Duration: 25:51
🧾 Analytical Summary
🚀 Why SEO Matters: The Reality of Search Behavior
Noelin, a Business Analyst at Odoo, opened with a revealing question to the audience: "Who would be too lazy to scroll all the way down to click on the 10th page of Google results?" The overwhelming response demonstrated a fundamental truth of online behavior—users overwhelmingly click on top search results, making Search Engine Optimization (SEO) critical for any business website seeking visibility.
The presentation focused specifically on organic search results rather than paid advertising (SEA - Search Engine Advertising). When searching for "running shoes," the presenter distinguished between sponsored results (marked with "Sponsor" labels) that companies pay to display and organic results below them that earn placement through Google's algorithm. SEO is the practice of optimizing websites to rank highly in these organic results without paying for placement.
💼 Understanding SEO vs. SEA
The crucial distinction between SEO and SEA sets expectations correctly. SEA (Search Engine Advertising) involves paying platforms like Google to display your website prominently in search results, with costs per click or impression. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) focuses on convincing search engine algorithms that your website deserves high organic ranking based on relevance, quality, and authority.
While SEA provides immediate visibility, it requires ongoing payment and stops the moment budget runs out. SEO builds sustainable, long-term visibility that continues generating traffic without per-click costs. For most businesses, combining both strategies is ideal, but SEO provides the foundation for enduring online presence.
⚙️ The Three Pillars of Odoo SEO
Odoo's SEO approach is organized around three main pillars that make optimization accessible to non-technical users. The first pillar—content optimization—represents the most important area where users have the greatest impact. The second pillar covers technical settings that Odoo largely handles automatically. The third pillar addresses linking strategies that build authority and navigation. Additionally, a critical fourth element—redirections—becomes essential for businesses migrating from other platforms.
The presentation emphasized simplicity throughout, demonstrating that effective SEO doesn't require deep technical knowledge. Business owners and content managers can implement powerful optimization strategies using Odoo's built-in tools.
🧩 Pillar One: Optimize Your Page and Content
The demonstration used Soapy Smiles, a fictional company manufacturing and selling handmade natural soap through an Odoo e-commerce website. The founder, Mary, wants her site to rank highly when potential customers search for natural soap products.
The starting point for any page is the Optimize SEO button in the top-right corner of the website editor. This should be configured for every important page, particularly the homepage, product categories, and key landing pages. Clicking this button opens a dialog where users define the page title and meta description—the text that appears in search results.
The title tells search engines what the page is about, while the meta description provides a brief summary that appears below the title in search results. These elements directly influence click-through rates because they represent the first impression users see on Google. Odoo's AI can automatically generate appropriate titles and descriptions based on page content, though users should review and customize these suggestions to ensure accuracy and brand voice.
📊 Keyword Strategy and Content Structure
Keywords are terms users type into search engines when looking for products or services. For Soapy Smiles, relevant keywords include "natural soap," "handmade soap," "organic body care," and similar phrases. These keywords must appear naturally throughout page content for search engines to understand topic relevance.
Content structure dramatically impacts SEO effectiveness. Every page should have exactly one H1 heading—the primary title that identifies the page's main topic. This H1 should incorporate primary keywords. For example, "Handcrafted Natural Soap for Your Family" is a strong H1 because it includes relevant keywords while remaining readable and compelling.
Subsequent content should use hierarchical heading structure with H2 subheadings for major sections, H3 for subsections, and so on. In Odoo's website builder, this is controlled by selecting text and choosing heading levels from the formatting options. This logical structure helps both users and search engines understand content organization and topic relationships.
The content check feature in Odoo analyzes pages for keyword density and placement, providing feedback on whether important terms appear sufficiently throughout the content. This helps ensure pages effectively communicate their subject matter to search algorithms.
🖼️ Image Optimization: The Hidden SEO Opportunity
Images represent a significant but often overlooked SEO opportunity. Properly optimized images can drive substantial traffic through Google Image Search as users discover products and content visually. However, search engine algorithms cannot yet understand image content automatically, making proper tagging essential.
In Odoo's website builder, clicking any image reveals a description field where users should provide clear, keyword-rich descriptions of what the image shows. Rather than writing complete sentences, concise keyword phrases work best—for example, "natural lavender soap bar" or "handmade olive oil soap." Images from Odoo's Unsplash library come with descriptions pre-populated, saving time.
Image file size and format also impact SEO significantly. Google prioritizes fast-loading websites because users abandon slow sites. When images are uploaded to Odoo, the system automatically converts them to WebP format, a modern image format that provides excellent quality at dramatically smaller file sizes. The demonstration showed an image dropping from 131 kilobytes in JPEG format to 11.7 kilobytes in WebP—over 90% size reduction—with no visible quality loss. This automatic optimization ensures fast page loading without requiring manual image processing.
