Miva Merchant SEO Tip #2 – Tweak CTGY & PROD Title Tags

Here’s the second post in our Miva Merchant SEO Tips series. Probably the most simple tip we’ll give, so take advantage.

Miva Merchant SEO Tip #2

DITCH THE STORENAME FROM THE TITLE TAG OF YOUR CTGY & PROD TEMPLATES

Miva Merchant out-of-the-box includes the Store Name in the Title Tag of all pages within it’s system. This isn’t a horrible idea, especially for non-catalog pages, but when it comes to your Category and Product pages, IT SHOULDN’T BE THERE.

The problem is that one thing the search engines look for is “unique meta content” and YES, the title tag is considered meta content, and in some cases is the most important piece of meta content on a given page. On most Miva Merchant stores, the category and product pages make up the largest percentage of content, so why would you want the same string to appear in all of those pages title tags? Understand, I’m not saying it’s going to bury you from a rankings standpoint if its there, but it certainly isn’t going to help each of your category and product pages from being looked at as “more unique” in the search engines eyes.

What we’re going to do below, is remove the store name from the title tags of the Category and Product Templates. By removing the store name, we leave that pages title tag with only the Category Name or Product Name associated with that page, therefore that page is now shouting to the search engines “THIS PAGE IS ABOUT…” whatever the category or product name states. This is a much better strategy for trying to help the search engines figure out the topic of a given page.

So here’s the easiest fix.

(1) Click on Pages in the left column of your admin.

(2) To edit the Category Template, Click on the CTGY/Category Display Template’s EDIT button on the right of the page.

(3) Once the template loads, in the top few lines of code, you should see something that looks like this:

<title>&mvt:store:name;: &mvt:category:name;</title>

Replace the above code, with this:

<title>&mvt:category:name;</title>

Notice that all we did was remove the snippet of code that draws the store name into the title, leaving only the Category Name.

(4) Once you replace the code, click the Update button at the bottom of the page, and you’re now good to go.

(5) Now, click on Pages in the left column of your admin again.

(6) To edit the Product Template, Click on the PROD/Product Display Template’s EDIT button on the right of the page.

(7) Once the template loads, in the top few lines of code, you should see something that looks like this:

<title>&mvt:store:name;: &mvt:product:name;</title>

Replace the above code, with this:

<title>&mvt:product:name;</title>

Notice that all we did was remove the snippet of code that draws the store name into the title, leaving only the Product Name.

(8) Once you replace the code, click the Update button at the bottom of the page, and you’re now good to go.

Why do this?

The concept is simple. By removing a snippet of code that is over redundent from the title tags of all of these category and product pages, we now make these pages “more unique” in the eyes of the search engines.

Is it going to be the trick you needed to sore into the rankings for the terms you’re targeting? ABSOLUTELY NOT. But in a world where you have to scrape and claw for every bit of traffic out there, it isn’t going to hurt either.

ALWAYS REMEMBER, that in the world of SEO, every little bit helps. Just make sure that the things you do make sense, and aren’t geared towards “fooling” the search engines.