Organic search drives 30–50% of traffic for most UK online shops. PrestaShop has solid SEO fundamentals — friendly URLs, canonical tags, XML sitemap, schema.org — but they need configuring. This guide covers the settings UK merchants should set on day one and the ongoing per-page work that maintains rankings.
Friendly URLs and URL rewrites • Canonical tags and duplicate content • XML sitemap and robots.txt • Meta titles and descriptions • Schema.org structured data • Core Web Vitals on PrestaShop 9 • Google Search Console integration • FAQ
Under Shop Parameters › Traffic › SEO & URLs:
/merino-jumpers.Route customisation per entity type (Category, Product, CMS Page, Manufacturer) is configurable below these settings — swap /{category}/{product} to /{product} for flatter URLs.
PrestaShop 9 outputs canonical tags automatically on product and category pages when Friendly URLs are enabled. Confirm by viewing page source — look for <link rel="canonical" href="..."/> in the head.
Faceted navigation (layered filters) creates URL variants like /jumpers?color=navy. Core PrestaShop outputs self-referencing canonicals on these — acceptable but imperfect. Modules like Nuxt SEO or custom theme tweaks add noindex,follow on filter combinations to remove them from Google’s index.
Install the “Google sitemap” module from Module Manager. Generate:
yourdomain.co.uk/index.php?fc=module&module=gsitemap&controller=sitemap or configured URL.Configure automatic regeneration via cron (every 24 hours). Instructions in the module config.
Robots.txt: generate via Shop Parameters › Traffic › SEO & URLs › Generate robots.txt. Edit to block search, cart, customer URLs:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /*?orderby=
Disallow: /*?search_query=
Disallow: /cart
Disallow: /order
Disallow: /my-account
Disallow: /authentication
Allow: /
Sitemap: https://yourdomain.co.uk/sitemap.xmlSet per entity (product, category, CMS page) under their respective edit screens.
For bulk-generated meta, Shop Parameters › Products › SEO options has limited templating; community modules add richer auto-generation (e.g. {name} — {category} — Brand).
PrestaShop 9 default Classic theme outputs Product schema with price, availability and aggregate rating when reviews exist. Confirm at Google’s Rich Results Test (search.google.com/test/rich-results).
Breadcrumb schema: also output by the default theme.
Organisation schema: add via a CMS block in the theme’s footer or via a module like PrestaShop SEO Schema.
Targets: LCP under 2.5s, INP under 200ms, CLS under 0.1.
PrestaShop 9 with the Classic theme on SmartXHosting Redis/NVMe infrastructure typically hits green. Levers:
Weekly Search Console review is one of the highest-leverage SEO habits — coverage errors, mobile usability issues and low-CTR queries all show up here.
PrestaShop hosting tuned for Google rankings
NVMe SSD, Redis and PHP 8.2 on SmartXHosting PrestaShop plans keep Core Web Vitals green and Google crawling efficient.
See PrestaShop plansQ: Should I migrate from PrestaShop 1.7 URLs?
A: PrestaShop 9 preserves URL structures. If you moved from 1.7 with different URL config, add 301 redirects for changed routes via .htaccess or a redirect module.
Q: How do I avoid duplicate category/product URLs?
A: Turn off “Add category URL” in SEO & URLs. Products get one canonical URL regardless of which category they sit in.
Q: Does PrestaShop output hreflang?
A: Yes if you have multiple languages enabled with ISO codes. Output lives in the head of each page. Useful for UK/Ireland stores with separate en-GB and en-IE content.
Q: Can I edit robots.txt directly?
A: Yes — the auto-generated file lives in the root directory. Edit via SFTP or Plesk File Manager. Re-generation through admin overwrites your changes, so maintain a custom file or use module-friendly edits.
Q: My category page is not indexing.
A: Check: (1) page is reachable (not behind login), (2) canonical does not point elsewhere, (3) robots.txt does not block, (4) sitemap includes it, (5) Search Console inspection report.
Q: Are product reviews SEO-valuable?
A: Yes — aggregate ratings feed the Product schema. Enable reviews via Module Manager › Product Comments.
Q: Can I run SEO audits from within PrestaShop?
A: Not natively. Third-party tools (Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, SEMrush) are standard for deep audits. Modules like SEO Expert add per-page suggestions from within admin.