos that complement it.

Include titles and subtitles with H1 tags for the header and H2, H3 for subtopics. This makes Google understand your online store better and can display it, which will help with SEO for your Prestashop.

If we want to carry out effective SEO and rank high, we need to generate rich content at the semantic level.

It is advisable to write the text for each category as if it were an article, that is, about 1000 words on average.

Meta Title and Meta Description

And here we come to an important part, as both the title and description are key in SEO for Prestashop.

In the meta title you should include the main keyword you want to rank for, as far left as possible. And the length should be between 50 and 65 characters.

And in the meta description (as its name suggests) add a text that describes what the page contains (product or category). It should grab attention to improve conversion (CTR - Click Through Rate). And it should be 120-160 characters long.

Once you have logged in and are in the Prestashop back office, access both title and description from the dashboard at:

“Configuration” > “Traffic & SEO”.

And there you can add all the information corresponding to the SEO meta tags.

You will see the option:

– Meta title (page title): Put the name of the page and it also allows you to select the language.

– Meta description, briefly describe what your online store is about.

Click the Save button.

Interlinking

Working on internal linking helps on one hand the Google spider to navigate within the online store and on the other hand helps the user find what they are looking for and thus, stay longer within the e-commerce.

Prestashop has several modules to improve the interlinking of your e-commerce. Automatically, you can link hundreds of links to reinforce the relevance of the content.

One of the modules with the best reviews (not free) that you can try is: SEO Internal Linking PRO.

Images and Videos

You should not overlook the SEO optimization of the images you upload to Prestashop. Supported image formats include jpg, png, gif, webp.. and you should reduce the file size of the images as much as possible, but without losing resolution.

And the compatible video format is mp4; although it is recommended to use an external service like YouTube, to avoid consuming too many resources and reserve them for visits, which is the most important.

Regarding the ALT attribute of images, it is also fundamental in SEO optimization for Prestashop. Since Google interprets the theme of the image through the text of the image.

With the Prestashop Image Optimizer Module and converter to Webp, you can improve the quality of images and reduce their size.

Blog and Search Intent

Google values search intent as an SEO factor. So much so that if our online store shows the visitor what they are looking for; they understand that our content is good and will display it in the results, increasingly higher.

This is where the blog comes into play; Through the writing of articles, we can target informational search intents.

And within the blog articles, link the products from the store, using transactional keywords (“buy”, “offer”, “cheap prices”...).

The user, after being informed, is willing to make a purchase.

Blog in Prestashop to Achieve Sales

For example:

If I search on Google “niacinamide,” which is a word I have heard, but I have no idea what it is and what it is for.

A blog article from an online cosmetics store appears, explaining all the advantages of the product for the skin.

If I keep reading a little further down, an image of the cream appears with a link to the online store, for me to buy.

This will attract interested visitors to our website and in turn, we will direct them to the online store so they may end up buying our products.

Off-Page SEO

We have seen the aspects of On-Page SEO that you should consider, such as keyword analysis and search intents, internal linking, and other optimizations.

And now we will see link building as the main factor of Off-page SEO. It refers to actions taken outside the page, including link building.

Link Building for Prestashop

For an online store to rank, it needs links, that’s a fact. Obtaining quality links increases domain authority, which is one of the SEO ranking factors that Google values the most.

Buying quality links is one of the most effective strategies to obtain links. This will bring you benefits such as: increased organic traffic to your e-commerce, authority, and online reputation.

At Unancor we have a tool, which is more than a tool, it is a weapon to make “Match” with your ideal media.

You can find links related to your theme in over 10,000 media outlets local, national, and international:

• You just need to register and set up your project.
• Choose from the blogs and media that are most aligned with your target audience.
• Provide the article details and that’s it. You can rely on our team of specialized writers or you can send the already written articles for publication.

And even easier; to save you time and headaches, you can count on our tailored service. Where a SEO professional will study your project and create a 100% personalized strategy.

!Schedule an appointment with our SEO master!

Mentions on Relevant Sites

Getting mentions on other relevant websites can significantly increase the visibility and authority of your online store.

You can contact bloggers and influencers in the sector to collaborate.

Also by participating as a guest in blogs “guest post” related to your market niche.

Technical SEO

Regarding technical aspects within the page, you should improve loading speed, make your website compatible with all devices, and resolve issues of duplicate content, among others. If you work on all these SEO aspects in your online store, you will increase traffic.

