SEO is one of the most principal aspects of online marketing. If you’re running an eCommerce store using WooCommerce, it is vital that you optimize your website for search engines.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll reveal the most efficient ways to improve your WooCommerce SEO. From optimizing your headers and product title choices to using the Yoast WordPress SEO plugin, and even choosing a fantastic web host like WordPress.com.
Start optimizing your WooCommerce site with this SEO guide now.
Isn’t WooCommerce SEO Friendly Already?
WooCommerce is often compared with Shopify, but unlike Shopify, it’s free to get started. However, while Shopify has SEO functionality built-in, WooCommerce requires plugins.
Fortunately, WooCommerce is built using code optimized for SEO, and plugins such as Yoast make further optimization easy.
But, if you want to make sure your WooCommerce website is performing at its best, it’s essential to understand how to optimize it for search engines.
Let’s talk about how to make WooCommerce more SEO friendly, how to make your shop rank higher in Google searches, and more. On-page SEO for WordPress and WooCommerce is an art that takes time to learn.
In this guide, we will cover the most relevant basics to get you on your way toward eCommerce SEO success.
What Are Some Common WooCommerce SEO Challenges?
One of the main issues with WooCommerce SEO is that it can be challenging to make your product pages and category pages rank high in search engines. Because of how search engines like Google and Bing rank pages, it’s important to have unique and compelling content on each page. Quality is far more important than quantity, so instead of pumping out article after article, build a strategy that focuses on the quality of the content.
Another challenge for WooCommerce product pages is that search engines might not always index all of your products correctly. There are many factors at play here. For example, if there are broken links, bad plugins, or you do not have a site map that allows crawlers to index your store, you will notice your pages drop in the rankings.
Contents: Let’s Start With the Basics
Here’s everything that’s covered in this post:
- Optimize All Headers
- Optimize Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
- Optimize All Product Descriptions
- Start a Blog (or Refresh Your Existing One)
- Do a Site Structure Refresh (Make It Easy To Crawl/Index)
- Check It Passes The Google Mobile Friendliness Test
- Use an SEO PlugIn
- Choose An Amazing Web Host Like WordPress
- Check Links, Including Broken and Backlinks
- Ensure Unique Product Descriptions and Avoid Duplicate Content (Google Hates It)
- Improve Your URLs So They Are Clear, Not Ambiguous
- Optimize All Images For SEO
- Make Use Of Breadcrumbs (Like This Article!)
- Leverage Schema Markup / Rich Snippets
- Increase Website Speed
- Use Search Engine Optimized WordPress Themes
- Improve Your WooCommerce Store’s Security
The Best Ways to Improve WooCommerce SEO
Here are some of the best ways to improve your WooCommerce Website SEO.
Optimize All Page Headers
Headers are a great place to include your targeted keywords, and they play an essential role in SEO. Make sure that you optimize all of your headers for search engine optimization.
Your main header should always contain the primary keyword. The primary keyword is essentially the focus of your content, whether it is a product description or general content of your website.
When you are creating content, make sure to break up your sections. This is where other headers come into play. If you have a great product description, but it is all just one large section, your readers will quickly give up. Instead, divide them up with headers.
Use H2 or H3 headers for these sections. This creates a perfect opportunity for using both primary and supporting keywords.
When you include your target keyword in the headers, you are telling search engines that this is the most important topic on the page. As a result, your site will rank higher for that keyword.
Optimize Your Title Tags and Meta Descriptions
Title tags and meta descriptions should be written to be as search engine friendly as possible.
But what are title tags and meta descriptions?
Title Tags
- The title tag is an HTML element that specifies a web page’s title page
- Displayed as part of the search snippet (SERP)
- Displays as the search result’s clickable headline
- Crucial for user experience, SEO, and social sharing
- Should provide a clear and concise explanation of the page’s content
Meta Description
- A meta description is an HTML element that gives a quick overview of a web page
- Appears in a search engine results page (SERP) as part of the search snippet
- Intended to provide the search engine user an idea of the material on the page and its relation to their search query
A meta description should be clear and concise about what each page is about. This is particularly important for product categories.