💬 AI-Generated Content: Balancing Speed and Quality
Odoo's AI integration accelerates content creation significantly. The presenter demonstrated generating category descriptions by typing slash-AI in the website builder and providing a simple prompt: "Generate a short text about shampoo that is natural and handmade." The AI instantly created relevant content that could be published immediately.
However, an important caveat accompanied this demonstration. While AI-generated content saves time and provides good starting points, search engines increasingly favor unique, specific content that reflects genuine expertise and brand personality. Generic AI text can sometimes be detected and de-prioritized by algorithms.
The recommendation is to use AI as a foundation rather than a complete solution. Provide AI with specific context about your company—mission statements, product details, company culture documents—to generate more tailored content. Then edit and personalize the output, adding unique insights, specific product details, and authentic brand voice. This approach combines AI efficiency with the authenticity and specificity search engines reward.
🎯 One Page, One Topic: Focused Content Strategy
An important principle demonstrated was topic focus—dedicating individual pages to specific subjects rather than cramming multiple topics onto single pages. The Soapy Smiles homepage mentioned workshops the company offers, but the presenter recommended creating a dedicated Workshops page to provide comprehensive information about this service.
Odoo makes page creation simple. Clicking New in the top-right corner, selecting Page, choosing a template (or starting blank), naming the page, and checking "Add to menu" creates a new page that's immediately accessible through site navigation. This focused approach improves SEO because search engines can more clearly understand what each page offers and rank it for specific searches.
🔧 Pillar Two: Technical Features (Odoo Handles It)
The second pillar—technical SEO—involves behind-the-scenes factors like site speed, clean code, proper HTML structure, SSL certificates, XML sitemaps, and numerous other technical requirements. The good news is that Odoo's development team manages these continuously, ensuring the platform meets search engine technical requirements without user intervention.
One technical element users should understand is mobile responsiveness. More than half of all web traffic now comes from mobile devices, and Google uses mobile-friendliness as a significant ranking factor. Websites that don't display properly on phones and tablets face ranking penalties.
Odoo automatically converts websites for mobile viewing. Clicking the mobile preview button in the website builder shows how pages will appear on smartphones, with Odoo intelligently resizing and rearranging content for small screens. Users can fine-tune mobile presentation by selecting blocks and adjusting visibility settings to hide elements on mobile if they don't translate well to smaller screens. This ensures optimal user experience across all devices without requiring separate mobile site development.
🔗 Pillar Three: Linking Strategies
The third pillar covers two types of links that significantly impact SEO ranking. Internal links are connections between pages within your own website. Search engine crawlers follow these links to discover and index content, and well-linked sites signal to algorithms that content is organized and comprehensive.
Creating internal links in Odoo is straightforward. The demonstration showed adding a button by typing slash-button in the content editor, then defining where it should link. Rather than requiring users to find and copy URLs, typing slash in the URL field displays all website pages, making linking intuitive. Good internal linking helps visitors navigate easily while ensuring search engines can fully index your site.
Backlinks are links from other websites to yours, representing the most powerful SEO factor beyond your own content. When respected, high-traffic websites link to your site, search algorithms interpret this as a vote of confidence and authority. The New York Times linking to Soapy Smiles would dramatically boost the company's search rankings, but even links from smaller local blogs, industry directories, and community websites positively impact visibility.
Building backlinks requires outreach, creating link-worthy content, participating in industry communities, getting listed in directories, and fostering relationships with complementary businesses and publications. While Odoo cannot generate backlinks automatically, the platform provides excellent content creation tools to produce the high-quality material that earns links naturally.
🔄 Redirections: Critical for Platform Migration
For businesses migrating from another platform to Odoo, the redirection strategy becomes absolutely critical. When you change website platforms, page URLs typically change. For example, a Shopify site might use /h-who-we-are while the equivalent Odoo page uses /about-us. If these URLs aren't properly redirected, visitors clicking old links will hit error pages, damaging both user experience and SEO rankings.
Setting up redirections in Odoo prevents this problem. Navigate to Configuration > Redirects, click New, name the redirect, enter the old URL path (just the path portion, not the full domain), enter the new URL path, select Permanent Move (301 redirect), and save. This tells search engines and browsers that the old URL has permanently moved to the new location.
These redirections should be created for all important pages—homepage, product categories, best-selling products, blog posts with traffic, and any pages that rank well in search results. Bulk import via Excel streamlines this process for sites with many pages, preventing the tedious manual creation of hundreds of redirects.
