Ok I am going to state absolutely upfront and categorically that we love this module, if you only install one module to handle on site SEO within Magento then make this the one. It doesn’t do everything , it isn’t the answer to all your prayers, but it is a very comprehensive module that covers more than just the basics.
Creare SEO module for magento has several sections to it that really need to be covered separately as they each cover different elements of your onside SEO.
Luckily the nice boys at Creare have included a “Basic SEO Health Check” as part of the module so that would seem a good place to start
The Default SEO Check screen within the module is a basic checklist of Magento configuration items that need to be setup to give your site a fairly optimal SEO setup, that Google etc are going to have real trouble objecting too. What your looking for here is a screen full of big green ticks, fairly simple, yes it is however this simple tick list does contain some pretty big items, that many might have been caught out by in the past, and also some of the items relate directly to configuration items that need to be set for Creare SEO itself. Let’s take each element one at a time.
Creare SEO Settings:
The Meta Keywords Tag and any Blank Meta Descriptions Tags have been removed :- This one is very simple Google have long since stated that they and many other engines no longer use the meta keywords tag, however they have never to my knowledge stated they will penalise a site for having it, so removing the meta keywords tag completely can seem like a little bit of over kill, but if you look at the bandwidth usage over time of redundant code then it is worth removing, and the second part of this is the removal of any blank Meta DescriptIon Tags, in essence if thenTag has no data why would you want it.
Parameter Based Category Pages have ‘noindex’ set in robots :- this simply change brought in by Creare SEO will have a dramagic effect on reducing page duplication (a serious nono and pet hate of Google) , the problem sitso within Magento itself in that when your categories have searchable products using Layered Navigation then each category page will have a huge number of possible combinations of parameters, we have seen a Magento site with as few as 500 products throw up over 8000 duplicate pages all nicely indexed by Google, what Creare SEO has done is added the ‘no index, follow’ flag to the category pages, so that bots will still crawl the entire category but all parameterised pages will be marked as noindex and keep Google etc from penalising your site for duplicate content.
Unique Category Heading are Enabled:- really simple, this option enforces unique category headings so that you doing get Duplicated Content within your site, really useful option, however if you use Configurable Products and then Associated Products for variations then this one might not suite you.
Canonical Product Redirecting is enabled. Any non-canonical URL paths are automatically 301 redirected to the canonical path:- All products will be set to be accessed via the product url only, not via the /category/product structure and a Canonical Link Meta Tag will be inserted to each product to tell search engines which URL to use.
Twitter Cards are enabled for product pages:- Interesting one, this adds structured data for both Twitter Cars and Facebook to the product pages, you will need to register with Twitter for your cards to work properly.
Default Meta Descriptions for products are configured and enabled: With default meta description enabled for products in Creare SEO, the system will create an SEO description following your default template [product_name] – [category_name] etc.
Default Meta Descriptions for categories are configured and enabled: As above Creare SEO can be configured to supply default meta descriptions for all categories where non are specified in the category data.
Default Page Titles for products are configured and enabled: Default page titles as with the Meta Descriptions can be configure to follow a template for each product by Creare SEO this default will then be used for all products where the page title is not already set.
Default Page Titles for categories are configured and enabled: As with the Default Page Titles for Products categories page titles can also be set to follow a template set in Creare SEO.
Your robots.txt file exists and is writable: This check ensures that the robots.txt file exists in the root directory and that it can be written to by Creare SEO, their are menu options in Creare SEO for editing both the robots.txt and .htaccess files.
Your .htaccess file exists and is writable: This check is to make sure the .htaccess file a) exists and b) can be written too by Creare SEO.
Magento Configuration Settings
Web Server Rewrites are enabled correctly: We Server URL Rewrites have been correctly configured and enabled, allowing Search Engine Friendly URLS’s to be used.
Category Canonical Tags have been setup correctly: Canonical Tags for categories, will set the Canonical URL meta tag in each category page telling search engines exactly which URL to use for the page.
Product Canonical Tags have been configured correctly: As with Categories you want this set to inform Search Engines via the Meta Tags exactly what URL to index for the page in question.
Product URL’s only exist under the canonical tag: Product URL’s should only be accessible via their Canonical URL.
Default Values
The default Meta Description value has been emptied: Ensure the Default Page Meta Description value is empty other wise you will have “demo store” in the meta description of all your products, not ideal for SEO you must admit, by making sure this is empty you allow Creare SEO to utilise it’s own defaults for products with no Meta Description.
The site’s Meta Robots Tag allows search engines to both crawl and cache your website: This option ensures that your basic robots.txt file is configured correctly, not optimally, just the basics.
Your store view name has been customised: The store new name has been changed away from the default.
Your website name has been customised: Ensure the name of the website has been changed away from the default.
Your logo alt text name has been customised: The logo and it’s Alt text appear on the site via your theme, do not leave them default.
In Summary
In our opinion this should probably be the first module you load to any new Magento setup, get Creare SEO installed and everything configured, then think about themes and products etc, make sure Google gets the right information from the off.
Check out the Creare SEO Module for Magento here.
Doing It All Again 