You can manually input HTML tags of your choice.
What is an HTML tag?
Hyper Text Markup Language is a kind of programming language for creating a webpage. An HTML document contains HTML tags that can add a large range of features to your webpage.
For example, you can add content including images and videos on your page or create a link that leads to a different page with HTML tags.
Likewise, HTML tags are used to mark and describe content included in a webpage. Tags are written with angle brackets: <example>. You can add the name of an HTML element between the two angle brackets and use it as a tag.
Tags usually come in pairs: an opening tag (<tag name>) defines the start of a block of content and a closing tag (/tag name) defines the end of that block of content.
An HTML document always starts with <html> and ends with </html>. The <HTML> element indicates the beginning and the end of an HTML document and includes <head> tag and <body> tag.
The <head> element, which starts with <head> and ends with </head>, includes the <title> element which represents the title of a webpage.
The <body> element starts with <body> and ends with </body>. It contains all the content of a webpage.
HTML tags
You can add common source codes that will be inserted into all the HTML pages on your store.
- Go to My Store>Store setup>Search Engine Optimization>Advanced settings (tab)>HTML tags.
- Enter your source in Head tag source or Body tag source.
- <Head> tag source location: The source for the <head> element is located between <head> and </head>. The <head> element is placed between the <html> tag and the <body> tag.
- <body> tag source location: The <body> tag source entered in this field will be placed at the end of the text placed between <body> and </body>.
- Click Save at the bottom of the page.
Info
You need to add tags to your html document to use tools such as Google Search Console tool and Google Analytics.
Copy the meta tags provided by Google and paste them into the <head> element, which is located before the <body> element. Go to Google Search Console for more information.
Web crawlers
What is a web crawler?
A web crawler is an Internet bot that browses the World Wide Web to collect web content and brings it to search engines such as Google. If a user types in a search query on a search engine, the search engine shows content that has been collected by its web crawler as search results.
Web crawlers collect a wide range of files and they sometimes collect confidential data which has not been secured with permission-based access control. Therefore, if there is any data that you want to keep from being crawled, enter meta tags that prevent them from indexing your webpage or create a robot.txt file, which tells web crawlers which URLs they can access on your site.
Blocking web crawlers from accessing your pages
robot.txt is a text file that follows the Robots Exclusion Standard, which specifies how to inform web crawlers which areas of the website should not be accessed. With this text file, you can prevent certain web crawlers from accessing your website or certain areas of your website from being crawled. It is recommended that you restrict access to the store admin directory and the directory containing information on accounts.
- Go to My Store>Store setup>Search Engine Optimization>Advanced settings (tab)>Web crawler access settings.
- Refer to the instructions below to enter the content for robot.txt.
Most popular web crawlers
- Googlebot: Googlebot
- Google Image Bot: Googlebot-image
- Google Mobile Bot: Googlebot-mobile
- Yahoo Bot: Slurp, yahoo-slurp
- Allow all web crawlers to crawl your entire store
- User-agent: *
- Allow: /
- Do not allow any web crawler bots to crawl any page of your site
- User-agent: *
- Disallow: /
- Allow a specific web crawler to crawl your store (except certain pages)
- (E.g. Naver crawler)
- User-agent: yeti
- Allow: /
- User-agent: *
- Disallow: /
- Block a certain web crawler from crawling data in a specific format
(E.g. Blocking Googlebot from crawling .gif files)- User-agent: Googlebot
- Disallow: /*.gif$
- Block a certain web crawler from accessing the admin and tmp directories
(E.g. Googlebot)- User-agent: Googlebot
- Disallow: /admin/
- Disallow: /tmp/
- Block a certain crawler from accessing boards
(E.g. Googlebot)- User-agent: Googlebot
- Disallow: /board/
How to block access to different boards
- Block access to all boards → Enter Disallow: /board/
- Block access to general boards → Enter Disallow: /board/free/
- Block access to product boards → Enter Disallow: /board/product/
Open graph tags
What is an open graph tag?
Open Graph meta tags are tags that control how URLs are displayed when shared on social media. If you apply Open Graph meta tags to a URL, the URL is shared with the title, description and screenshot of the site it leads to.
You may have shared a link to a product, image, or writing with your friends on social media before. Companies also send emails or messages with a link to their promotional content. If you share a link without Open Graph tags, your friends would have no idea how the website you shared looks before actually clicking the link. Open Graph tags give a brief introduction about the website when it is shared on social media platforms and make clear the link you share is not a malicious link.
Open Graph tag settings
1. Go to My Store>Store setup>Search Engine Optimization>Advanced settings (tab)>Open Graph tag settings.
2. Enter available tags in Home page (tab), Product category (tab), and Product details (tab).
3. Click Save at the bottom of the page.
Product details image priority
Product image>List thumbnail image>Additional image>Sidebar thumbnail image
Alt text for product images
Alt text is a word or a phrase that can be inserted as an attribute in an HTML document to describe an image on your site to web browsers. Web crawlers may fail to index an image that does not have alt text because it cannot perceive it as an image.
