PrestaShop SEO: How to Boost Rankings in 2023

It's important to improve your store's PrestaShop SEO (PrestaShop Search Engine Optimization) as ChatGPT and Google Bard, the new generation of search engines, are available. The old ways to optimize SEO for online stores (PrestaShop 1.7) still work, but due to artificial intelligence, new techniques will need to be updated in 2023.

The PrestaShop platform lets you build and run your online store without any hassle. But having a nice store is not the only thing that matters. You also need to find ways to draw more customers and boost your sales.

You also need to optimize your store for search engines, or SEO (Search Engine Optimization).
SEO is the process of improving your website’s visibility and relevance for the keywords that your potential customers are searching for.
SEO can help you rank higher on Google and other search engines, drive more organic traffic to your store, and ultimately grow your business.

But how do you do SEO for the PrestaShop ecommerce site? What are the best practices and tips to improve SEO that you should follow in 2023?

In this article, we will share with you some of the most effective ways to optimize SEO of your PrestaShop store.

Choose the right keywords for the product and category pages.

To make your posts and products appear regularly and be seen by users on Google, Bing or Yandex, you need to use the right words and phrases.
These are called keywords.

Both ChatGPT, Bing AI and Google Bard also use keywords to search for data before processing information from your website.
Choosing the right keywords for a product page is very important for SEO. It helps you find the right audience, provide them with relevant content, and meet their search intent.

To find the best keywords for your online store, you can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Semrush (free version), and Ubersuggest...

These tools can help you find out what keywords your competition is looking for, and what keywords have a high value and low competition.

You should aim to use long-tail keywords (keywords that consist of three or more words) because they are more specific, less competitive, and more likely to convert.

For example, instead of using “shoes” as a keyword, you can use “women’s leather shoes” or “men’s running shoes”.

Once you have a list of keywords that suit your products and categories, you should use them strategically throughout your website.

You should include them in:
The domain name
Page titles
Meta descriptions
Headings (H1-H6)
Product names
Product descriptions
Category names
Category descriptions
Image alt texts
Your URLs
However, be careful not to overuse or stuff your keywords unnaturally. This can harm your SEO performance and user experience.

You should aim to use your keywords naturally and moderately within your content for both users and Search Engine Crawlers.

A useful trick from the SEO guide tutorial for PrestaShop Search Engine optimization: Use Google Search Console to get the URL of the page that is indexed by Google for PrestaShop and find keywords with already visibility on the search engine results page.

Generate unique and engaging content for your PrestaShop Store.

Content is king when it comes to SEO. The content of the page is what draws users in, makes them stay on your pages, and persuades them to buy from you.
Creating a blog for your store is a good idea to rank on Search Engines. So, you should create unique and engaging content for every page of your blog on your PrestaShop store.

Do not forget to delete duplicate content and avoid copying content from other sources because this can lower your rankings and credibility.
Your content should be original, persuasive, useful, relevant, and informative.

It should offer value to your visitors by addressing their concerns, showing how your products can improve their lives, and helping them overcome their challenges.

You should also update your content regularly with fresh information, new products, customer reviews, videos, blog posts, or any other content that can make your site more useful.

These on-page SEO techniques are a very helpful SEO strategy for ecommerce shops to help you to improve your SEO on this friendly platform.

To generate unique and engaging content for a PrestaShop website, you can use tools like Grammarly or Hemingway Editor.

We still regularly use these tools to verify the grammar and spelling of content written on client websites.
They are really worth it.

Optimize your PrestaShop eCommerce site's speed.

Speed is another important factor for SEO. Site speed refers to how fast your website loads on different devices and browsers.

Site speed affects both user experience and SEO ranking performance.

A store that loads faster tends to rank higher on Google Search results or other search engine results such as Bing AI, and users tend to leave stores that load too slowly.

To optimize your site speed for PrestaShop, you can use a module such as PageSpeed Insight by PrestaSOO or GTmetrix. This module for PrestaShop or this free tool can help you measure your site speed and identify the issues that are slowing down your website.

Some of the common issues that affect site speed are:

• Large images: You should compress and resize your images before uploading them to reduce their file size and loading time. You can use tools like Kraken or Imagecompressor to optimize your images.
• Unnecessary modules: You should deactivate or uninstall any modules that you don’t need or use on your website. Modules can add extra code and requests to your website that can slow it down. In PrestaShop 8, you can disable all default modules during the installation. I think it's a very helpful option to speed up your store.
• Minify and combine CSS files: You should minify your CSS files to make them smaller and faster to use, and combine your CSS files to make them smaller and faster to use. PrestaShop has the option to help you to combine and optimize your CSS & JS files from the admin dashboard.
• Enable caching: Caching is a way to store the content of your website on a server or in a browser so that it can be sent faster to the user.
• Use a CDN: A CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a network of servers that are located around the world and provide the user with the content they want based on where they are. This can improve your site speed by reducing the distance between the user and the server. I think a CDN service like Cloudflare or Bunny is good ideals to boost your site speed.

Improve your site structure for Search Engines.

Site structure is another key element for SEO. Site structure refers to how you organize and link your pages on your website.

Site structure affects both visitors and search engines.

Users tend to find websites that are easy to understand and find what they are looking for. Google & ChatGPT indexes and crawls websites to find what they are looking for.

Want to improve your site structure for PrestaShop? You should follow these tips:

Use simple and descriptive URLs: Your URLs should be short, relevant, and readable by both users and search engines. You should avoid using numbers, symbols, or parameters that make your URLs confusing or meaningless.
You should also include your keywords in your URLs to make them more SEO-friendly.
For example, instead of using this URL:
https:// your-store/index.php?id_product=123&controller=product
you can use
https:// your-store/womens-leather-shoes

Create a logical hierarchy: Your hierarchy is how you categorize and subcategorize your pages on your website.

Your hierarchy should be logical, consistent, and intuitive for both users and search engines. You should use headings (H1-H6) to create levels of importance and relevance for your pages.

You should also limit the number of levels to three or four at most, to avoid creating too much depth or complexity.

For example,
Home > Shoes > Women’s Shoes > Leather Shoes
is a good hierarchy.
But
Home > Shoes > Women’s Shoes > Leather Shoes > Black Leather Shoes > Size 7 Black Leather Shoes
is too deep.

Pretty Fox is a PrestaShop module by PrestaSOO. This SEO module is the fastest way to improve SEO with SEO-friendly URLs.

Build clear navigation: Your navigation is how you display and link your pages on your ecommerce store.
Your navigation should be accessible from every page, user-friendly, and clear.

You might want to use menus, breadcrumbs, sitemaps, and internal links to create a smooth navigation experience for both users and search engines.

For instance, you can use a menu bar at the top of your website with links to your main categories, a sitemap at the footer of your website with links to all your pages, and internal links within your content with anchor texts that describe what they are linking to.

Always improve SEO for your PrestaShop store.

SEO is a vital part of any e-commerce business that wants to succeed online.

SEO can help you improve the PrestaShop site's visibility and relevance for your target keywords, increase your sales and revenue, and drive more organic traffic.

But we all know that SEO optimization is not a single thing.

SEO is an ongoing process that requires constant monitoring, testing, and optimization.
With the rise of artificial intelligence-based search engines, you must stay up-to-date with the latest SEO best practices and trends to get a good position in new style search results and stay ahead of the competition on the first page of Google.

Do not forget to follow these SEO tips in this article on PrestaShop SEO to optimize your PrestaShop site for SEO in 2023 and beyond.