Search Engine Optimization
Introduction
Search Engine Optimization, abbreviated as SEO, is the process of making a website show up on web search results. A website needs to be optimized continuously for it to appear in the organic rankings of a search engine, such as Google. The better the quality of a website, the higher the ranking.
In this document, you will learn about the following SEO options
Robots.txt
Search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and many more use crawlers (a program or script) to find web pages that are new, old, and modified. These crawlers read the content of the pages and accordingly create entries for the search engine index. Robots.txt is a file that instructs the crawlers which resources to read, and which ones to ignore.
A typical robots.txt looks like this:
Case 1: If you want all the crawlers to visit all the resources on your website.
User-agent: *
Allow: /
Case 2: If you want only one crawler (say Googlebot) to visit all the resources.
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /
Case 3: If you don't want a specific crawler (say LinkedInBot) to visit a specific resource (say /photos/).
User-agent: LinkedInBot
Disallow: /photos/
Case 4: If you don't want crawlers to access any resource.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
Recommended Sample Code
This is the recommended Robots.txt content for your website.
User-agent: *
Disallow: /dashboard/
Disallow: /order/
Disallow: /address_book/
Disallow: /return/
Disallow: /wishlist/
Disallow: /cart/
Disallow: /checkout/
Disallow: /thankyou/
Sitemap: https://www.yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml
User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow:
User-agent: Googlebot-image
Disallow:
You can specify permissions (allow/disallow) for more than one user-agent (crawler) in the robots.txt file.
Custom Tags
You can create tags that describe the content of a page. Unlike other tags, the custom tags appear only in the source code of the web page. For example, Facebook seeks a domain verification before linking ads to your website. It provides a custom tag to add within the <head> section of your page's source code. For doing this, you can refer the below steps.
- Click Add New Meta Tag.
- Enter any name and paste the tag provided by Facebook.
- Click Save
Similarly, you can add custom tags to specify the character set, SEO keywords, and many more.
Click here to learn how you can use custom meta tags to get your site verified by Google.
Application Details
In Fynd Platform, you can add a title and description within Application Details. Search engines will show the meta title and meta description of your website when people search for your website.
- Meta title
Whether a user clicks your website or not, depends on how you have constructed the title of your website. Therefore, it should be written by keeping the user's perspective in mind. You can generate the meta title using AI by clicking on the generate or generate using custom keyword button.
- Meta description
Search engines may define their own meta description for your website. To avoid this, you should write a meta description that includes all the relevant keywords and the purpose of your website. You can generate the meta description using AI by clicking on the generate or generate using custom keyword button.
No matter how long the title and description is, search engines will show only upto 50-60 characters of the title, and 155-160 characters of the description in the search results. Therefore, you should consider adding the most relevant keywords in the beginning.
Self Canonical Tags
In SEO, canonical tags are used to mark or point the preferred version of a website page when there are different versions of that page accessible through different URLs. As the name suggests, a self-canonical tag is the tag that points to itself, implying that a particular page is the preferred version of itself, despite it may be accessible through different URLs.
Example, suppose you have a product page on your website that can be accessed through multiple URLs, such as:
https://pc.fyndstore.co/product/black-tapered-panthttps://pc.fyndstore.co/category/trackpants/product/black-tapered-panthttps://pc.fyndstore.co/product/black-tapered-pant?source=google
Upon enabling self-canonical tags as shown below, a canonical tag will be added to HTML code of that page (Refer Figure 7). It gives suggestion to search engines that the page at https://pc.fyndstore.co/product/black-tapered-pant is the preferred version, although it may be accessible through different URLs.
Learn more about Canonical Tags.
Sitemap
A sitemap is a structured file that lists all the important pages of a website, ensuring that search engines can find and crawl them efficiently. Search engines like Google primarily discover web pages through links. By providing a sitemap file in XML format, webmasters assist search engines in better understanding the site structure. This can improve crawling accuracy and speed, enhancing the website's search engine visibility and indexing.
