Mastering Technical SEO for PrestaShop: Sitemaps and Robots.txt

Whether you are a PrestaShop merchant or running a store on any other platform, you will be aware of the importance of keywords, product descriptions, and backlinks. Yeah, they all come under the basic or on-page SEO, but you also need to look into the technical SEO of your store, which will certainly help you get amazing results as well.

Technical SEO is the process of creating a website that is accessible and easily crawled, indexed, and ranked by search engines. Think of it as the plumbing inner workings of your eCommerce site, without search engines being able to navigate your store correctly.

The two tools in your technical SEO kit that are most critical? Sitemaps and robots. txt files. Sitemaps are like a roadmap, leading search engines to every nook and cranny of your catalog. Robots. txt files, however, work like traffic cops, instructing search engines which pages to visit and which not to visit.

In this blog post, we’re going to break down sitemaps and robots.txt for PrestaShop, what their correct configuration should be, and how to avoid some common technical SEO mistakes.

Why Sitemaps and Robots.txt Matter

Search engines like Google use crawlers to index and find the content. If they can’t locate your pages, those products will not show up in search results, no matter how optimized your titles and descriptions may be.

Sitemaps - Your Store’s Roadmap

A sitemap is an XML file that shows the links of your site and is organized in a hierarchical or textual way, and it contains the structure of the website to be searched by the bots. In PrestaShop, it’s going to be your products, categories, CMS pages, and, sometimes, images. It serves as a roadmap when search engines receive the code> which:

• Ensure that every product, including a deep catalog, can be indexed.
• The data is in a different language version of your pages; you need to instruct crawlers to go to the correct ones.
• With Google or any other search engine, any time you add new products or update categories, they appear more quickly in the results.

So without a sitemap, search engines could miss many pages, or need to crawl through them very slowly.

Your Store’s Traffic Controller

This is just a plain text file in the root of your website. It is an instruction for search engines as to which pieces of content should be scanned and which should be ignored. 

For example:

• If you want to have crawlers not respect a bunch of duplicate filter URLs (? sort=price) or checkout pages.
• Blocking such irrelevant or duplicate content will also save your crawl budget, which means that Google can crawl the pages that actually count.

Combined Impact

Together, sitemaps and robots.txt ensure that:

• Indexation of relevant pages is rapid.
• Duplicate or thin pages are not a drain on your SEO authority.
• Search engines are more efficient with their time on your site.
• Technical files are nicely implemented as they are one of the main reasons why e-commerce stores don’t rank, even if their on-page SEO is pretty solid.

Configuring Sitemaps in PrestaShop

PrestaShop has a built-in functionality for sitemap, although it's a little bit limited, particularly if you have a large or multilingual shop. You can do it yourself, or you can use a specialized SEO plugin. Here’s how you can do it:

Manual Sitemap Setup

A sitemap can be generated in PrestaShop with its built-in module. This will output a list of links that you can add to Google Search Console. Although that works, it’s limited because:

• It might not automatically refresh when you add new products to your store.
• Multilingual support is not very effective.
• Indexing of images (especially on CDN-hosted files) isn't always present.

Thus, manual setup is okay for the very small store, but it can be laborious as your catalog grows.

SEO Module Sitemap Generator Script

A better approach is to employ an SEO module having a sitemap generator, such as PrestaShop SEO Module by FME Modules.

This tool gives even more:

Auto-Updates

• Sitemaps auto-update when new products, categories, or CMS pages are created.
• No longer have to manually reproduce files.

Multilingual Support

• Creates a separate site map for each language.
• Assists Google in indexing your store properly in translated languages.

Image Sitemaps with CDN Support

• Comes with product photos, which may show up in Google Images.
• Works with external CDNs, so images hosted elsewhere will be indexed.
• Editable Priorities and Frequencies
• Prioritize categories and best-selling products.
• Define “update frequency” (daily, weekly, monthly) to guide crawlers.
• Integration with Google Search Console

For better Prestashop SEO, manually submit your site by sitemap using the direct link to your sitemap for it to index faster!

Example:

We've also prepared sitemap files for a multilingual PrestaShop fashion shop, in English, French, and Spanish. Product URLs and images of all languages are indexed so that the international SEO is taken care of.

When you automate the process, you guarantee search engines always have a current roadmap of your store, diverging entirely in a fast-paced industry like e-commerce.

Optimizing Robots.txt for PrestaShop

Just like sitemaps, robots. txt requires a foolproof configuration to avoid making indexing mistakes.

Auto-Generating Robots.txt

PrestaShop generates a basic robots.txt file when you install it. However, this file is not very sensitive to the actual data and often requires some tweaking. For instance, it won’t allow you to block duplicate filter URLs, layered navigation, or internal search results.

Customizing Robots.txt with an SEO Module

It is easier with a module. Here’s what the PrestaShop SEO Module

Pre-Built Rules

• Automatically block irrelevant URLs such as /cart, /checkout, or session IDs
• Blocks showing filters (e.g., filter colour=red) to prevent duplicate content.

Custom Directives

• Custom rules can be added to block particular directories or query parameters.
• Example: Disallow: /search prevents crawl of internal search result pages.

Allow Important Assets

• Make CSS and JS files crawlable. They may not display properly.

Testing and Validation

• How Googlebot will see your robots.txt files. Some best modules provide a "test" mode so you can see how Googlebot would interpret your robots following your changes. txt.
• This prevents important content from being falsely blocked.

Example Robots.txt Rules

• User-agent: *
• Disallow: /cart
• Disallow: /checkout
• Disallow: /search
• Allow: /img
• Sitemap: https://mystore.com/sitemap.xml

A poorly configured robots.txt can destroy SEO. You don’t want to accidentally block /category or /product pages, which could remove your whole store from Google’s index. Using a module is one way to avoid this.

Common Technical SEO Mistakes and Some Fixes

Even with sitemaps and robots.txt stored where they should be, PrestaShop stores are still plagued by technical SEO errors. Some of the common problems and how to resolve them with an SEO module are as follows:

1. Broken Links

Issue:  Users landing on old product URLs that generate 404s is a poor UX, and it’s a waste of link equity.

Fix:  Use 301 redirects. The SEO feature comes with the possibility to bulk-redirect old URLs to new URLs.

2. Duplicate URLs

Problem: PrestaShop creates multiple URLs for the same product, such as with and without an ID, etc.)

Fix: Set up a canonical tag and remove IDs through the module’s clean URL functionality.

3. Unindexed Images

Issue:  You were using images hosted from third-party CDNs.

Fix:  Create image sitemaps with CDN support for it to be properly indexed.

4. Wasted Crawl Budget

Issue:  Crawlers can get “stuck” crawling faceted navigation (? sort=price,? size=large).

Fix:  Use robots. txt settings if the latter has been set to prevent unneeded inputs.

5. Missing Sitemap Submissions

Challenge: Retailers neglect to send sitemaps to Google Search Console.

Fix:  Automate submissions from your module dashboard.

By fixing these mistakes, you can greatly improve your crawl efficiency and make sure your most profitable products and categories are getting the attention they deserve.

Take Away

Technical SEO may not sound fancy, but it’s very necessary when it comes to PrestaShop. Sitemaps direct search engines to the correct pages, and robots.txt keeps them from wasting time on duplicates or irrelevant content. As a whole, they make up the foundation of a healthy, crawlable, and indexable online store.

PrestaShop by itself provides quite simple functionality, but having the PrestaShop SEO Module from FME Modules and their automation makes it much more manageable. Multilingual sitemaps for flexible robots. txt regulation, these answers are also time savers, error reducers, and maximum visibility creators.