Here is a practical, action-oriented PrestaShop 9 SEO checklist, tailored for PS9 core changes, Google Search Console, and real-world store optimization (especially useful if you upgraded from PS 8).

✅ PrestaShop 9 SEO Checklist (2025-Ready)

🔧 1. Core SEO & URL Settings (MOST IMPORTANT)

Back Office → Shop Parameters → Traffic & SEO → SEO & URLs

✔ Enable Friendly URLs
✔ Disable Product category in URL (recommended in PS9)
✔ Remove language code for default language (if single-country focus)
✔ Enable Redirect to canonical URL
✔ Ensure .htaccess is regenerated

👉 Result: cleaner URLs, fewer duplicates

🌍 2. Canonical, Noindex & Crawl Control (PS9 Improvement)

✔ Faceted / filtered URLs → noindex (default in PS9)
✔ Pagination pages → canonical to page 1
✔ Disable indexing for:

• ?orderby=
• ?orderway=
• ?search_query=
• ?page=

✔ Check canonical tags on:

• Products
• Categories
• CMS pages

👉 Improves crawl budget & prevents thin content indexing

🧭 3. Redirect Management (Upgrade Safety)

✔ Create 301 redirects for:

• Old category-based URLs (PS 1.7 / 8 → PS9)
• Deleted products
• Disabled categories

✔ Never use 302 for permanent changes

✔ Fix:

• Soft 404s
• Redirect chains

👉 Protects rankings after migration

🧾 4. Metadata Optimization

Products

✔ Unique Meta Title (50–60 chars)
✔ Compelling Meta Description (140–160 chars)
✔ Only ONE H1 per page
✔ Avoid auto-generated junk titles

Categories

✔ SEO-optimized category descriptions
✔ Add intro text above product list

👉 Boosts CTR in Google results

🖼 5. Image SEO (Big PS9 Win)

✔ Enable WebP + AVIF
✔ Descriptive image file names
✔ Proper ALT text (keyword + intent)
✔ Avoid oversized images
✔ Lazy loading enabled

👉 Improves Core Web Vitals + Image Search

⚡ 6. Page Speed & Core Web Vitals

✔ Enable CCC (Combine, Compress, Cache)
✔ Use PS9 compatible theme only
✔ Remove unused modules
✔ Enable browser caching
✔ Use CDN (Cloudflare recommended)

Target Scores

• LCP < 2.5s
• CLS < 0.1
• INP < 200ms

👉 Direct ranking factor

🧩 7. Structured Data (JSON-LD)

✔ Product schema (price, availability, SKU)
✔ Use ImageObject for images (best practice)
✔ Breadcrumb schema
✔ Organization schema
✔ No duplicate schema output

👉 Required for rich results

🤖 8. robots.txt & Indexing Hygiene

✔ Block:

/search
/cart
/order
/my-account

✔ Allow:

/product
/category
/cms

✔ Do NOT block JS/CSS

👉 Clean crawling, no accidental deindexing

🗺 9. XML Sitemap

✔ Regenerate sitemap after:

• Upgrade
• URL changes
• New products

✔ Submit to:

• Google Search Console
• Bing Webmaster

✔ Verify:

• No 404 URLs
• No redirected URLs inside sitemap

🔍 10. Google Search Console Checks

✔ Fix:

• Duplicate without canonical
• Soft 404
• Crawled – currently not indexed

✔ Monitor:

• Core Web Vitals
• Rich results
• Manual actions

✔ Validate fixes after changes

🛑 11. Common PS9 SEO Mistakes to Avoid

❌ Multiple H1 tags
❌ Indexing faceted URLs
❌ Missing redirects after upgrade
❌ Slow third-party modules
❌ Duplicate product content

🏁 Final Recommendation

If you upgraded from PrestaShop 8 → 9, always do:

1. URL audit
2. Redirect audit
3. GSC error cleanup