Ready to begin the process of optimizing your WooCommerce SEO, but don’t know where to start?
You actually have less work to do than you think. WooCommerce’s functions already offer SEO benefits to your site. With a few additional steps, you can even further improve your WooCommerce store in Google’s rankings.
The following guide will help you to understand the benefits of using WooCommerce for your online store, as well as some of the best practices for optimizing your WooCommerce SEO.
The Basics of WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a plug-in for your online store that is designed for WordPress websites. With its open-source structure, you can use WooCommerce to customize your products.
Luckily, installing WooCommerce already will do wonders for your SEO. Most of its functions are derived from its hosting system WordPress. Below are some of the features that WooCommerce will integrate into your site.
Mobile Responsiveness
As more and more customers use their tablets and phones for online purchases, responsiveness is becoming one of the most important features of an SEO-friendly website. WooCommerce automatically adjusts its features based on whatever device a visitor uses.
SEO Guidelines
WooCommerce also will guide you into designing pages that follow an SEO strategy. For example, pages with title headers (H1) will rank the best on Google, and WooCommerce will guide you to input an H1 on each page.
Optimized Themes
Certain design themes are better for SEO than others. Sometimes, the most attractive themes will wreak havoc on your website’s search engine rankings. With WooCommerce, you can choose from a variety of visually appealing designs that complement your brand identity without affecting web performance.
Describing Products
WooCommerce gives you the option to include a meta description for your products. For the best SEO, every single product should have one. Google will read and track the information here, so treat it as a small bit of content for Google’s algorithm.
And even though this description will not be visible once viewers click on your site, they will see it displayed under your product title on search engines.
To attain the best SEO results, product descriptions should be eye-catching enough to spark the interest of viewers but include clear language and relevant SEO writing to improve Google’s understanding of your product. Make sure that you use the same keywords in the meta description as you do in the product title.
Product descriptions that are visible under each product should be SEO-friendly, too. To do this, make sure they are easy to read and provide an accurate summary of what the viewer is looking for.
Best Practices for URLs
Any URL on your e-commerce site should be as short as possible while still explaining the purpose of its webpage. This way, customers will be able to remember specific pages on your site and find them more easily.
To do this, use permalinks, which are static hyperlinks to particular pages on your website. For example, a link that reads yourwebsite.com/contactpage will take you to the specific page on your site, rather than the home page. In this case, it seems like the page in question is a contact page.
You can customize your permalinks using WooCommerce by going to Settings > Permalinks on your WordPress backend. Here you can decide how you want to structure your permalink. The best way would be to choose a custom permalink for each page.
On WooCommerce, your permalink for each product will automatically use product IDs rather than a recognizable product description. Using custom permalinks, you can change your link from yourwebsite.com/?product=333 to yourwebsite.com/pendantnecklace. This will optimize your SEO because it will include keywords.
Optimizing Page Titles
Following the same logic, you would use for URLs, make sure to optimize your page titles. Most e-commerce stores will have pages for individual products as well as category pages.
Titles should indicate what viewers can find on your pages without competing with one another for SEO rankings. For category pages, keep your title broad. If your website sells a variety of clothing and accessories, your category page for jewelry and watches simply should read: “Jewelry and Watches.”
Independent products should be more specific, like “Silver Pendant Necklace.” Make sure that product pages are individual to your site. If you sell both a gold and a silver pendant necklace, the product page titles should be different to reflect the two different color options.
Simplifying Your Site
One metric that Google will use to rank your site is the amount of time that customers spend on each page. If a user clicks a link to your website but only stays on the page for two seconds, Google will interpret your website as unhelpful to the viewer.
In order to avoid high bounce rates, make your site as simple to use as possible. The longer that viewers stay on your site, the better that your site will rank on the search engine results page.
And making your website easier to use will benefit more than just your SEO rankings. Users often will leave websites and abandon their shopping carts if they experience difficultly navigating your products. This means that you will likely see your sales increase once you streamline your site design.
Maximizing Your WooCommerce SEO
Creating well-crafted WooCommerce SEO content can be time-consuming, especially if you’re not seeing the ROI that you’re hoping for. If you’re selling products in a highly competitive space like retail, you may want to invest in an SEO writer to curate unique content that will get the results you expect.
For the best results, consult with our team of SEO experts. With a free consultation, we can discuss the best ways to maximize your WooCommerce SEO and boost traffic to your e-commerce store. We’re looking forward to connecting with you!