We also remind you that you should choose a good hosting that has the capacity to store all the products and images of your online store.

Sitemap

Once you have uploaded the products and everything is configured, it is time to create a sitemap for Google to crawl and position your online store in search results.

From the PrestaShop marketplace (back office), you have several options available. You will find SEO modules for Prestashop that will allow you to generate a sitemap. Choose the one that is most suitable for your project.

You would have the PrestaShop sitemap created, now you need to submit it to Google. It’s very easy, through your Search Console account:

• In the side menu, click on “Sitemaps”.
• And in the new tab that appears, add the URL of the sitemap provided by the Prestashop plugin.

This way you will improve the SEO of your e-commerce.

Use of Cache

Browser cache allows temporarily store resources from your e-commerce on the user's device, which allows pages to load quickly and improves loading speed.

You can enable caching in the settings tab.

SEO-Friendly URLs in Prestashop

An SEO-friendly URL is easier to understand for both search engines and users, as it shows the context of the page just by reading its address.

They should not have a length greater than 115 characters and must include the keyword to rank.

And should not contain parameters or strange characters, such as “ñ, accents,…”

Something to be very careful about in e-commerce is changing the URL. It is not recommended for the SEO of your Prestashop as it generates broken links (error 404).

You can perform a 301 redirect to tell Google that this URL will no longer be active and inform it of the “new” one.

There are also SEO modules to handle redirects.

Prestashop Marketplace

Prestashop works with modules, just like WordPress works with plugins. In the Prestashop Marketplace, you will find all the modules, themes (templates) to customize your store.

You also have options for support and free official training in “Prestashop Academy” with tutorials designed by e-commerce specialists, so you can benefit from their experience.

Template for Prestashop ClassicBlinders

ClassicBlinders is one of the best free templates for Prestashop that exists and… Watch out, it’s made in Andalucía! From the Almeria-based company SEOBlinders, this SEO monster for e-commerce.

Thanks to it, you will be able to optimize the On-Page SEO of your store and technical SEO.

Just by installing the theme, you will solve: data marking, internal link issues, crawl budget optimization, semantic problems (text blocks, heading structure…).

It improves the loading speed, thanks to the optimized code; so that your online store works much faster than the competition.

In terms of crawling and indexing, the template uses a module called “DB Obfuscator”. With it, all links in the customer area such as “My orders, coupons…” are encrypted to prevent loss of authority.

It can be customized with corporate colors and fonts. And they have good support in case you have any problems or suggestions.

SEO Optimizer Module

This SEO module for Prestashop allows you to automatically configure the sitemaps for both categories and product pages… among other functions:

• You will be able to automatically add the meta title and meta description of the product and category pages.
• Manage the robots.txt file to indicate to Google which URLs of your online store it can access.
• Manage 301 redirects.
• Manage link attributes (follow, nofollow..).
• It also offers suggestions for new keywords.
• And allows you to automatically add internal links.
• Supports multilingual sites for store versions in different languages.

As you can see, it is a very comprehensive SEO tool for Prestashop.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Prestashop in SEO

As we said at the beginning, Prestashop is open-source software that:

• Is completely free.
• With which you can create an e-commerce.
• Offers themes and templates that you can customize.
• Has an advantage over other CMS as it can link to the physical store's POS, to manage orders, warehouse stocks, in short, to manage the business more easily.
• You can implement SEO modules to optimize your Prestashop.

However, it has some disadvantages when it comes to working on SEO.

• It is not as powerful as other CMS in this aspect, such as WordPress, but with the SEO modules for Prestashop, you can achieve notable optimization.
• SEO cannibalization: It does not allow the implementation of canonical tags to avoid duplicate content, for example, in products with multiple sizes or colors.

You can solve this with a module, such as Canonical SEO, or by hiring a programmer.

The truth is that Prestashop should allow this without having to use any type of module.

Conclusions:

We hope this article has been useful to you, whether you have an online store and want to position it, or if you are considering creating it from scratch and optimizing it for SEO for Prestashop.

You have a demo of the tool, available if you want to see the back office and check how everything works.

In conclusion: a good keyword and competition analysis, well-structured content that addresses the search intent, combined with optimization of technical SEO aspects, such as sitemap, loading speed… will take your e-commerce to the top of Google.

Do you think there is something we haven’t mentioned? We look forward to your comments!