7 Tips About Shopware SEO You Should Know

Optimizing an online store for top search engine rankings is achievable for professionals, but keeping that position long-term can be harder as competitors are also optimizing their sites. With useful tips and information about the new responsive template, this SEO guide explains the most important parts of Shopware. It helps you establish a solid foundation for long-term search engine optimization (SEO) of your store.

Search engines use over a hundred different ranking factors, making it impossible to cover every detail here. Poor rankings usually result from issues like duplicate content, broken links, bad backlinks, overuse of keywords, or slow page loading speeds. To combat these issues, Shopware's new template is responsive. It has a mobile-specific XML sitemap. This will improve performance on mobile devices.

The team optimized all important pages for search engines with the updated responsive template. We have removed unnecessary tags and updated relevant ones to meet the latest SEO standards. Shopware SEO route engine allows for flexible URL management through either automatic or manual methods. You can make changes in the backend without altering the source code or templates.

Mobile optimization has become a key factor in how Google ranks websites. If a site isn’t mobile-friendly, Google lowers its ranking because it wants to ensure users get high-quality results.

This has had a big impact on search rankings. The template meets this requirement by being responsive from the start. You can check if your website is mobile-friendly using Google's Mobile-Friendly Test. The responsive template performs well on Google's tools. The template addresses common issues like small text and elements being too close together, which are common problems.

After switching to , you’ll notice an improvement in your site's usability on mobile devices. Google will no longer flag mobile usability errors. This will improve your mobile conversion rate and search ranking.

Shopware has a powerful SEO URL system. It helps create search engine-friendly URLs. This makes it easier for Google and other search engines to find and index your content. This system tracks any changes to URLs. It ensures old links are redirectedO to new ones with 301 redirects. This prevents issues like broken links or duplicate content.

When you change a product name or URL, Shopware remembers the old URL and redirects visitors to the new one without any interruptions. It does this regardless of the search engine's cookie settings. It ensures a clean 301 redirect and helps maintain your search rankings. Additionally, we include the canonical URL to avoid duplicate content issues.

If you’re customizing Shopware SEO URLs in Shopware, it’s best to test changes in a staging environment before making them live, as changes can affect your site's ranking. SEO expert Matt Cutts of Google advises keeping URLs short. They should be 3 to 5 words and under 60 characters. This ensures that search engines see important keywords.

Shopware uses a "slugify" system to clean up URLs by converting special characters (like ñ or é) into simpler ones, creating cleaner URLs like "tomatiga-de-ramallet" from "tomàtiga de ramellet." You can further customise these rules using a plugin.

For individual product, category, or blog URLs, Shopware allows for extensive customization through the backend. You can adjust the format and structure of URLs to suit your needs, and even add specific keywords for better SEO. The Shopware SEO system also ensures that non-relevant pages like login or filter pages are marked as "noindex," helping avoid unnecessary content from being indexed by search engines.

Overall, Shopware's SEO system offers flexibility, ensures smooth URL handling, and helps optimize your site for better visibility on search engines like Google.

When optimizing Shopware SEO titles for your website , it might not always be necessary to customize every title individually, especially for sites with a complex category structure. Google recommends that titles remain within a certain length, measured in pixels rather than characters, but long titles can exceed this limit. Shopware has built-in solutions to display ideal SEO titles for product, blog, and category pages.

Using Shopware's template engine, Smarty, you can easily create custom Shopware SEO titles by making small adjustments to the templates. You can also use free text fields to input custom titles, giving you more control over what appears in search results. This method allows for flexibility in creating optimized titles without needing extra tools or plugins.

Product Shopware SEO Titles

For product pages, you can create your own custom title by using a free text field. If someone fills this custom field, Shopware will use it as the title. If it's not, it will fall back to a default title format, such as the product name or breadcrumb trail (a navigational aid showing the page's location in the hierarchy). This ensures that every product has a relevant title without exceeding the recommended length.

Category SEO Titles

You can optimize category titles by utilizing free text fields in a similar manner. If a category title becomes lengthy because of several sub-categories, you can create a custom title that is concise and more SEO-friendly. If you do not provide a custom title, we will use the default category name instead.

Blog Shopware SEO Titles

For blog posts, it already optimizes titles by default. However, if you prefer a different title for a blog post, you can use one of the available free text fields to set a custom title. If no custom title is set, Shopware will use the default blog title or fallback options like breadcrumbs.

By making these adjustments, you can guarantee that your titles stay within the recommended length and have a greater chance of appearing correctly in search engine results. However, it's important to note that Google may not always use the title you provide, as they sometimes generate their own based on the content of your page.

This flexible title customization in Shopware allows you to optimize your pages for search engines without the need for external plugins, ensuring better Shopware SEO performance while maintaining a user-friendly experience.

Many underestimate Google Image Search as a tool to boost online store traffic. But, it can be a simple, effective way to get more clicks. One strategy to take advantage of this is to use title tags to display similar products in image searches, providing more visibility for your items.

Videos and SEO-Optimized Images

Shopware designers designed the responsive theme to fully optimize images for search engines. This ensures that you configure all images across SEO-relevant templates correctly to enhance your search engine rankings. Proper image optimization can significantly improve your shop’s visibility without requiring a lot of extra effort.

