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Your Complete Guide to Search (2024)
Thousands of e-commerce stores are vying for your customers' attention. How do you ensure they visit your store and make a purchase?
The answer is simple – WooCommerce SEO!
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the art of being found online. The better your SEO, the higher your ranking in the search engines.
The higher your rank, the more customers you can attract to your store.
In this article we discuss:
- Why WooCommerce SEO is so important
- Some background on WooCommerce and SEO
- 19 Tips for Optimizing WooCommerce for Search Engines
- Top SEO plugin recommendations from our team of experts
At the end of this page, you will have enough information to improve your store's position in search results and attract new customers!
Unleash the power of #WooCommerce SEO! Learn how to get more customers, increase sales, and dominate your niche with this comprehensive guide.
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What is WooCommerce SEO and why is it important?
SEO is the process of optimizing your store to give it the best chance of ranking well in search engine results pages (SERPs).
Although SEO can be incredibly complex, it basically boils down to one thing:
The higher your rank, the more customers you will get.
Search visitors are measured by click-through rate (CTR), which is essentially the percentage of people who click on your page from search engines or other sources.
The higher the percentage, the more people visit your store.
According to Backlinko, the first five search results receive the most visitors before their number drops significantly:
- Position 1 receives 27.6% Click rate.
- Position 2 receives 15.8%.
- Position 3 receives 11%.
- Position 4 receives 8.4%.
- Position 5 receives 6.3%.
Here is an infographic that explains in more detail why SEO is crucial for your business:
Is WooCommerce SEO friendly?
WooCommerce is a relatively SEO-friendly platform. Since it is based on WordPress, which is also SEO-friendly, you have a solid foundation to build on.
However, there is a lot of room for improvement.
You can do this as follows:
Read on to find out how.
Pro tip: SEO is a continuous process. You need to plan your SEO strategy and make it the center of all your activities to continuously increase traffic.
WooCommerce SEO and Keywords
For a business to rank in search engines, you need a basic understanding of keywords.
Keywords are individual words or phrases that someone types when searching for your product.
For example, if you sell watches, some keywords a potential customer might use might be:
- Men's watches
- Women's watches
- Sports watch
- Watches for men
- Watches for women
- Waterproof watches
- Casio Watches
The idea is to use relevant words that someone would automatically type when searching for the content on the page.
For example, if you only sell sports watches, all of your keywords would be related to sports watches, waterproof watches, and similar keywords.
If the site only sold Casio sports watches, your keywords would be even more specific: Casio sports watch, Casio G-Shock watches, and so on.
Keywords and SEO are a complex topic, but it's easy to understand once you get the hang of it.
We have a complete guide on adding keywords and meta descriptions that may be helpful.
Once you know which keywords you want to target, add them to:
- Product title
- Product description
- Contents
- Meta description
- Permalink
Try to insert them where they fit naturally on the page.
Effective WooCommerce SEO Strategy
In this section, we'll discuss every aspect of WooCommerce SEO, provide insider tips, and show you how to make your store as competitive as possible.
First, let's talk about WordPress SEO. It's the foundation your store is built on, so it makes sense to start there.
1. WordPress SEO
WooCommerce is a WordPress plugin and is based on the content management system.
A lot of WooCommerce SEO optimization is done through WordPress and you will see some tips that apply to both WordPress and WooCommerce.
First, we recommend installing and configuring a WordPress SEO plugin so that the basic optimization is already done.
Most SEO plugins have a setup wizard or instructions on how to use them.
Next, implement as many WordPress SEO best practices as possible.
We recommend using categories and tags, internal linking, optimizing the comment section, using an appropriate hierarchy, and more.
Finally, optimize WordPress for speed and performance. Speed is an important ranking factor and also impacts user experience.
The faster your business works, the happier customers and search engines are.
Anything you can do to speed up loading times is better.
Once that's done, we can move on to WooCommerce-specific SEO optimizations. They're in no particular order and we highly recommend considering as many of them as possible.
2. Write optimized product titles
Writing SEO-friendly product titles is important because that’s what your customers are searching for in search engines.
The more relevant you can make it, the more likely a customer is to select it when searching.
Your SEO plugin may be able to help you write SEO-friendly product titles, and it's also useful to get into the habit of optimizing them manually.
Yoast SEO, for example, has some very useful tools that can help with optimizing titles and meta descriptions.
For SEO friendly product titles we recommend the following:
- Use words your audience would use
- Use relevant keywords or phrases
- Follow Google's title guidelines
- Make sure the title reflects the content of the page.
- Be precise
- Avoid excessive advertising
- Consider attributes such as size, color and unique selling points
- Mention the category if you have space
It's worth testing the performance of product titles over a longer period of time to see which ones work well and which ones don't.
Be open to changes to product titles and experiment until you find the perfect title.
3. Use meta descriptions
Meta descriptions appear in search results below the product title. They're usually the second thing someone sees, so getting them right is incredibly important.
Your meta description, just like your title, has to fulfill two tasks. It has to be attractive to search engines and to visitors.
A good meta description should be:
- Less than 155 characters to avoid being cut off
- Keyword optimized like the title
- Descriptive and give a clear idea of what is on the page
- Written in active with positive energy
- Display size, variants or specifications if relevant
- Inviting, with a clear call to action
- 100% unique
Most SEO plugins offer the possibility to optimize the meta description within the product page.
Google is not required to use your meta description, but is likely to do so if it is present.
If you don't provide one, Google will create its own and we don't want that!
4. Optimize product slugs
A slug is part of the page URL and has little impact on SEO, but it is more useful to humans as it explains the page content in plain English.
For example, a URL for a men's shirt could be: https://storename/men's blue designer shirt
The part “mensbluedesignershirt” is the slug and describes the exact product on the page.
This helps search engines understand the page content better and visitors can decide more quickly whether it is the right page or not.
This is another setting that your SEO plugin can help you with, but you can also do it manually if you prefer.
5. Optimize product descriptions
After optimizing the product title, meta description, and slug, it's time to turn your attention to the product page.
This is another part of WooCommerce SEO that needs to satisfy both search engines and customers.
Optimize your product descriptions and increase the likelihood that your products will appear in search results, which can lead to more sales.
There are several things you can do to optimize your product descriptions and improve visibility in search results.
First, use relevant keywords throughout your description.
This helps search engines better understand your product and makes it more likely to appear in relevant searches.
Second, keep your descriptions short and concise.
This allows potential customers to quickly identify what the product is and whether it is of interest to them.
Product descriptions should be:
- Written primarily for customers
- Consistently focuses on features and benefits
- Optimized with the most relevant keywords
- As long or as short as the product and customer needs
- Easy to understand with all the information needed to make a purchase decision
- Designed to encourage customers to buy
- Easy to read, with lots of pictures and videos if necessary
We know that's a lot, but the better your product page, the better your position in search.
Spend as much time as possible studying the competition, experimenting and using your own experience as an online shopper to create the perfect site.
6. Enable breadcrumbs
We recommend enabling breadcrumbs as part of WooCommerce SEO so the customer always knows where they are.
Breadcrumbs can also be displayed in search results, giving your site an additional ranking advantage.
The Astra theme supports breadcrumbs natively. Other themes will likely do so as well.
They are also usually supported by SEO plugins, such as Yoast SEO, which has a special setting for breadcrumbs.
Navigate to SEO > Search results.
Click on the breadcrumbs tab.
You can then use the product category in your breadcrumbs.
Remember to save the changes you made.
If you are not using the Astra WordPress theme or your theme does not natively support breadcrumbs, add the following code to the end of your theme or child theme's header.php file.
