Web Development

If you have an ecommerce website, what would be your key aim? Driving more organic traffic and increasing conversions, right? You need to optimize your website for not just search engines but for users as well as search engines are making the user experience a more prominent ranking factor. Especially for an ecommerce website, there are a set of different considerations. If you are willing to move up the search rankings, we have everything you need for kickstarting your nopCommerce SEO success journey.

Optimizing your ecommerce website puts your website in front of your prospective customers based on their search intent. If you get your ecommerce SEO right, people who are looking to buy your product will find their way to your store. Unlike earlier, when the primary focus was mainly on keywords, the shift has moved to provide a great user experience. For achieving this, you need to understand the customer intent and optimize your website layout and on-page content.

If you own a nopCommerce website, here are the simple tactics for skyrocketing your sales.

1. Optimize your meta tags

Meta tags - meta title and meta description are vital aspects of on-page SEO.

Meta title tags help both the customers and search engines with the information about your nopCommerce store and the web pages. Search engines take these meta title tags as titles of the listings on the SERPs, and these are what people see and click through.

• Keep it descriptive. Describe what the page is all about. For instance, if you are on a product page, you can include product details in the titles of the product pages.
• Include relevant keywords but do not overstuff them. Also, avoid any spammy keywords otherwise you may get penalized.
• Keep it short and simple! A clear and concise title below 60 characters is the optimal way to go about it.

Meta Description tags are the small HTML snippets of code that contain information about your website. Meta description tag doesn’t provide the same information as that of the title tag, but it provides additional value. A compelling and well-written meta description can improve your click-through rate.

• It is nothing about a short description or summary of your page. It could be about your products, features, etc. Provide what information the customers would be interested to know about before they make a purchasing decision.
• The optimal size is 160 characters of meta descriptions. So keep it to the point and informative.
• Include target keywords and do not go overboard by cramming unnecessary keywords.
• Include CTAs and give your customers the reason to click through.

2. Enable SSL certificate

Search engines prefer websites that are secure and having an SSL certificate improves your security and will have a positive impact on your rankings. Having an SSL certificate ensures the utmost safety for your customers’ transactions. Today, not having an SSL certificate undermines your credibility which if there, improves your sales.

For enabling an SSL certificate on your nopCommerce store, you need to install and configure an SSL certificate for your domain. Once you have it enabled, all the login and admin pages will be directed to the secure HTTPS URL. Make sure your SSL configuration is correct so that it doesn’t become inaccessible to the users.

3. Optimize your images

Image optimization includes a gamut of things like

• SEO-friendly image file names
• Choosing the right image type
• Optimizing the size for improving page speeds
• Adding alt tags to understand the images better

Image optimization may seem to be trivial but for an ecommerce website where the customers rely only on the images and media files, they are very important in deciding your conversion rates. Image optimization also improves page load speeds and reduces the churn rate by improving your shopping experience. It can become a real deal-breaker for your customers and can have a significant impact on your search rankings.

Consider the following elements for image optimization are -

• Alt tags
• Image file names
• Image size
• Image type

Alt tags - provide a text alternative for the images. This is also one of the accessibility aspects as visually challenged people who rely on screen readers find this alt tag useful making the website more accessible. This improves the SEO as well. It also provides a better shopping experience as even if a page doesn’t load, the users can read the alt text and understand.

Image file names and types are other elements wherein the names should convey the intent of the name. Search engines should be able to understand the images and index them. The quality of the image also depends on the image type(jpg, png, gif). The quality of the PNGs apparently is better than the quality of JPEGs and GIFs. PNGs are usually the best but make sure they aren’t so heavy that they slow down your nopCommerce website.

5. Proper heading hierarchy

Headings from h1 to h6 usually define the page’s hierarchy and importance for sectioning off your nopCommerce web pages. They break up the entire page and help you to categorize your content. They improve the usability of your nopCommerce website and help both the search engines and users understand your page content better.