Using the Media Manager Effectively

One simple but highly effective way to boost your Google Image Search presence is by using proper keywords in image file names. For example, name your images after the related product, category, or a few relevant keywords. This can help search engines crawl and index them. Shopware adds image names to the site's source code. This helps search engines find and rank them.

When naming images, Google suggests using hyphens (-) to separate keywords rather than underscores (_), to improve search engine readability. Always use unique file names to avoid confusion and maximize visibility.

Alt Tags and Title Tags for Images

The SEO-relevant "alt" tags are automatically applied to images in standard themes. Be sure to fill in the "Title" field for product images, but don’t overstuff it with keywords. A well-balanced, relevant description works best for Shopware SEO purposes.

If the image is not a background image, the shop's theme will display the alt tag. However, be cautious when using link tags, as they can sometimes overwrite the image's alt tag.

Alternative Title Tags for Item Images

There is debate in the Shopware SEO community about the impact of image title tags on rankings. lets you assign different title tags to your product images using free text fields. This gives you more flexibility to fine-tune your Shopware SEO strategy.

Google's "Similar Items" Feature

Since 2017, Google has offered a "Similar Items" feature in its Image Search results. This feature shows similar products to your search. It only works if you embed the required Schema.org snippet on the product's details page. In ’s responsive theme, this snippet is already implemented, making it easier to take advantage of this feature, especially for mobile users.

By following these simple yet powerful techniques, you can improve your shop's visibility in Google Image Search, making it easier for potential customers to discover your products.

Shopware provides comprehensive tools for managing SEO-relevant files like sitemaps, robots.txt, RSS feeds, and Atom feeds. These features help ensure that search engines efficiently crawl your shop and present it to users in the best way possible.

Sitemaps

• Sitemap.xml: Shopware generates an XML sitemap that includes SEO-relevant pages, including product details, categories, and blogs. Pages like the shopping cart or account areas are excluded (noindex by default). This ensures that only important pages are crawled, providing a cleaner index structure.
• Mobile Sitemap (sitemap_mobile.xml): includes a separate sitemap specifically for mobile devices, although it's mostly redundant if you're using a responsive theme. Google still supports mobile sitemaps, but if you have a responsive theme, we recommend using the standard sitemap.xml in Google Search Console.

SEO-URLs, Variants, and Filter URLs

• Variants and Filter URLs: Shopware excludes variant and filter URLs (such as those generated when users apply filters on product lists) from the sitemap to avoid duplicate content. For filter URLs, a "noindex, follow" tag is applied. This ensures that these pages are not indexed by search engines but still allow bots to follow the links. This strategy prevents unnecessary URLs from being crawled by search engines.

Robots.txt

• Subshop-Specific Robots.txt: You can generate and customize a robots.txt file for each subshop. The robots.txt file guides search engines on which areas of the shop should be crawled and indexed. Shopware’s robots.txt is dynamically generated from a template, making it easy to adapt for different shops.
• Avoid Unwanted Crawling: You can use the robots.txt file to prevent the indexing of specific file types, like PDFs or Word documents. This helps keep search engines from crawling documents that aren’t relevant to your shop’s content quality.

RSS and Atom Feeds

• RSS Feeds: Shopware provides RSS feeds for categories and blogs. These feeds are useful not only for search engines but also for embedding content into external sites, which can help with backlink generation. Each category or blog has its own RSS feed, making it easier to display updated content across platforms.
• Atom Feeds: In addition to RSS, Shopware supports Atom feeds, which function similarly to RSS feeds. These feeds are available on category and listing pages, providing another option for syndicating your content.

Key Considerations

• File Naming and Structure: In sitemaps, robots.txt, and feeds, the naming and structuring of your files and URLs should be SEO-friendly. Make sure to use hyphens in file names and unique, relevant keywords.
• Clean Indexing: Shopware automatically handles indexing logic for products, categories, and blogs, which results in a clean and well-structured approach to search engine crawling.

Using these tools correctly in Shopware will help your shop achieve search engine optimization. It will also communicate well with search engine crawlers. This leads to better indexing, ranking, and visibility.

To optimize your Shopware store for search engines, managing meta information is essential. Meta tags give search engines key details about each page, improving how they index and display your content in search results.

Standard Snippets for Meta Information

In Shopware, it's critical to set the default snippets for meta information via the snippet administration:

• #IndexMetaAuthor#: Author of the site.
• #IndexMetaCopyright#: Copyright details.
• #IndexMetaDescriptionStandard#: Meta description for the homepage. This snippet should contain 200-300 characters to summarize your store's purpose. This snippet is crucial for Shopware SEO, as it affects how your site is described in search results.
• #IndexMetaKeywordsStandard#: Keywords for the homepage (though not used by search engines, can still help with internal site search).

Meta Information for Categories

For each category, optimize the following meta fields:

• Title: Headline of the category. Keep it between 50-60 characters (excluding spaces).
• Description: A meta description of 200-300 characters to explain the category content.
• Keywords: Though meta keywords are not considered by Google anymore, they can still be used for internal search purposes.

