Magento SEO
agency.

Layered navigation and crawl budget

Magento’s layered navigation lets shoppers filter categories by any attribute set as filterable, and each selection adds parameters to the URL. Combine a few filters with sorting, page size and pagination, and a single category can expose thousands of variations. On a catalog of tens of thousands of SKUs that adds up to a URL space far larger than the store itself. Google does not crawl all of it, but it spends a lot of time trying, and that time comes out of crawls of new and updated products. We use server logs and Search Console crawl stats to measure the problem, then control it with a mix of canonical settings, nofollowed or non-link filter controls, robots rules for parameter patterns and, for the filters with real demand, static landing pages that carry their own copy.

Magento’s own configuration matters here as well. Whether product URLs include category paths, whether canonical tags are enabled for products and categories, and how URL rewrites are generated all affect duplication. Stores that have been running for years often carry a very large URL rewrite table full of stale paths. We clean that up carefully, because some old rewrites still receive links and traffic. Catalog search runs on OpenSearch on current releases, or Elasticsearch on older 2.4 versions; internal search result pages should usually stay out of the index while their query data feeds our keyword research.

Adobe Commerce, Open Source and the front end

Adobe Commerce, the licensed edition, and Magento Open Source share the same core, so most SEO work is identical. Adobe Commerce adds features such as content staging and B2B tools, and runs on Adobe’s cloud infrastructure for many merchants. On either edition, the default Luma front end is heavy, and Core Web Vitals suffer under the weight of extensions that each add their own JavaScript. Hyvä, a modern Magento theme built on a much lighter stack, has become a common route to a faster storefront. It is a real project rather than a switch, since extensions need compatible versions, so we help weigh it against cheaper improvements first. On very large stores, every change goes through tickets, a test environment and an agreed release window, the same as any other engineering work.

Multi-store setups add another layer. Magento organizes stores into websites, stores and store views, and each store view can carry its own language, URL keys and content. Regional versions that share English copy, such as the US and UK, compete with each other unless hreflang tells search engines which to show where. We generate hreflang from the store configuration, check that every alternate returns a live page, and make sure translated store views have translated URL keys and metadata rather than inherited defaults.

Migrations off Magento 1 and replatforming

Magento 1 reached end of life in June 2020, and stores still on it are running unsupported software. Moving to Magento 2, or replatforming to Shopify or BigCommerce, changes URLs, templates and often site structure all at once. We build a complete redirect map from the old site, using crawls, analytics and backlink data so no page with traffic or links is missed. We then benchmark rankings, test redirects on staging, and monitor crawl errors and indexing daily after launch. If your new platform is Shopify or BigCommerce, the same team stays with you after the move.