Create a Custom Sitemap
Do the following steps to create a custom sitemap:
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In the left pane, navigate to the Sales Channel section and click on it.
Figure 8: Sales Channel Setting
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Navigate to Settings → SEO → Sitemap.
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In the upper-right side of the window, ensure that the Sitemaps Enabled toggle is enabled. This will activate the default sitemap functionality.
Figure 9: Sitemap
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In the Sitemap XML Editor, enter content in the XML format. Content added in the custom sitemap will be integrated into the default sitemap and will not replace your default sitemap.
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:news="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-news/0.9"
xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
xmlns:mobile="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-mobile/1.0"
xmlns:image="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-image/1.1"
xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
<url>
<loc>https://ajay-test.fynd.io/collection/collection-1</loc>
<changefreq>never</changefreq>
<priority>0.5</priority>
</url>
</urlset>
Refer to the Sitemap for detailed guidelines on effective writing steps.
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- Click Save to update your sitemap after entering all necessary information and formatting it correctly.
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Figure 11: Save Setting
NOTE: To check the content of your website's sitemap, add /sitemap.xml to your website's domain (for example https://yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml).
The system will generate a custom sitemap named custom.sitemap.xml and index it to the main sitemap.xml. Example: https://yourdomain.com/sitemap/custom.sitemap.xml
Schema
Schema is structured data that search engines use to read and understand the content on your page. It allows the merchant to use JSON-LD schema at the application level to improve search results and visibility. JSON-LD is an on-page markup that helps Google and other crawlers understand the content of your web page. It consists of keys and values, making it easier for search engines to interpret and present your page in search results. By using the JSON-LD, you can enhance search results and visibility.
Create a Schema
Do the following steps to create a Schema:
- In the left pane, navigate to the Sales Channel section and click on it.
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Navigate to Settings → SEO → Schema.
Figure 14: Schema
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Click Create to make a new schema or select the existing schema from the list to modify it.
Figure 15: Create Schema
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Select the page from the dropdown where you want to create a schema. A schema will be created separately for every page. For example, we have selected Product. So, the Schema will be generated for the Product page only. The other pages will contain the default Schema value.
Figure 16: Select Page
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In the Details section on the right, enter a Title and Description for the schema. It defines the schema's purpose and content at a glance.
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In the provided editors, enter content in JSON format. The Edit Schema page contains three editors, they are:
- Schema: The Schema editor supports JSON and Mustache templates and is pre-populated with schemas for all listed storefront pages. You can customize these as needed to match your specific requirements.
- Example JSON: This editor contains sample JSON data that helps you preview the final schema. This is useful for ensuring your schema is correctly structured before implementation.
- Preview: The Preview editor allows you to visualize the JSON-LD schema that will appear once implemented. This is based on the data provided in both the Schema and Example JSON editors. Refer to Product Schema to learn more about Schema and JSON-LD. Refer to Introduction to Mustache to learn more about Mustache.
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Click Save.
Check the Created Schema
You can refer to any of the procedures given below and check the Schema that you have created:
Google’s Rich Results Test
It can be used to validate your schema markup and see if it is eligible for rich results in search. Do the following steps to check or validate a schema that you have created:
- Go to the Rich Results Test.
- Enter the URL of your created page or paste your schema markup code.
- Click Test URL if you have entered the page URL. OR Click Test Code if you have pasted the Schema markup code.
- Review the results. The tool will show you if your schema is valid and if it can generate rich results. It will also highlight any errors or warnings.
Schema Markup Validator
The Schema Markup Validator is a tool to check the correctness of your schema. Do the following steps to check or validate a schema that you have created:
- Go to the Schema Markup Validator.
- Enter the URL of your created page or paste your schema markup code.
- Click RUN TEST.
- Review the validation results for any errors or suggestions.
Other SEO Options
Click the following links to know more about: