Optimizing URLs is one of the most crucial, yet often overlooked, aspects of improving your website’s SEO. When it comes to PrestaShop, using PrestaShop friendly URLs can make a significant difference in search rankings, user experience, and overall site performance. A clean, keyword-rich URL structure helps both search engines and users better understand the content of your site, leading to increased visibility and traffic.
In this blog, we’ll guide you through 7 proven steps to effectively optimize PrestaShop friendly URLs and boost your store’s SEO.
1. Enable Friendly URLs in PrestaShop
The first step to optimizing your store’s URLs is to enable the friendly URL option in PrestaShop. By default, PrestaShop creates URLs that include unnecessary characters or ID numbers, which are not ideal for SEO. Enabling friendly URLs will remove these characters and give you clean, descriptive URLs.
How to enable friendly URLs:
- Go to your PrestaShop back office.
- Navigate to “Shop Parameters” > “Traffic & SEO.”
- Under the “Set up URLs” section, toggle “Friendly URL” to “Yes.”
- Click “Save” to apply the changes.
This simple step instantly cleans up your URLs, making them easier for search engines to crawl and for users to understand.
2. Remove URL IDs for Cleaner Links
While enabling friendly URLs is a great start, your URLs may still include ID numbers that are unnecessary and potentially harmful to your SEO efforts. PrestaShop allows you to remove these ID numbers for a more streamlined URL structure.
Removing IDs not only makes your URLs look cleaner but also helps search engines better index your pages.
How to remove IDs:
- Use a module such as “Remove IDs” to get rid of the ID numbers in product and category URLs.
- Alternatively, manually edit your URLs to ensure they don’t include any numbers.
Clean, simple URLs help boost your SEO rankings by making your site more user-friendly and easier to navigate.
3. Use Keyword-Rich URLs
A key part of optimizing your PrestaShop friendly URL setup is ensuring your URLs include relevant keywords. Keywords help search engines understand the content of your page, and they can also attract users by signaling that your page contains what they’re looking for.
For example, if you’re selling organic skincare products, a URL like “www.example.com/organic-skincare-lotion” is far more effective for SEO than “www.example.com/product?id=123.”
Best practices for keyword-rich URLs:
- Keep URLs concise and to the point.
- Avoid keyword stuffing—one or two relevant keywords are enough.
- Ensure the URL reflects the content of the page.
4. Create Custom URLs for Important Pages
While PrestaShop automatically generates URLs for your products and categories, it’s important to customize URLs for your most important pages, such as your homepage, product pages, and category pages.
Custom URLs allow you to include the exact keywords and phrases you want to rank for, and they also give you more control over how search engines interpret your content.
How to create custom URLs:
- In your PrestaShop back office, go to the “Catalog” section and select the product or category you want to edit.
- Scroll to the “SEO” tab and update the “Friendly URL” field.
- Save the changes.
This level of control allows you to optimize your site’s most important pages for both SEO and user experience.
5. Implement Canonical URLs
PrestaShop sites often suffer from duplicate content issues due to multiple URLs pointing to the same content. Duplicate content can confuse search engines and hurt your SEO rankings. To avoid this, implementing canonical URLs is a must.
Canonical URLs tell search engines which version of a page is the “master” version, preventing them from indexing multiple versions of the same content.
How to set canonical URLs:
- In PrestaShop, go to the product or category page you want to edit.
- Under the “SEO” tab, look for the “Canonical URL” field and enter the primary URL you want search engines to index.
This step ensures that search engines focus on indexing the correct version of your content, improving your SEO.
6. Use 301 Redirects for Changed URLs
If you ever need to change a URL for any reason, it’s important to set up a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one. This ensures that both search engines and users are directed to the correct page, without losing any SEO value from the original URL.
A 301 redirect tells search engines that the page has permanently moved, allowing them to transfer the ranking power of the old URL to the new one.
How to set up 301 redirects:
- Use a PrestaShop module like “301 Redirect Pro” to easily manage redirects.
- Alternatively, you can set up redirects manually in your site’s .htaccess file.
Failing to set up redirects for changed URLs can result in 404 errors, which can hurt your site’s SEO and user experience.
7. Regularly Audit Your URLs
Once you’ve optimized your PrestaShop friendly URLs, it’s important to regularly audit your site’s URL structure. This ensures that all your URLs are still working properly and are fully optimized for SEO.
During a URL audit, check for:
- Broken or dead links (404 errors).
- URLs that are too long or contain unnecessary characters.
- Any duplicate content or duplicate URLs.
- Opportunities to improve keyword usage in URLs.
There are several SEO tools, such as Screaming Frog or SEMrush, that can help you audit your URLs and identify any potential issues. Regular audits ensure that your site remains SEO-friendly and user-friendly over time.
Conclusion
Optimizing your PrestaShop friendly URLs is a crucial part of any successful SEO strategy. From enabling friendly URLs to using keyword-rich URLs and implementing canonical tags, these 7 steps will help you create a clean, well-structured URL system that boosts your site’s visibility and search rankings.
By making your URLs easy for both users and search engines to understand, you’ll not only improve your SEO performance but also enhance the overall user experience on your PrestaShop store. Regularly reviewing and updating your URLs will ensure that your store stays optimized and continues to drive traffic in the long run.
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