• The heading tag should follow the proper hierarchical order. For instance, h2 tags should be properly nested in h1 tags; h3 tags should be nested in h2; h4 should be nested in h3; and so on.
• H1 tag should define the topic of the page and ensure that you have only one h1 tag per page.
• H2 and h3 tags are used for breaking up the page and categorizing the content of the page
• H4 to h6 tags although used for the same purpose should be used only if they are necessary.
• The simpler the structure, the better it is for understanding
• All the heading tags should be relevant, logical, and clear.
• Include proper keywords without overstuffing which makes the search engines trust and doesn’t look spammy

6. Additional SEO Tips

• Do keyword research
• Maintain proper architecture
• SEO-friendly URLs
• Proper internal linking

Wind up

We hope this simple guide gives you a clear idea of how to make your search engines fall in love with your nopCommerce store.

Remember, SEO is a continuous process, not a one-time campaign. So, if you take care of your SEO fundamentals early on, most of your legwork down the road will be reduced. You can maintain consistent rankings on the search page results. Make the best use of nopCommerce Development features along with some basic SEO tips for ranking higher in the Search Engine Page Results (SERPs).

Skynet technologies always strive to remain updated to the latest SEO and digital marekting updates to keep the website or store on Google, Bing, Yahoo and another search engine approved. We have a bunch of creative and qualified internet marketing professionals having years of expertise and capability in developing the right strategy for SEO, SMO, Social Media Marketing, SEM, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Content Marketing, Google Shopping and more to hit the millions of minds!

If you need any kind of help with improving your SEO score for your nopCommerce store, click here to contact us.

It’s every business enterprise’s dream to get ranked on page 1 of Google. If you have a Sitecore website, you may also be thinking of setting your website up for SEO success. But quite often it takes a backseat while other digital marketing aspects also fall into the priority bucket. However, SEO is far more important for getting ahead in the industry and it has the potential to reap long-lasting benefits. SEO undoubtedly is the best way to drive organic traffic to your website and improve your leads and conversions.

If you’re wondering how to ensure your Sitecore website gets ranked on the top SERPs, you’re at the right place. We provide you all-in-one Sitecore SEO tips to help you win this race.

For improving your Sitecore website’s organic search ranking, implement the below SEO tips:

1. Set your Sitecore website up on Google Search Console

If you are planning to work on the SEO of your Sitecore website development, Google Search Console is probably the best SEO tool that is available for free. On Google Search Console, you can find reports that help you monitor your website’s KPIs as perceived by search engines. It also throws light on the areas of improvement, fixing issues, and errors that hamper your website’s performance. You also get to see what the search are terms the visitors usually search for to land up on your website and find out which URLs visitors access the most.

2. Create XML sitemaps

Search engines like Google may find your website hard to crawl especially if you do not have proper internal links pointing to your web pages. XML Sitemaps serve as the guiding light helping the search engines discover your pages faster by serving as a roadmap of all the URLs on your website. This makes it easy to crawl and find the relevant pages faster. There are also several Sitecore extensions for creating XML sitemaps. You can either ask your developer to build a solution that updates your sitemap, or you can rely on one of the sitemap extractors tools that does the same. Submit the extracted sitemap to Google Search Console.

Sitecore Marketplace has two modules to help you create XML sitemaps - Sitemap XML and XML Sitemap Generator.

3. Work on 404 errors and 301 redirects

404 error code is generated for a “page not found” error. Whenever a user clicks on such pages, he faces broken links, and the best way is to go for Sitecore’s internal linking feature to link to the other items. Alternatively, you can set up 301-page redirects for taking the page down. You can either add a 301 redirect URL in the content tree or ask your developer for creating a field on your page that allows a redirect URL onto the page. You can integrate a module into your Sitecore builds for redirecting pages when you delete some pages.

4. Improve your website speed

Since 2021, Google has been focusing on the user experience metrics as the new ranking signals and rolling out Google Core Web Vitals that provide insights on how your user experience is on your website. The factors include LCP that measures your website loading speed, FID measuring interactivity, CLS measuring visual stability. If your websites render slow, then the user drop-off rate would peak. The faster your page loads, the better the conversion rates! Focus on finding ways to improve your web load speed like

• lazy loading
• Optimizing images
• Improve slow server response time
• Hide certain sections until the first load happens
• Configure a CDN for properly caching media and CSS
• Implement ‘read more’ buttons on pages

5. Focus on page titles and meta descriptions

Page titles and meta descriptions that are part of on-page SEO helps not only the users but also the search engines of what your page is all about. With empty or irrelevant content, Google considers this as low-quality. Also, delete the duplicate page titles and help search engines prioritize the relevant ones in the search results. Also, keep them short and appealing to the users to improve the click-through rates.

