If you are struggling to find which is the better eCommerce platform between Shopify vs WooCommerce, you will find the answer in this guide. Several eCommerce businesses with iconic ideas eventually fail to retain their audience due to their lack of awareness of SEO. The constant failures to reach their potential customers urges them to step into the fat world of SEO. Since SEO is a powerful tool that can help you scale up your business, you cannot avoid taking advantage of it right from the beginning by choosing a designated platform. The right platform helps in scaling your desired business goal. Shopify and WooCommerce are the top-rated SEO platforms, and we will discuss their significance throughout this article.
The Importance of SEO
Before we juggle these big platforms, let us understand the importance of SEO. Search engines are used in the online context to search their products within a blink of an eye. SEO fuels the website visibility and also helps in improving the user experience. Through search engines, you can boost your website visibility organically instead of paying tons of paid advertising.
Shopify vs. WooCommerce: An overview
Understanding the identical features of Shopify vs WooCommerce eCommerce platforms is essential before we go to lengths and breadths into Shopify Vs. WooCommerce.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is the finest eCommerce platform enabling users to build a website from scratch. It is an all-in-one platform that provides users with various useful tools to help them customize, grow and manage their site effortlessly, keeping them free from the knick-knacks of technical headaches. So, whether you are on the outlook to begin your eCommerce website or switch your existing eCommerce website from another platform to Shopify, you can do it effortlessly.
Shopify helps you to sell from anywhere, regardless of your target customers. Some online platforms include Instagram, Facebook, or online marketplaces like Amazon. The compelling features of Spotify make it an ideal platform. Every task in an eCommerce space requires a different tool, and Shopify has blended them as a one-stop solution for business owners.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is one of the top-notch eCommerce platforms built for WordPress. In other terms, we call them a WordPress plugin that has great extensibility to allow users to grow and scale their eCommerce business. With the help of WooCommerce, you can effortlessly set up your store within a few minutes through easy-to-use tools. Apart from just setting up, you can also extend your store’s functionality with extensions available on WooCommerce.
The site is famous for its simplicity and durability. Whether dummies or developers, it is friendly for both of them.
5 Key SEO factors to consider for Shopify vs WooCommerce Comparison
Both Shopify and WooCommerce have identical features and offer tough competition to each other. Let’s have a look at some of the key factors to understand the distinctive features in the Shopify vs WooCommerce race.
1. The ability to customize page URL
URL plays an essential role in ranking your page through the search engine, which is why they need to be customized. Regarding URL customization, WooCommerce is at par with Shopify as it has certain limitations. Shopify has some limitations compared to WooCommerce when we talk about URL customization. You can easily customize your page URL by following quick, simple steps on the WooCommerce site.
2. Meta descriptions, Title tags, headings customization
You can rely on Shopify for basic SEO practices like tile, headings, or meta-information. You can easily rank through Shopify SEO functionality if you create effective content. You can easily change your title tag and meta descriptions by clicking on edit your website SEO
When we talk about WooCommerce, you are in full control to change and edit your website’s content and meta information. As it is built on WordPress, it gives you full control. WooCommerce is highly optimized for content creation on your WordPress site.
Shopify and WooCommerce offer tough competition regarding title tags, meta descriptions, and headline customization.
3. Mobile-friendliness
While comparing SEO performance, mobile-friendliness is one of the essential SEO factors to consider. It is vital to know whether the platform you are choosing is compatible with mobile or not, as most people these days shop through mobile.
WooCommerce and Shopify are mobile-friendly and help users navigate and purchase from their websites. But there’s a kick with WooCommerce. What kind of theme you choose will determine whether or not your WooCommerce website will work on mobile or not? In WooCommerce, not all themes are mobile-friendly. However, WordPress has several flexible development tools that help developers, which makes them win over Shopify.
When we talk about Shopify, it is well-known that it was born as a mobile-friendly platform. It enables various mobile-friendly features which allow the users to upgrade their store’s mobility across various mobile devices. Moreover, as a store manager, it allows you to manage your store through android or iOS apps conveniently.
WooCommerce surely outperforms Shopify as it has free various premium mobile themes.