If the image of your product cannot be found on the search engine results page, customers are less likely to trust your website or search for your product. So, make sure to insert alt text for your product image so that web crawlers can index your product and its image and show them on the search engine results page.
- Go to My Store>Store setup>Search Engine Optimization>Advanced settings (tab)>Alt text for product image.
- Enter alt text with available tags, and then click Save at the bottom of the page.
Info
Alt text will be applied to product images displayed on the store's home page, product category page, product details page and product search page.
Available tags for product image alt text
| Variable | Description |
| [MALL_NAME] | Store name entered in My Store>General>Store profile>Basic information |
| [PRODUCT_NAME] | Name of the product. |
| [PRODUCT_BRAND] | Brand of the product |
| [PRODUCT_TREND] | Trend of the product |
| [PRODUCT_MAKER] | Manufacturer of the product |
| [PRODUCT_ORIGIN] | Origin of the product |
Canonical URL
What is a canonical URL?
A canonical URL is a representative URL under which you want web crawlers to crawl your content. Let’s say there is a restaurant that has multiple gates. It would be hard to figure out how many customers visit the restaurant a day if they are allowed to enter via any of the gates.
The same goes for your store. Your store may be connected to more than one domain or the same content or page may have PC and mobile version URLs. In this case, it’s hard to measure the number of visits as customers click different URLs to connect to the same site or content.
By choosing a canonical URL, you can consolidate links for duplicate pages and tell search engine bots which URL you want people to see in search results. Customers will also visit your store via the canonical URL.
Enabling canonical URL
- Go to My Store>Store setup>Search Engine Optimization>Advanced settings (tab)>Enable canonical URL.
- Click Enable, then click Save at the bottom of the page.
Page not found connection settings
Configure the connection path for when a user attempts to connect to a page that does not exist.
- Go to My Store>Store setup>Search Engine Optimization>Advanced settings (tab)>Page connection settings.
- Select the page you wish to take users to when they attempt to access a nonexistent page for your store's PC and mobile version.
- If you have selected Connect to specified path, enter the URL to which you want users to connect.
E.g. Connecting users to the home page - Click [Save] at the bottom of the page.
Pros and cons
- Connect to 404 page
If you connect web crawlers to a 404 error page, you can inform them that the website’s URL is incorrect and help them to improve search results. However, the error page may frustrate customers and drive them away. - Connect to specified page
If you lead customers to a specified path, you can prevent them from leaving and make them stay on your website. But they may not know why they have been redirected to a different page.
XML sitemap
An XML sitemap is an XML file that includes additional information added to each page’s URL that helps search engine bots to crawl your store more effectively. This additional information includes URLs’ last updated date, update frequency, and priority.
In simple words, an XML sitemap is a roadmap of your website that helps search engines to find your website more effectively.
- Go to My Store>Store setup>Search Engine Optimization>Advanced settings (tab).
- Select Enable for Enable sitemap, and then click Save.
Info
Changes, such as the initial creation of the sitemap and the addition/deletion of products, will be reflected on your store the next morning.
You can view the sitemap path once the sitemap is created. By entering the location of the XML sitemap file in robots.txt, you can directly tell the sitemap location to search engine bots that visit your online store.
- Go to My Store>Store setup>Search Engine Optimization>Advanced settings (tab).
- Enter the sitemap path for PC store and Mobile store in Web crawler access settings.
E.g. Sitemap: http://www.cafe24sample.com/sitemap.xml - Click Save at the bottom of the page.
Note
An XML sitemap will not be created if there is no product on display or for sale. Make sure to display products or change the product status to [For sale] before enabling sitemap.
RSS feed
An RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed is a file that continuously updates itself with the latest information available on your site. If you enable RSS feed, an RSS feed will be created on your store and the latest news of your store will be updated on the feed.
An RSS feed does not affect the theme of your store and helps your customers to browse the latest products via an RSS reader.
It also helps search engine bots to collect the latest information about your store. If more customers visit your store via your RSS feed path, search engines are more likely to consider the RSS feed path high quality and bring it to the top of the search results.
- Go to My Store>Store setup>Search Engine Optimization>Advanced settings (tab).
- Enable RSS feed.
- 3. Select a product category you wish to display on the RSS feed in RSS feed product settings.
RSS feed product settings
You can choose which items to display from your home page on the RSS feed. You cannot create an RSS feed if there is no product displayed on the home page. Display products on the home page first. You cannot create an RSS feed if the products on the home page are out of stock or their price is set as 0.
4. Click Save.
Info
- If you enable the RSS feed, an RSS feed is created immediately.
- Once the RSS feed is created, you can view the RSS feed path in RSS feed path
Note
- If your store uses an intro screen that requires account verification or identity verification, you cannot create an RSS feed.
- An RSS feed can tell search engines what are the latest products on your store, but not the update frequency.
RSS feed creation error
You may fail to create an RSS feed if your store name contains special characters (&, ", /, [ ], <>, etc.). Delete special characters from your store name or edit your source code with Smart Themes.
- Go to Themes (PC).
- Click Edit theme.
- Findand replace it with. Click Save.