• Keep it unique and concise
• Include important keywords
• Add descriptive texts in the title tag

Recommended Sitecore configuration -

You can configure a base template such that each page can inherit three editable fields that can be customized.

1. Browser title for HTML document
2. Navigation title for rendering purposes
3. Page title using the H1 tag

A Sitecore custom validator can check the page title, meta description, browser title and make sure that they are unique to the page and the title length is less than 65 to 70 characters.

Meta description, as well know, is the short summary of your website content that lets the search engines get the gist of it. Search engines use this to display your page description in the search display results. This description helps the users also understand what your page is all about and encourages them to click through the page. Missing or irrelevant meta descriptions are unappealing to users and even search engines do not reward such pages.

• Provide unique and relevant meta descriptions
• Avoid duplicates
• Keep it within the short character limits for the SERPs

6. SEO-friendly URL Structure

The URLs should be SEO-friendly and no unnecessary spaces, or characters that put off the users from clicking. Do not clutter the URLs as it can be visually less appealing, and it lowers the click-through rates. Focus on building links that contain hyphens and no spaces or underscores. You can ask your developers for redirecting all the users with special characters or incorrect spaces to the proper URL versions. Ensure you maintain uniform and consistent URL configuration. Sitecore usually adds .aspx at the end of the URL by default and the module removes it for ensuring uniform URLs. Include proper keywords. Sitecore uses item names and tree structures for building your URL by default within the information architecture.

7. Use the h1 tag for Page titles

You can use the h1 tag on your Sitecore website’s pages as this helps your website pages rank better in the search results. These h1 tags improve the SEO as search engines and your users can easily understand what your page content is all about. You can include the following practices while using h1 tags -

• Stick to only one h1 tag per page. Don’t go for multiple h1 tags as it hampers your SEO score.
• Don’t leave your h1 tag empty or missing. If you miss out on this h1 tag, it breaks your page’s hierarchy which isn’t good for your SEO. h1 tags are important and help you to define the page topic for search engines and users.
• No duplicate title tags! If your page title is the same as the h1 tag, it is like a lost opportunity for incorporating relevant keywords for your page. So provide different content in your page title and h1 tags.

8. Additional tips

• Ensure cross-device compatibility & cross-browser compatibility
• Create compelling content
• Use canonical URLs where necessary and avoid duplicate content
• Use relevant keywords
• Include optimized media files
• Include relevant internal and external links
• Add schema markup for attracting your visitors
• Add alt texts to your images

Wind up

By following the above tips, you leave no stone unturned to take your Sitecore website content to the top pages of search results and rank higher. As a Leading SEO Service Company in USA, we also offer SEO audit services as well as we perform a complete SEO analysis of your website - technical, on-page, affiliate marketing, email marketing, google shopping off-page optimization, backlink analysis for identifying any gaps. We also design and build Sitecore websites by incorporating the best Ecommerce Website SEO practices. Get in touch with us to know more.

Get a quick quote for SEO Audit!

Structured data allows search engines and other algorithms for understanding your web pages and their information better. When you use this structured data on your content or website pages, you would see a great improvement in your search engine results. It also makes search and extracting data easier which is a big boost to business’ marketing efforts.

What is Structured Data?

Structured data is a data format that helps search engines to understand the content of your website easily and in an organized manner. It allows the website owners to let the search engines easily understand the content type, extract the information, and serve better to the users in a way that enhances the user experience.

For instance, by tagging the different content on your page, you can let the search engines understand whether your pages have pricing, phone numbers, products, ratings, or any other information. This makes it easier for the search engines to deliver accurate search results to the users thereby, improving the search engine rankings and also click-through rates.

To make things clear, structured data is similar to meta description in HTML. This is also a form of metadata that is not directly seen by the site visitors. It is seen only by search engines for understanding what images and content are about. For instance, structured data could be product name, review, ratings, images, and content. Search engines don’t have to rely on any algorithms to know something about the products. Structured data lets the search engines know that it is a product image.

