5 Tips to Improve SEO for Your OpenCart store

OpenCart is an excellent online store software that combines configuration flexibility, well-made OpenCart themes and a relatively good dataa security. And all this available for free, because it’s an OpenSource software. In this article, we present 5 tips for improving OpenCart SEO so that your online store can rank higher on Google, attracting customers and improving sales. Properly done SEO is extremely important for your online store, as you can get hundreds to thousands customers coming from Google, depending on your niche.

5. Optimize the URL structure

URLs are simply the addresses displayed in the browser bar. They should look “friendly” which means visitors should be able clearly tell what page they are on by looking at the address bar.

yourfantasticstore.com/wooden-charirs

is certainly better than:

yourfantasticstore.com/jert5=43/product.php?art=44333

– and it also matters to Google, being one of the many factors that evaluate your page in SERPs.

To switch to friendly links, change the setting in the System> Settings> Edit> Server> Set the SEO URL’s admin panel

and then make a change to the .htaccess.txt file by removing the “.txt” ending in the file name in the root directory. Remember to make a copy of this file before any changes.

4. Avoid duplicate content

Duplicate content, is a problem faced by many online store owners. If possible, give each product an individual description. If your product page is lacking any description or it’s description copy-pasted from competing websites, you’re asking for penalties from Google that reduce the value of the website in search results, driving it down. Google likes fresh and original content and ranks  such pages higher.

Eliminating duplicate content is associated with the extra work of writing descriptions, but it is worth the effort – this way you will overtake competitive stores, especially if your store operates in an industry with a similar range,

3. Create a robots.txt file and remove unnecessary pages

The robots.txt file will allow you to send Google directives not to index specific types of pages, removing unwanted parts of the online store that should not appear in search results. In this way, you can remove the store’s admin panel (the entire admin directory), which also improves security, because search engine bots will no longer have access to vulnerable parts of your site.

This tip, of course, also applies to other store systems – creating this file helps with any other type of site.

2. Use an OpenCart template with clean code

Ready-made OpenCart themes speed up the building the online store, but remember that not all of them will not SEO rank equally well.

Before picking a store template, first watch the demo and see how such a theme is built, checking whether it has errors that could have negative SEO impact. For example, theme can force its own directory structure. It’s also better to choose a new template than an old one, because themes created five years ago or older are made in obsolete technologies and slow down the store, they render incorrectly in smartphones and do not use the full capabilities of today’s browsers.

1. Use the full functionality of Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools

The OpenCart store is easy to integrate with Google Analytics, and after adding a page identification tag, you can also add Google Webmaster tools without additional verification.

Both of these tools have extensive SEO sections, indicating pages and keywords that bring you customers. This analysis will also help you identify what customers are most interested in, and even which products are too expensive for them and where they leave the site.

OpenCart uses full Google Analytics e-commerce capabilities, allowing you to transfer sales data to this tool, so you can check the effectiveness of advertising, for example how many dollars are generated from each click on Google Ads, establishing the ROI rating of your advertising campaign.

Wishing you highest SERP positions and big sales in your OpenCart store!