4. SEO tools and plugins
Shopify has a wide collection of SEO-friendly apps specifically designed to enhance the user’s SEO efforts, like SEO Suite or SEO Marketing. They have both free and paid apps that can help you improve your store’s visibility, which can help you in increasing your sales.
WooCommerce also has several great SEO plugins that help user to optimize their eCommerce website. Just like Shopify, WooCommerce plugins also come in both free and paid versions.
5. Customer support
Shopify surely wins when it comes to customer support. For any complaints, inquiries, or website-related issues, users can easily access 24X7 customer support that offers fast and quick solutions.
We all know that WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin, but it likely does not have full customer support. However, you can create your account at WooCommerece.com to access customer support.
Shopify vs WooCommerce: Summing it up
While comparing Shopify and WooCommerce, we get to know their distinctive features. Both offer different solutions for different problems. Choosing one among them generally depends on your business goal and lead generation strategy. If you want to launch your large-scale store by benefiting through SEO, then WooCommerce is an ideal platform. On the other hand, if you are on the verge of scaling your start-up, then Shopify is the ideal option.
SEO is becoming a key strategy for personal and business websites in what is becoming a highly-competitive online space. Website owners are pulling all whitehat strategies and even darkhat tricks and hacks to rank better on search. However, the whole SEO is still largely misunderstood and still quite technical, especially for newbies. Yes, you might have tons of burning SEO questions from the basics to the advanced level. Fortunately, we are here to help. This article will answer some of the common SEO FAQs to help you tap into the SEO strategy for your growth.
Frequently Asked Questions about SEO
1. What is the meaning of SEO?
For starters, SEO stands for search engine optimization. It refers to the process of improving or optimizing a website to increase its visibility and attract more traffic/organic visits. If you get right with SEO, the quality and quantity of traffic to your website will increase.
2. How does SEO Function?
The working of SEO is complex because it tries to rank tons of websites. Search engines use over 200 factors in their algorithms to produce the search page results/ranking. These factors include quality of content, keywords, page loading speed, backlinks, user-interface friendliness, and mobile friendliness, among others.
3. Has SEO changed over the years?
SEO is constantly evolving to make internet searches enjoyable and fair. A lot has been added to the search engine algorithm to make it smart, detect bad practices, and ensure the genuine ranking of websites. Some of the improvements include the detection of keyword stuffing, location-specific searches, a reward for mobile-friendly websites, optimized SERPS favoring quality content, and semantic search results that match the user’s intention and not just the keyword.
4. Can I handle SEO on my own?
While it is tempting to try it yourself, the truth is that these things are far better when left to the right SEO professionals. The reason is that SEO is not an overnight topic. You need time and dedication to learn it. You ought to hire an SEO professional if you need good results.
5. Do I need SEO for my business?
Nowadays, SEO and business are one thing. You need SEO to make your website visible to potential customers. Otherwise, you will struggle to find a market for your products and services, especially with the current market that leverages digital space.
SEO FAQs about Google Ranking System
6. What should I do to make my website rank on Google?
You need to invest in SEO to make your website rank on Google. Make sure your SEO team uses the right SEO ranking tips for your website ranging from off-page to on-page SEO techniques. Your website should be fast, mobile-friendly, consistently updated, and alert to social signals. The list is long.
7. How does SEO rank Websites?
SEO uses several key ranking factors to rank websites on Google and other search engines. These factors include keywords, loading speed, content, media, backlinks, and website mobile friendliness. It uses these factors with the help of an algorithm to determine how your website ranks on search engines like Google.
8. How long does it take to see new rankings once I start SEO?
It is important to understand that SEO is not a one-time and overnight process. It involves several strategies working in tandem to push your rankings on search engines gradually. When you make updates, the search engine spiders need time to crawl and index the changes. Typically, you need between 3-9 months to see new rankings depending on the search engine spider crawling frequency and the size of work on your website.
9. Should I continue with SEO even after getting good rankings?
Getting the rankings is one thing, and maintaining good rankings is another thing. Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving to make their rankings more accurate. More factors and metrics are added to the algorithms, and you need to be up to speed with them to retain your good rankings. If you stop SEO, your website will lose its ranking fairly quickly and water down all your efforts to rank well.
