Comparison of the default Magento 2 SEO features in comparison to Magento 1 platform. Find more useful Magento tips on Magetips.com

1. New SEO FEATURES in MAGENTO 2.0

2. Magento is one of the most powerful platforms in terms of SEO.
By default, it has a bunch of useful SEO features to easily optimize site
URLs, page titles and meta tags, ALT tags, H1 headings, etc.
Here we are going to run a side-by-side comparison of the default SEO
features that shortly released Magento 2 version has in comparison to
Magento 1 platform.

3. Key SEO Improvements in Magento 2.0:
1. The ability to add rich snippets and organize structure markup data
2. The ability to optimize search engine indexation by editing robots txt files from
the admin panel
3. A more complex and extensive set of tools and options for optimizing category
pages.

4. SEO Improvements and Product Page Optimization:
SEO feature M1 M2
Setting meta title, meta description for each product
page
Yes Yes
Setting URL keys for different store views Yes Yes
Product Fields Auto-Generation Template No Yes
Using Canonical Link meta tag for products Yes Yes
Using Categories Path for Products URLs Yes Yes

5. Product Fields Auto-Generation
This new feature consist in forming the product meta tags using available product
attributes according to the predefined templates. You can find it in your admin panel
under Stores –> Configuration –> Catalog –> Catalog.
But, there is a downside: this feature changes meta-text for all products as it uses
only one template.

6. Category Page Optimization
SEO Feature M1 M2
Setting meta title, meta description and meta keywords for each
chosen category page
Yes Yes
Setting URL Keys for different store views Yes Yes
Preserving the same URL format for category pages when
filters are used
No Yes

7. When it comes to category page optimization, it’s vitally important to set up
canonical URLs rightly. The point is that a lot of duplication can be caused by
layered navigation.
The URL Preservation feature gets rid of the query parameter URLs so whatever
you sort or arrange categories using the available filter options, the category page
URL will remain basically the same and won’t include URL parameters as limit, sort,
and mode. This will take care of a lot of canonical issues on category pages.
Category Page Optimization

8. Sitemaps
On the one hand Magento has massively improved it’s default XML sitemaps. And
on the other hand, there is no HTML sitemap at all.
SEO Feature M1 M2
XML sitemap features Yes Enhanced
HTML sitemap features Yes No

9. XML sitemap improvements
- Ability to separately specify the frequency and the priority of each page. It can be
either a product page or category page or CMS page.
- Ability to automatically add the XML sitemap to your robots.txt file and edit it via
the admin panel.
- Ability to add images
- Ability to use the Sitemap Index and allow you to define different parameters on
splitting items between XML files.

10. Schemas
Magento 2 has an impressive set of tools for optimizing structure markup data.
SEO Feature M1 M2
Rich Snippets Functionality No Yes

11. Now you can make your pages stand out in search results by displaying such
attributes as rating stars, price, currency and even the product image. It’s very rare
when you can actually see product image in rich snippets.
This feature is enabled in the system by default, so you don’t need to go through
the site and then configure it. So it’s an advantage because no technical knowledge
is required. But on the other hand if you would like to configure it somehow then
there’s no way to do that now.
Schemas

12. Editing Robots.txt file
In Magento 2 you can easily edit a Magento robots.txt file via the admin panel.
Go to Stores –> General –> Design to update your file.
SEO Feature M1 M2
The ability to add robots.txt files via the admin interface No Yes

13. So, let’s summarize it
Magento 2 default SEO functionality is more powerful than its
predecessor.
The absence of an HTML sitemap seems a little disappointing,
but upon the whole, we can see a row of new features and
significant improvements.

14. Links & Resources
•MageWork: Article on Magento 2 SEO Potential
•How SEO Friendly is Magento 2.0? with Vitaly Gonkov
•Magento 2 SEO Extensions by Mageworx

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