Failing to implement redirections when migrating can result in catastrophic SEO damage, losing months or years of ranking improvements almost overnight. This is one of the most common and devastating mistakes businesses make when changing platforms.
📈 Measurement and Ongoing Optimization
Odoo integrates with Google Search Console and Google Analytics to provide visibility into SEO performance. These connections are configured in the website settings and allow tracking of search rankings, click-through rates, traffic sources, user behavior, and conversion metrics. This data reveals what's working and what needs improvement.
Regular SEO audits should review content performance, identify optimization opportunities, and adapt to algorithm changes. For businesses that prefer expert assistance, Odoo offers professional SEO services that include comprehensive site audits, keyword research and strategy, content structure recommendations, implementation training, and ongoing optimization support. This service helps businesses maximize visibility without becoming SEO experts themselves.
🌟 Key Takeaways and Best Practices
The essential SEO practices for Odoo websites can be summarized in actionable steps. Add titles and descriptions to every important page using the Optimize SEO feature. Ensure each page has one and only one H1 heading that includes relevant keywords. Describe every image with keyword-rich alternative text. Create focused pages with one primary topic per page. Generate relevant, specific content that reflects genuine expertise. Let Odoo handle technical optimization automatically. Build internal links between related pages throughout your site. Pursue backlinks from reputable websites in your industry. If migrating from another platform, implement comprehensive redirects for all important URLs.
Following these practices makes Odoo websites discoverable by customers actively searching for products and services, building sustainable organic traffic that drives business growth without ongoing advertising costs.
🧠 Viewpoint: Odoo Perspective
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated creative perspective inspired by Odoo's vision.
SEO shouldn't be something that requires hiring specialists or understanding arcane technical details. That's why we've built comprehensive SEO capabilities directly into Odoo Website with interfaces that make sense to normal business users. The Optimize SEO button isn't hidden in technical settings—it's right there in the website builder where people are actually working on their content. The automatic WebP conversion, mobile responsiveness, technical optimization—these aren't features you turn on or configure, they just work in the background because we know most business owners don't want to become SEO experts, they just want their websites to be found. What makes our approach unique is the integration. When you're managing products, those products automatically have proper schema markup for rich search results. When you're writing blog posts, the content structure tools guide you toward SEO-friendly formatting. When you're running e-commerce, the category pages are already optimized with the right technical elements. And the AI integration for content generation represents the future—not replacing human creativity, but accelerating the work of creating the unique, valuable content that search engines reward. We're also realistic about what Odoo can and can't do. We can make your website technically excellent and easy to optimize, but we can't write your unique brand story or build backlinks for you. Those require human insight and relationships. That's why we offer SEO services for companies that want expert guidance—we'll help you develop the strategy and teach you how to execute it within Odoo's tools.
🏢 Viewpoint: Competitors (WordPress / Shopify / Wix / Others)
⚠️ Disclaimer: AI-generated fictional commentary. Not an official corporate statement.
Odoo's SEO capabilities are competent and appropriate for their target market, particularly businesses seeking operational integration over specialized web optimization. The simplified interface and automatic technical handling work well for users who aren't SEO professionals. However, companies serious about search visibility should understand the landscape. WordPress, which powers over 40% of the web, offers unmatched SEO depth through plugins like Yoast, Rank Math, and All in One SEO that provide granular control over every aspect of optimization, extensive schema markup options, advanced technical configuration, and integration with every major SEO tool and service. The WordPress SEO ecosystem is simply the most mature and comprehensive available. Shopify has invested heavily in commerce-specific SEO, with features like automatic product schema, excellent site speed optimization, sophisticated URL structure for product variants, and deep integration with shopping search features across Google, Facebook, and other platforms. Their focus on conversion-optimized commerce gives them advantages in product search visibility. Specialized SEO platforms and tools like SEMrush, Moz, and Ahrefs offer capabilities for competitive analysis, keyword research, backlink monitoring, and rank tracking that are far beyond what any integrated business platform provides. The real question for businesses is whether SEO is a core competency or a supporting function. If it's core to your business model, specialized tools with deeper functionality make sense. If it's important but not central, and operational integration provides substantial value, Odoo's approach is reasonable. The redirect functionality for migrations is basic but functional—though anyone migrating a large site with strong SEO should engage specialists regardless of target platform.
Disclaimer: This article contains AI-generated summaries and fictionalized commentaries for illustrative purposes. Viewpoints labeled as "Odoo Perspective" or "Competitors" are simulated and do not represent any real statements or positions. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.