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:
- URL audit
- Redirect audit
- GSC error cleanup