Magento (Adobe Commerce) SEO

Magento (Adobe Commerce) SEO is the practice of configuring and optimising shops built on Magento Open Source or its paid version, Adobe Commerce, so search engines can crawl and rank them well. It focuses on URL settings, layered navigation, duplicate content and performance across large catalogues.

Written by Paul Hoda, SEO consultant since 2005. Last updated 8 November 2026.

What Magento is

Magento is an ecommerce platform used mostly by medium and large retailers. Adobe bought it in 2018. The free edition is called Magento Open Source and the paid, supported edition is Adobe Commerce. Both share the same core, so most SEO advice applies to either. Magento 1 reached end of life in 2020, so current advice relates to Magento 2.

Magento has a built-in Search Engine Optimization section in its catalogue settings, where you can control URL suffixes, whether category paths appear in product URLs and whether canonical tags are added to products and categories. Many SEO issues on Magento sites come from these settings being left at their defaults or changed without a plan.

Why Magento needs careful SEO

Magento is powerful and flexible, which also means it can generate a lot of URLs. Large catalogues, multiple store views for different countries and filter options can quickly create duplicate and near-duplicate pages. Its default front end can also be slow without tuning. Good set-up decisions early on save a lot of clean-up later.

Important settings and issues

  • URL rewrites: Magento creates search-friendly URLs, but it can also create several paths to the same product, for example with and without the category in the URL. Choose one and use the canonical settings for products and categories.
  • Layered navigation: Magento’s filters add parameters to category URLs. Without control this becomes a classic faceted navigation problem.
  • Internal search pages: keep site search results out of the index.
  • Store views: multi-country or multi-language stores need correct hreflang annotations.
  • Configurable products: child products can create duplicate pages. Usually only the parent should be indexable, as covered in product variants.
  • Performance: full-page caching, a CDN and a lighter theme can improve load times significantly.

How to audit a Magento store

  1. Crawl the site with an SEO crawler and compare the number of URLs found with the number of products and categories you expect.
  2. Check that each product resolves to one canonical URL.
  3. Review which filter combinations are indexable and whether any deserve their own optimised landing pages.
  4. Check the XML sitemap only includes canonical, indexable URLs.
  5. Look at crawl budget signals in Search Console crawl stats and server logs.
  6. Test page speed on key templates: home, category and product.

Common mistakes

  • Changing URL keys in bulk without creating redirects.
  • Leaving default category descriptions empty on important categories.
  • Letting staging or development stores get indexed.
  • Upgrading or replatforming without a proper website migration plan.

Key Takeaways

  • Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce share the same core, so SEO advice applies to both.
  • Layered navigation and multiple URL paths are the main sources of duplicate pages.
  • Canonical settings and clean sitemaps keep large catalogues under control.
  • Multi-store set-ups need accurate hreflang.
  • Caching and theme choice have a big effect on speed.

Related Terms

Need a second opinion on your website? Ask for a free website SEO check, or keep learning in the SEO Encyclopedia.