Implement an XML Sitemap
A sitemap will help search engines index your website, including your WooCommerce store. A sitemap provides all of your site’s information, including content, videos, photos, and any other file that is part of your store and site.
Optimize All Product Descriptions
Optimize all your store’s product descriptions for search engines. This means including your target keyword in the description and using it throughout the content of the description.
You are informing search engines that this topic is the most vital one on your website when you improve your product descriptions for SEO. As a result, the term will rank higher in SERPs.
While adding keywords to your content is highly recommended, you need to be careful to avoid what is known as “keyword stuffing.” This happens when a word is used in a repeated and unnatural way, and the content no longer flows. It brings the quality of the page down.
Keywords help with search engine optimization, but they will also help improve your conversion rate. When a potential customer searches for your chosen keyword, you want your product to be one of the top results because it:
- helps the consumer trust your business more
- 90% of all traffic goes to the first page
- You don’t want your potential customers to see multiple offers before they get to yours, as each time they see an offer, it lowers the expected value of your traffic.
If your product is one of those top results, you are likely to make a sale, as the customer is looking for that product.
Target Relevant Keywords on Category and Product Pages
This brings us to relevance as well. When you are conducting research on your keywords, make sure they are relevant to your website. You may rank high on a word that is trending, but if it is irrelevant to your industry, you are actually harming your ranking and brand.
For example, receiving 1,000 visitors to a page will not matter if only one person buys your product. Instead, 999 of those people will immediately leave the site, which impacts your bounce rate and SEO rating. If you only receive 50 visitors, but 30 of them buy, you make more money, and bounce rate isn’t affected.
Optimization for a search engine can be a daunting task. But, with the right tools, it can be easy to do and improve your website ranking.
- Use keyword research tools to find keywords that are relevant to your products
- Include these keywords in your titles, headers, and product descriptions
- Optimize your site for search engine friendliness
- Use a plugin to improve your search engine ranking
The best free SEO keyword tools fare:
Install a Quality SEO Plugin
Another great option to optimize your content is to install plugins that specifically help you to produce the best product descriptions.
One of the best-ranking SEO plugins is the Yoast SEO plugin. It has some key features that can improve your website.
Some of these features include:
- Readability Checker
- Duplicate Content Alert
- Content Insights
- Multisite Compatibility
However, Yoast is not the only option. There are several paid and free options that are just as great. An alternative plugin that does it all, as the name implies, is All in One SEO. It currently has over 3 million users and is beginner-friendly.
All in One SEO Benefits
- SEO Audit Checklist
- Easily optimize product title and meta descriptions
- Product image optimization
We briefly mentioned Google Keyword Planner and SEMrush. These tools are some of the best the industry has to offer. They allow you to research keywords, rank your website and have assistant tools to help you improve your content.
Start a Blog (or Refresh Your Existing One)
A blog can be a great way to improve your website’s SEO, and it can also help you generate traffic and sales for your store.
When you blog about topics relevant to your products, you are informing search engines that your website is an authority on those topics. As a result, you will rank higher for those keywords in search engine results pages.
As mentioned before, keywords help customers find you through search engines. While blogging, including keywords in your blogs can help drive new customers to your store.
If you already have a blog, make sure to update it regularly with fresh content. This will help keep your blog readers engaged, and it will also help improve your website’s SEO. You should post on your blog at least two times a week with quality content that will inspire your readers
When you start a blog, you want to choose relevant topics that your readers will find interesting. It is therefore essential that you connect with your audience. Give them a glimpse into your industry and highlight items that are relevant to them. Ask yourself what questions readers might have about your products then create posts that answer these questions.
For example, instead of comparing your products with competitors, write a piece about something interesting that made you dive into the industry. This could have been out of necessity (you needed this product, but it wasn’t available), or you knew you could do better than your competitors (the product was available, but it wasn’t up to par).