How is Structured Data important for SEO?

Structured data may not be listed as one of the prominent Search engine optimization tips but it let the search engines understand what your website content is all about. It helps in deciding when and where your website should rank in the search results. Based on the type of Structured data included information about your website will be displayed on the search engine results. It gives a confirmation to the search engines whether your website has the requisite information.

SEO Structured Data Benefits

Improve your search rankings - When your website lands up in the search engine results, the chances of users clicking on the link and visiting your website would be enhanced. If it has relevant and accurate information then the user stays for a long time. The longer the user spends on your website, the better your search rankings will breakings be in the long run.

Get listed in rich snippets - When a user enters a query, search engines like Google usually provides answers through rich snippets. This would be usually above the search engine results. In case, Google pulls information from your website for this featured snippet, then you are increasing the chances of your click-through rate. Google trusted your website as it felt your website has the relevant and useful content that the user is searching for. This also impacts the user behaviour as they tend to click on this featured snippet instead of the search results.

Better User experience - The aforementioned featured snippet helps better the user experience by providing the end-users with some valuable and insightful information about your website. Google uses this Structured data and fetches the most relevant and value-added content pages to the users which makes their experience a better one. Users’ decision-making also improves when they have a great user experience. With our UI/UX web design service, we extensively analyse both the users’ behaviour and the core features of the system to allow the accurate rendering of all the visual and functional aspects.

Get into Google’s Knowledge graph - We all know about Google’s knowledge graph where you, your products, and your brand become entities based on your structured data. The direct implication of finding a place in the knowledge graph is garnering brand visibility and authority. This builds trust in the users and they understand your sense of authority and expertise your brand has.

Types of Structured Data for SEO

Structured Data includes different types of markups and by adding these markups, you are letting the search engines understand the objectives of your website.

• Articles
• Events
• Videos
• People
• Products
• Organizations
• Local Businesses
• Job Postings
• FAQs
• Reviews
• Recipes
• Medical Conditions
• Breadcrumb
• Sitelinks search box
• Corporate contact

Article

This can be a news article or an investigative report or a magazine report. By using different properties of the article, you can provide a textual summary providing a brief explanation of how and why the article was created. It can include information like the reporting process, interviews, methods, data sources, etc.

Event

An event is something that is happening at a certain location and time like a festival, concert, or lecture i.e., any upcoming event. Ticketing information, rating, intended audience, duration time, language, location, are some of the things that can be displayed using the event properties.

Video

The video structured data shows valuable information in search results that help drive traffic away from your competitors. This schema makeup gives quick answers even to complex questions like how to clean the gutter or how to update the settings.

Product

The product data snippet helps your business share any vital information with your customers or buyers. When a user searches for your products, through product structured data, you can display product details like categories, pricing, reviews, ratings, availability, and more.

Sitelinks search box

With this schema markup, your business can make it easier for the users in finding what they need on your website. By providing valuable keyword data, you can add more value to your SEO strategy.

Corporate Contact

When a user searches for your contact information, this particular markup data displays some contact information like logo, social media links, contact details, etc. signalling that yours is an official and well-established company.

People

People schema markup shows a person (alive, dead, fictional). This can include person name, place of birth, organization, brand associated, contact point, awards won, family name, etc.

Organization

People look up information about any of any organization over the web. The properties include founder name, the associated logo, email address, overall ratings, alumni of the organization, geographic area, awards, brands associated, etc.

Local Business

The local business structured data will be about a physical business or a brand of an organization. The local businesses include restaurants, branch of a restaurant chain, branch of a bank, a club, a medical practice, a bowling alley, etc. The properties include currency accepted like cash, credit, local exchange trading system, cryptocurrency, etc.

Job Postings

FAQs

Review

The review structured item means the reviews of any item that the user searches on the search engines like Google. It could be a movie, store, or a restaurant.

For instance, if you search for the best places to have Thai food. You may get a list of restaurants with images, addresses, reviews, ratings, website names, costs, and all the information that would be communicated with Google through structured data. Of course, there is no guarantee that structured data helps you to achieve a prominent position on the SERPs. It only makes your web pages eligible for a better result.

