Here are some tips to enhance your product pages.
Optimize the product page title.
The meta title tag – which is the title of the page displayed in the upper frame of your browser – is very important for the visibility of your store, both for search engines and for users who will read the search results. Each meta title tag must be unique in your store, and the display is limited to 70 characters, so it is advisable to make the most of this valuable space by optimizing it.
Include keywords in the product names.
Since the product names will be used at least in the h1, and by default (this is PrestaShop's default behavior) in the title and the URL, try to give your products names that are also key phrases searched by users. If you have a choice between two synonyms, prefer those with the highest search volumes.
Describe the product in an optimal manner.
The (lengthy) description of your product is primarily of a commercial nature. It is this description that sells your product to the visitor. Many e-commerce merchants neglect to clearly describe their offerings. From an SEO perspective, here are the requirements: no copy-pasting! Your description must be unique both on your site and off your site. Otherwise, you risk a penalty for duplicate content, which causes Google to ignore your page. The most commonly made mistake is to take the supplier's sheets as they are... We recommend a minimum of 300 words (with subjects, verbs, and complements, not just a series of technical data like the composition). If you lack inspiration, consider describing the product, its use, its advantages, its limitations, its variants, the brand, anecdotes, etc. If you have enough inspiration, do not hesitate to use h2 tags to structure your description and incorporate a few keywords along the way! You may also include links within these descriptions to informative content pages related to the product.
Avoid changing the product URLs.
In PrestaShop, changing the product name does not result in a change of the simplified URL. You have the option to regenerate the simplified URL, but you should not do so: the old URL would then result in a 404 error! To be used only if your product has radically changed.
Fill in the alt tags of the images.
Bad surprise, PrestaShop does not allow us to update the alt tag of an already existing image. It must be done at the integration of the image by filling in the field called "caption." If you were to redo it, click on the image; this will result in opening a window on the left of the images where you can enter the caption for the selected photo.
Please fill in the meta description tag correctly.
If you do not provide it, it will be taken from the short description. If you have time to spare, you can rewrite everything while adhering to the principles already discussed: no more than 160 characters, commercially attractive, and different from one page to another. My advice is to focus on writing short descriptions that meet these criteria. You will achieve two goals with one action.
Optimize the h1 title.
By default and in the vast majority of cases, the h1 title will be the name of the product. This is acceptable; improving this point would be too costly. Should you feel inclined, you could remove the h1 from the product name and place it manually within the long description. Unnecessary and time-consuming!
Avoid excessive tags.
Tags are keywords that you associate with your products to provide visitors with an additional way to search for what they desire. It is rarely used and very time-consuming to implement (you must do it for all products and be meticulous...). In terms of SEO, it is quite unprofitable, so you may choose not to concern yourself with it. The risk is to end up with over-optimization, as keyword clouds have been widely abused in the past.
Provide a specific description for export to marketplaces.
The idea is not to generate duplicate content of your texts on other sites, which are often very well ranked (Amazon, Fnac, RueDuCommerce...). The simplest solution is to send only the short description in your feed, definitely not the long one. And for this one, you may simply use the one possibly provided by the product supplier.
Archive the products in "phase out".
A product in "phase out" is a product that will no longer be available for sale. The (normal) reflex of the e-commerce operator is to deactivate it in the back office, or even to delete it. These two solutions are bad. You are creating 404s (a negative SEO signal for your PrestaShop store) and discarding useful content (if you have followed the recommended natural SEO optimizations mentioned earlier). Archiving involves making the product accessible to the search engine but more difficult for the user to access. To do this, create an archive category in your PrestaShop store. As soon as a product is no longer available, you remove it from all the categories where it was previously listed and place it only in the archive category (or its subcategories if you prefer to keep things organized!). The archive category must not be accessible from the site menu. Try to provide a discreet link from the footer to enhance its indexing by Google, but you may also simply include its path in the sitemap.
That said, the work is not yet complete. You should consider setting up a pop-up (using an Addon) to inform a visitor who enters directly through this page that the product is no longer available for sale (to avoid a bounce) and to offer them the option to click on an alternative. Avoid a meta refresh or automatic redirection that would be perceived as "cloaking" by Google (a prohibited technique). The alternatives being a link to the category or a substitute product. Over time, the size of your site increases without necessarily requiring a larger warehouse!