3. URL rewrites
Canonical URLs are added to your page by default
Nothing new compared to Magento 1
URL features in Magento 2
4. Meta Tags
Auto fill meta tags for all your products
Easier to generate unique meta tags per product
You can only use {{name}}, {{sku}} and {{description}} and just once
It’s a global setting, you can’t change it per store view / language
Product Fields Auto-Generation
You can’t set it per category
5. Open Graph
Open Graph support is available for products by default
It can be easily extended by yourself (template)
Currently, only basic information is shown
Shown price is the lowest price, no difference between original and special price
Native Open Graph support
6. Rich Snippets
Implemented for products in the required templates
Rich snippets are easy to extend in your own templates
Only support for products
They weren’t there in M1, but they’re default in M2
Tests revealed one issue, product price should be without currency symbol
7. Google Analytics & Adwords
Content Experiments are integrated
Easy to implement
No configuration except for Analytics ID and Adwords
Google Tag Manager only available in EE (or via extension)
Basic, but with a cool feature
8. XML sitemap
Set frequency and priority for specific entities
Add product images to your sitemap
No HTML sitemap available
Generate your XML sitemap on the fly
Submit your sitemap.xml to robots.txt
9. Robots.txt
Manage it through the Magento backend
Allow and disallow paths and pages
Add your sitemap(s) to your robots.txt
Reset your robots.txt from within Magento back to defaults
10. Conclusion
A lot of cool features for optimal SEO
All solutions are easy to extend, contribute on GitHub or in the M2 Marketplace
More features then Magento 1, room for improvement
There is still room for improvement, but it’s a really good start!
The Magento 1 knowledge is used and extended