How to Fix Common PrestaShop SEO Issues with Automation

Most of the PrestaShop merchants run into the same SEO problems that impede their rankings and sales. Issues like identical URLs, site loading speed, no meta tags, and 404 errors are very common, which play an integral role in the reduction of a website’s traffic.

Experts can overcome these issues manually, but the task becomes daunting when they have to be applied to hundreds or thousands of product and category pages. This is where automated SEO comes in handy. With the help of tailored PrestaShop SEO modules, shop owners are able to recognize issues, solve them, and keep the store in top shape without constant manual work.

That being said, this interesting blog post focuses on the frequent PrestaShop SEO problems, how to find them with the help of online tools like SEMrush and built-in SEO audits, and most importantly, how to fix those and automate these solutions with the right module! So without further ado, let’s get started. 

Finding PrestaShop SEO Issues

Before you can fix problems, you need to know what they are. Store owners only take technical SEO seriously when their rankings are affected, which is, of course, too late then. Thus, you now have more tricks to make the detection easier and resolve them before they affect your website. Here are some of the tools you can use:

SEMrush, Ahrefs, and Screaming Frog

These tools will “crawl” your website, identify duplicate content, missing meta tags, slow-loading pages, broken links, and so on. For instance, SEMrush can rapidly identify duplicate URLs within product pages or inform you about non-indexed content.

Google Search Console

Gives you immediate feedback from Google, like crawl errors, indexation problems, and a mobile usability report. This one is definitely essential to keep track of how Googlebot sees your PrestaShop store.

SEO Audit

You can use tools like SEMrush to audit and analyze your store for finding:

• Undefined or duplicate meta titles and descriptions
• Duplicate URLs and canonical issues
• 404 errors and broken links
• Images without ALT attributes
• Sitemap and robots. txt inconsistencies

PrestaShop merchants also get an overview of the SEO health of their store in real time.

Solving Duplicate URLs and 404 Errors

Duplicate URLs and 404 errors are two of the worst SEO enemies of a PrestaShop web shop. Why do they matter, and how does automation help address them? Let’s take a closer look at these challenges and how automation can address them.

Duplicate URLs

PrestaShop produces multiple URLs for each product (e.g., pathname with or without category). Search engines view this as duplicate content and divide ranking signals, harming search visibility.

Solution

Canonical Tags: FME SEO Extension automatically places canonical tags on the product and category pages. This lets Google know which page is the “master,” which helps to consolidate ranking power and prevent duplicate content problems.

Canonical Massive management: Apply canonical URLs in bulk throughout the catalog to avoid content duplication and save you a lot of time.

404 Errors

Old links by Deleted/Moved/Renamed products have old URLs that may still be indexed or linked. That results in 404 errors, which derails Prestashop SEO by letting search engines know the site has a broken structure.

Solution

Redirect Manager:  FME’s SEO Module comes with a friendly redirects system (301, 302, and 303 supported).

301 Redirects:  Redirect users and search engines to a new URL, and make it clear that the original URL no longer exists. Redirect users to a different page, such as a newly created page.

302 Redirects:  Temporary redirect, such as for a brief campaign.

303 redirects:  Used for post-form submission or post-checkout redirects.

Bulk Redirections: No more entering the redirects manually: upload a CSV file or add redirections in bulk with a wildcard rule.

With canonical tags and redirects, PrestaShop merchants can tackle two of the worst and most expensive SEO troubles. This way, you keep the traffic, keep the search rankings, and you get the customers where they should land.

Automated SEO repairs with Modules

Manual SEO patches are inefficient, and humans are error-prone. With automation, you can be sure that your PrestaShop store is optimized at any level of your catalog. With FME’s SEO Module, powerful automation makes it something more than just a ludicrous dream:

Bulk Meta Tag Generation

Automatically generate specific meta titles and meta descriptions for the products, the categories, and the CMS pages using a template, and concerning the categories on a few pages.

Automatic Image Optimization

ALT tags are not here. This is one of the most common problems. The module automatically generates ALT for all product images by product name and category.

Dynamic Sitemaps

Rather than manually updating sitemaps, this module helps the user create and update the sitemap in XML format automatically, so that search engines can crawl the fresh URLs.

Robots.txt Management

It also supports automatic rules for rejecting duplicate or suboptimal pages that minimize crawl cost.

Ongoing Audits & Alerts

And with its built-in SEO audit, the software checks your site for any issues, no need to manually check things yourself. This means your site is optimized as you continue to add products or restructure categories.

Automation allows you to not only solve SEO problems, but to avoid them in the future. This way, we save time, glorify search engines, and provide a better user experience.

Conclusion

SEO problems such as duplicated URLs or broken links can kill your PrestaShop store’s traffic and sales overnight. Tools like SEMrush and Google Search Console can identify issues, but manually fixing them is not a long-term solution, particularly for stores that have extensive catalogs.

Here is where automation makes a difference. With bulk metadata creation, canonical tags, redirects, SEO Audits, and more included in the plugin, FME’s PrestaShop SEO Module is your complete source to find, fix, and prevent SEO issues, with no more time-consuming manual work. 

You shouldn’t allow SEO problems to stunt the growth of your store. Get your optimization out of the way and focus on growing your business and being found in the search results today.