Meta Information for Items (Products)

For products, ensure you store meaningful meta tags:

• Title: Recommended length is 50-60 characters.
• Description: 200-300 characters to describe the product.
• Keywords: Not essential for Google but helpful for Shopware's internal search engine.

Meta Information for Blog Entries

Shopware’s blog module is an excellent opportunity to enhance SEO with blog posts. Make sure to set:

• Title: Use up to 50-60 characters.
• Description: A meta description of 200-300 characters for SEO purposes.
• Keywords: Not crucial for search engines but can be useful internally.

Note: Avoid using multiple H1 tags in your blog entries as it might confuse search engines.

Meta Information for Shopping Worlds & Landing Pages

Shopware allows you to set SEO-optimized settings for landing pages:

• SEO URL: Set a custom SEO URL for landing pages..
• Meta Description: Create SEO-optimized descriptions within the HTML blocks of landing pages. Be careful with the use of H1 tags—use it only once at the top of the page.

Meta Information for Shop Pages

You can configure meta tags independently for shop pages like contact forms, terms and conditions, etc. However, ensure the content is SEO-relevant. If not, you can mark these pages as noindex,follow to prevent search engines from indexing them but still allow them to follow internal links.

Meta Information for Producers

Optimize producer pages if you have products from specific manufacturers. Use the Shopware SEO fields available in the producer module to add meta descriptions and titles. You can also set a custom SEO URL for the producer pages.

Canonical URLs and Pagination (rel=prev/next)

Shopware handles canonical URLs and pagination to avoid duplicate content:

• For paginated pages, Shopware automatically adds rel=prev and rel=next tags, which help search engines understand how to index your paginated content.
• Paginated category pages or filtered lists are often marked with noindex,follow, telling search engines to crawl the pages but not index them to avoid content duplication.

Structured Data - Rich Snippets

It natively supports schema.org rich snippets, which provide structured data to search engines, helping them display detailed product information in search results (like ratings, prices, availability, etc.).

On product detail pages, Shopware includes rich snippet markups for:

• Product Information: Name, image, product ID, price, availability, etc.
• Ratings & Reviews: Aggregate ratings, individual reviews, and authors.
• BreadcrumbList: Structured navigation to help search engines understand your site’s hierarchy.

Use the Google Structured Data Testing Tool to verify if your rich snippets are properly implemented.

Structured data, or rich snippets, enhances how your products and categories appear in search engine results. uses schema.org markups to automatically provide these rich snippets within its default templates, helping search engines better understand and display your content.

Checking Structured Data

You can check your structured data implementation using the Google Structured Data Testing Tool. This tool helps identify any errors or warnings in your markup, ensuring everything is correctly set up for search engines.

Note on Rich Snippets

While implementing structured data is crucial for Shopware SEO, remember that whether or not the markups appear in search engine results pages (SERPs) is ultimately determined by the search engines themselves.

Markups on the Item Detail Page

On product detail pages, includes the following structured data elements:

• WebPage: Contains information such as the copyright year, whether the content is family-friendly, the main image of the product, the name of the webpage, and the copyright holder's name.
• BreadcrumbList: Displays the navigation path to the product, including URLs, names, and positions in the hierarchy.
• SiteNavigationElement: Includes the URL of the site navigation and the corresponding name.
• Product: Provides key details about the product, including:
  
  
  • Name
  • Image
  • Unique identifiers (like product ID and SKU)
  • Description
  • Aggregate rating, including average rating and total ratings
  • Brand name
  • Weight
  • Pricing and availability information

Ensure that the "in stock" status is only indicated when the product actually has a positive stock level and a specified delivery time. This helps maintain accurate product listings.

Structured Data on Category and Producer Pages

For category and producer pages, the following structured data elements are included:

• WebPage: Similar information as on product pages, including the copyright year, family-friendliness, main image, page name, and copyright holder.
• BreadcrumbList: Displays the navigation path, similar to product pages.
• SiteNavigationElement: Contains the URL and name for the navigation.

Implementing structured data through rich snippets improves the visibility of your products and categories in search results. Properly structured data can lead to higher click-through rates and better user engagement. Regularly check your structured data for compliance with Google’s guidelines to maintain optimal performance in search results.

Optimizing a Shopware store for SEO requires focusing on responsive design, URL flexibility, mobile-first optimization, SEO-friendly metadata, and structured data. This guide outlines crucial SEO tips to improve rankings, enhance mobile performance, and avoid pitfalls like duplicate content and broken links. With a focus on features in the new responsive template and URL management capabilities, Shopware enables smooth SEO optimization for better visibility on Google and other search engines.

Implementing these SEO practices when you choose Shopware Development ensures a solid foundation for long-term visibility and usability on both desktop and mobile devices.

Investing in professional Shopware SEO services significantly enhances business competitiveness by addressing essential SEO elements and keeping up with Shopware's functionality updates. At Elightwalk Technology, we specialize in fine-tuning your Shopware store to align with the latest SEO standards, ensuring your site not only ranks higher but also provides a seamless experience for users. Contact us today to learn how we can help maximize your store’s potential on all fronts.