Recipe

The recipe schema markup includes dietary restrictions covered by the recipe, total cooking time, method of cooking, nutritional value, the cuisine of the recipe, ingredients, quantity, method of cooking, category of the recipe, etc.

If you are looking for a walnut cake recipe, and you don’t click on the first link that appears on the search results. You may be looking for something that takes less than an hour. In the Structured data, you can provide you information like recipe’s user rating, cooking time, calorie count, etc. which helps the search engines adapt to the search results accordingly.

Medical Condition

This can be on any condition of the human body that affects the regular functioning of a person whether it is physically or mentally. It includes injuries, diseases, disabilities, syndromes, disorders, anatomy, specific drug, preventive therapy, possible treatment, possible evolutions of medical conditions, etc.

Breadcrumb

How to use Structured data?

You can use structured data on your company’s website by implementing the following steps -

Choose your web pages

First, decide on which web pages you should use your structured data on. For instance, you have an article on the best places to eat in the vicinity, you may have to use the appropriate schema using review markup data on that page. If you have a different page, say, for instance, a blog that explains the current news of the company, you may skip adding structured data to these pages.

You may have a number of web pages; you may have to find the appropriate pages to add your structured data.

Select your structured data

Choose the type of structured data you want to use. The list of structured data types is mentioned above. Depending on the requirement, you may have to choose the appropriate data type.

If you want to look up a quick recipe for Cheesecake, you may use recipe structured data to display the details like ratings, cooking time, ingredients list, number of calories, etc. If you want to find a good movie to catch over the weekend, you may rely on review structured data that displays ratings, total time, cast, etc.

Open Structured Data Markup Helper

Once you have narrowed down your pages and structured data, you can then use the Structured Data Markup helper tool. You can choose the preferred data type like product or event, add your page URL and click start tagging. You can also add any missing tags. You can download your structured data.

You can load structured data in any of the below formats -

JSON-LD - It is a JavaScript notation, and this code can be embedded into the HTML of your page. Search engines prefer this format as it can read the data even if it is dynamically inserted by an embedded widget or a JS code.

Microdata - This is an HTML specification, not a JavaScript notation.

RDFa – It is an HTML5 extension that supports linked data correspond to the user-visible content that you want to describe for search engines. RDFa is commonly used in both the head and body sections of the HTML page.

Google recommends using JSON-LD for structured data whenever possible.

Test the structured data

Test your structured data and ensure that there are no format issues. If there are any issues, Google will struggle to understand them, and this reduces the rankings. You can use a Structured Data Testing Tool. It will display the list of errors and warnings if detected. You can also preview your data to see how it appears in search results. If you notice any errors, you can go back to the Structured Data Markup Helper Tool for making changes and correct the markup. Repeat the testing process.

Wind up

Structured data is powerful but not everyone makes it a priority. But businesses looking to boost organic traffic, gain leads, and improve sales cannot ignore structured data. Remember, it is essential, and there is no rocket science. With structured data, you can optimize your website for both search engines and users. This improves your rankings in search results.

Take some time to figure it out, prioritize, and learn how to deploy it. You can also rely on some plugins that often take care of the markup. If you face any roadblocks or are not sure of where to start, As a leading SEO service company Skynet Technologies help to globalize your audience. You can avail of our SEO services and take full advantage of structured data. We have been a trusted choice for multiple companies who have been looking to improve their online presence and achieve business growth.

nopCommerce and Magento are two of the best and most popular ecommerce platforms for building ecommerce websites. With a substantial market share, magento and nopCommerce custom development both provide advanced features and robust extensions. If you want to move your website from nopCommerce to Magento, you need to understand that it is not as daunting as it seems. If you have a fair understanding of the process, you can get it done in no time. If otherwise, you can any day find a relevant company that can help you with the nopCommerce to Magento migration.

nopCommerce to Magento migration essentially involves transferring important data like products, blogs, orders, customers 7 other related entities.

In this blog post, we will let you know what entails nopCommerce to Magento migration and what process is the best. Let’s get started.