Here are some types of content that shoppers often find helpful:
- “How to” posts
- “Top Tips” posts
- “Top Benefits” posts
Do a Site Structure Refresh (Make It Easy to Crawl/Index)
The first step in improving your site structure is to add a sitemap. As mentioned briefly before, a sitemap helps search engines index your page and categorize them properly.
A sitemap also contains all the information of your pages, media, products, and the relationship between each of them. This helps search engines correctly rank your pages according to the search terms entered.
But a sitemap is not the only thing that you should consider. The site structure plays an important role in SEO as well. Search engines look at user experience.
So if your website is complicated, hard to navigate, and has a lot of hidden features, the site crawlers will rank your pages lower. A well-structured site would include:
- A homepage
- Categories
- Subcategories
- Pages and Posts
Your homepage should include information that redirects potential customers to certain targets, like your store. Once the customer views your store, they should easily see the different categories of your products, and if you have many products, even subcategories.
These categories should have the remaining product pages and posts.
Check It Passes The Google Mobile Friendliness Test
The Google Mobile Friendliness Test is a tool that assesses how well your website performs on mobile devices. If your website fails this test, it will be ranked lower on search engine results pages.
This is because Google now prefers mobile-friendly websites.
If your website fails the Google Mobile Friendliness Test, you can use the following techniques to make it more mobile-friendly:
- Use a responsive design
- Use a mobile-specific theme or plugin
- Optimize your website for mobile devices with code or plugins
This will help improve your website’s ranking on search engine results pages.
Choose a Reliable Web Host
Reliable hosting is essential for any successful website. There are many options available to host your WooCommerce website, including WordPress.com. If you choose WordPress.com, you’ll enjoy the following benefits:
- Built-in SEO tools.
- World-class support and security.
- Full access to WordPress themes and plugins.
Get the full scoop here to learn more. Regardless of which host you choose, the advice in this article will still apply.
Check Links, Including Broken and Backlinks
Broken links and bad backlinks can hurt your website’s SEO. Bad backlinks are links to your website from a questionable source. In other words, it is a website that is not trusted by the search engine and will therefore bring your ranking down simply because the external site is linking to your store.
You can use the Screaming Frog SEO Spider Tool to check for broken links on your website. This tool is free to use.
Another option is the Majestic SEO Tool to check for bad backlinks on your website. This tool is paid to use but offers a free trial.
Traditionally, SEO experts would advise disavowing bad links. “Bad” links are unnatural links that are paid for, or are otherwise placed to trick search engines into thinking your sites has more links than it actually does.
However, recent studies show that disavowing links is only helpful in extreme cases. In these cases, you can reach out to the owner of the bad backlink and kindly request a removal. You should also avoid buying links, creating low-quality websites to link back to your own site, and other spammy practices.
If you find that your website has broken links or bad backlinks, you can fix them by using the above techniques. This will help improve your website’s SEO and ranking in search engine results pages.
Ensure Unique Product Descriptions and Avoid Duplicate Content (Google Hates It)
Duplicate content is a big no-no for search engine optimization.
You can use the Copyscape Plagiarism Checker to check for duplicate content on your website. This tool is free to use.
Unfortunately, that even applies to product pages, so for example, if you have the same product information on different pages, it will be considered duplicate content.
To avoid this, make sure that each product has its own unique description. This will help to improve your website’s SEO and ranking in search engine results pages.
If you find that your website has duplicate content, you can fix it by using the following techniques:
- Add unique product descriptions to each of your product pages
- Create original content for your website’s blog posts and pages
Improve Your URLs So They Are Clear, Not Ambiguous
URL formats are an important part of search engine optimization. Permalinks are the permanent internal links or URLs to your individual blog posts and pages.
You can improve your website’s SEO and rank in search engine results pages by making sure permalinks are optimized.
You can use the Yoast SEO Plugin to improve your website’s URLs. Here’s an example of what we mean by a clear vs. ambiguous URL.
- Clear URL: /products/womens-clothing/
- Ambiguous URL: /?sort=price&page=123
Optimizing permanent internal links is an easy thing to change, but it will make a big difference to your SEO.