Limitations of nopCommerce

nopCommerce is an open-source ecommerce platform that comes with easy setup and customization options. It has a rich feature set including mobile commerce, single-page checkout, robust shopping cart, and other advanced features.

Along with capabilities, there are also certain challenges

• You have to host your own server
• The compulsion to use Microsoft licenses
• No support for load balancing
• Product pages are fairly limited
• Customizing invalidates newer nopCommerce upgrades
• Limited community support

If you are an SME, you can use nopCommerce development without any issues. But, as you scale or if you own a medium to large enterprise, you can start looking for other options like Magento.

Why migrate to Magento?

Magento ecommerce development is a powerful ecommerce solution and is a blessing for developers and designers. It comes in two editions - one if Community Edition and the other is Enterprise edition. Even if it is not free like nopCommerce, it offers numerous multistore capabilities, an exhaustive list of plugins and templates, SEO and marketing tools, mobile responsive, robust shipping and payment options, exceptional customization options.

• Offers high scalability options like extensions, plugins, integration capabilities. Hence suitable for retailers of all sizes.
• Easy import/export of your catalog using sophisticated catalogue management
• Easy control orders like create, approve, cancel, edit with just a click of a button
• A host of marketing tools like featured products, coupons, discounts, newsletters, etc.
• Exceptional customization options
• A plethora of analytics and reporting tools for making data-driven decisions
• Create and manage multiple stores from a single admin dashboard
• Leverage new features without having to develop them first as they are included by default.

Migration Process of nopCommerce to Magento Migration

You can implement the following steps for migrating nopCommerce to Magento. All the data including products, orders, customers, etc. can be moved easily by implementing the following steps. At the end of which, you can have a multivendor Magento marketplace. You wouldn’t even need tech skills and if done carefully, there is absolutely no risk for your current ecommerce store.

1. Create a LitExtension account, the world’s leading data migration expert. This lets you migrate your nopCommerce store and its data to Magento accurately and without the need for technical skills. If you go for a different tool like Cart2Cart, you can do the same. Tools like these can help you save time, effort, and cost.
2. Choose the nopCommerce option as the source cart type from the dropdown list. You need to enter the nopCommerce details, the nopCommerce store URL, source store’s DB connection details to set up the Connector.
3. Now, select Magento as the target cart type from the dropdown list and enter Magento store URL to set up the Connector. Download the connector and upload it to Target store’s root folder. You don’t need to go for a manual check as the Connector installation will be automatically informed.
4. Choose the data entities required to be migrated from nopCommerce to Magento. Here the language and the order status will be matched so that the corresponding details will be displayed in the new store.

Data that needs to be moved from nopCommerce to Magento

1. Products details like name, description, product id, etc
2. Product categories like name, status, URL, meta keywords, etc.
3. Manufacturer details like name
4. Customer details like name, address
5. Taxes like tax rates etc.
6. Order details like id, status, description, quantity, etc.
7. Coupons details like name, discount amount, type of discount, etc
8. Reviews
9. CMS Pages
10. Multiple languages

You can also select Additional Options for enhancing the migration possibilities.

1. Clear the data on the target store before migration
2. Create 301 redirects on Target store
3. Migrate Product and category SEO URLs
4. Strip HTML from the category, product names, and description
5. Migrate customers' passwords and more.

Before running full migration, you can go for a demo migration with limited entities. Perform the actions as that of the actual migration and see if everything is working on the expected lines. You can also skip demo migration if you do not wish to and head to full migration immediately. Complete full migration from nopCommerce to Magento and verify if your data has moved to the new store as expected.

Conclusion

Magento is loaded with numerous out-of-the-box features and everything you need to have for building a flexible store for retailers of all sizes. In case you don’t have time for conducting the migration all on your own, you can go for an experienced Magento development company that can take care of your nopCommerce store migration on your behalf. Alternatively, you can also rely on some third-party modules for the migration process.

Skynet Technologies provides All-In-One migration services of high quality at competitive costs. Our Magento migration services include not just data migration services but also incredible customization services. We offer the least turnaround time as we deploy experienced and professional migration experts on your project. We also ensure uptime of your store even during the migration process and maintains the SEO performance intact.

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