Optimize All Images for SEO
Images are also an important part of search engine optimization.
You can do this in the media library of your WordPress dashboard.
To access the Media Library, follow these steps:
- Log in to WordPress Admin
- Hover over Media on the left side menu
- Click Library
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Here’s an example of what we mean by optimized vs. non-optimized images:
Optimized image:
- /wp content/uploads/2018/12/cuteblackcat image.jpg
- File name: cuteblackcat
- Alt text: Cute Black Cat
Non-optimized image:
- /wp content/uploads/2018/12/fosjvgnrvh image.jpg
- File name: fosjvgnrvh image
- Alt text: None
An optimized image is smaller in size and has the correct file name and alt text.
Make Use Of Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are a great way to improve your website’s SEO.
Breadcrumbs are a navigation element that helps users and search engines understand the structure of your website. You can use the Yoast SEO Plugin to add breadcrumbs to your website.
If you scroll to the top of this article, you will see a list of all the headers which link out to the different sections. These are breadcrumbs.
The name breadcrumbs refer to Hansel and Gretel’s fairytale, where the two children left a trail of breadcrumbs to help them find their way back home.
Leverage Schema Markup
Schema markup is used for coding your website so that crawlers can index your website by reading the coded label. This code can be used to help search engines add additional features to your search results, like review score stars.
Plugins like Yoast, All in One SEO, and others can help you add this code to your HTML so that Google can properly crawl the code of your site. To add Schema markup to your store, use your chosen plugin and add to the Schema, fill in the Schema type (Product), add the brand, identifier type, and the identifier.
Increase Website Speed
Page speed is an important search engine ranking factor. Google prefers websites that load quickly and have smooth functionality for an excellent user experience.
You can use the Google PageSpeed Insights tool to test the speed of your website. This tool is free to use.
You can also use the Yoast SEO Plugin to improve the speed of your website. This plugin is free to use.
Google PageSpeed Insights will analyze your website and give you a score out of 100. You want to aim for a score of 85 or higher. If you want to improve your score, the tool will provide specific recommendations.
Some effective tips are:
- Reduce the size of your images
- Use a caching plugin such as WP Rocket
- Enable compression
- Minimize redirects
- Optimize your JavaScript and CSS files with a plugin such as Autoptimize
Use Search Engine Optimized WordPress Themes
You can use the WordPress Theme Directory to find search engine optimized WordPress themes.
This is a free resource where you can search for WooCommerce themes by keyword or by theme category.
There are many themes to choose from, so how do you know which one is SEO-friendly?
A theme should have adequate coding, fast loading speeds, and plenty of support. We mentioned responsive themes earlier, and it is the number one item you should consider. Is the theme mobile-friendly?
Make sure that the theme works with multiple browsers, plugins, and of course, WooCommerce.
Track SEO Improvements With Google Analytics
You can use Google Analytics to track the SEO improvements of your website. This tool is free to use.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool that allows you to track the traffic and engagement of your website.
You can use it to track the following data:
- Visits
- Pageviews
- Bounce rate
- Average time on page
- Percent of new visitors
- Top referring sites
- Top search keywords
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Improve Your WooCommerce Store’s Security
Google takes website security very seriously, and so should you.
You can use the Google Security Checkup tool to test the security of your website. This tool is free to use. Google ranks the security of websites, and it factors into its search engine results page preferences.
To ensure your WooCommerce store is secure, you can:
- Use a strong password
- Update your software regularly
- Use a plugin such as WordFence to add security features to your website
Improve Your WooCommerce SEO Today
SEO strategies are complicated, to say the least. It can become overwhelming to get started, but remember, take it one step at a time.
Tackle each problem with this guide in hand, and you will see your page rankings improve. You now have the tools you need to grow your online business! Ecommerce SEO is the new way to market. Get on board today and enjoy seeing your customers pour in for more.
Need more advice on your WooCommerce store? Check out our blog for more useful tutorials.
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