10. What triggers Google Penalty on your website?
When you get a Google penalty, your website won’t be visible in the search results, and the target audience won’t reach you. If you do anything that tries to manipulate the search results or breaches Google’s quality guidelines and is detected by Google Crawlers, then a penalty is imposed on your website.
SEO FAQs about Technical SEO
11. What is Technical SEO, and are they really important?
As the name suggests, technical SEO is your website’s technical aspects that affect your page ranking on SEO. They include site speed, quality of internal links, website security, content quality, structured data, and eliminating 404 errors. Technical SEOs indicate your website’s quality and help improve your site’s visibility on search engines.
12. What is On-page SEO?
On-page SEO comprises techniques and strategies you employ to improve your website’s search engine rankings. These techniques are focused on optimizing the aspects of your website that are under your control. It aims to make search engines crawl, index, and understand your content. In On-page SEO, you are talking about page speed, content quality, navigation, mobile friendliness, internal linking, title tags, Meta description, image alt text, and core web vitals.
13. What is Off-page SEO?
Off-page SEO refers to techniques and strategies you use outside your website/ third-party sites to boost your search engine rankings. These strategies include backlinks, social media, mentions, Google My Business, forums, influencer outreach, and content marketing.
Outreach Monks offers guest posting services, which is one of the best off-page SEO practices. We assist businesses in generating high-quality backlinks to their websites, which are essential for increasing your website’s authority and credibility in the eyes of search engines.
14. What is Domain Authority, and how is it important?
Domain Authority (DA) is a score given to websites depending on their ability to rank in search engine results. DA values range from 1-100. The higher the number, the better the ranking of your website.
15. What is Crawl Error?
A crawl error happens when the search engine is unable to reach a page on your website, maybe because of unstructured URLs. It is important to fix crawl errors to avoid your website being flagged for errors.
Comparing SEO to Other Strategies
16. What is PPC, and is it better than SEO?
PPC means Pay Per Click. It is a type of internet marketing where you pay a certain fee when your content ad is clicked on. PPC is considered a short-term strategy because it relies on pay per click. Conversely, SEO has more upfront cost but is a good long-term strategy because it gives consistent results with time.
17. What is SMO, and how does it compare with SEO?
SMO is an acronym for social media optimization. It is a social media technique aimed at growing your business’s online presence. Both SMO and SEO are good at generating leads and organic traffic. SMO provides cheaper and faster results compared to SEO. However, SEO provides a more long-term strategy.
18. What is SEM, and is it better than SEO?
SEM stands for search engine marketing and involves buying ads to get traffic and visibility on search engines. Just like PPC, SEM is a short term strategy that gives you quick results. However, SEO is better if you need long-term and consistent search engine ranking.
Local SEO FAQs
19. What is the meaning of Local SEO?
Local SEO is a strategy used by search engines to display page results based on location-specific queries. It leverages the IP address or geolocation technologies for desktop and mobile devices, respectively, to determine the ranking of page results. If you are looking for a local attorney, the search engine will prioritize local attorneys (attorneys near you).
20. What is a Local Pack?
When you search for a local business on a search engine like Google, you will probably see a map and names of three businesses within that locality. This feature is called the Local Pack. Businesses that appear in the local pack collect massive click-through rates, and you will want your business to be here.
SEO Tools FAQs
21. What do SEO Tools mean?
SEO tools are software that is used to analyze your website for the potential of higher ranking on search engine results pages (SERPS). They provide information about your website’s content, keywords, and backlinks. They help you uncover potential opportunities and identify the areas that are letting you down on the search engine ranking.
22. What are some of the best SEO Tools in the market?
There are many SEO tools in the market. However, finding a tool that meets your needs would be best. Different SEO tools provide different capabilities, and you ought to know what you are trying to accomplish. Some of the popular and highly-rated SEO tools include SEMrush, SpyFu, Moz Pro, Ubersuggest, Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Lighthouse, and Answer The Public.
SEO & Content FAQs
23. What are keywords, and how are they important in SEO?
You enter keywords on the search engine’s search bar when you are looking for content. They are used in SEO to optimize a website’s contents to become more visible to search engine crawlers. This makes it easy for crawlers to match the content on your website to the term entered in the search bar. If used properly, relevant keywords boost your search engine rankings.
24. How can I find best keywords for my website?
There are several ways to find relevant keywords for your website. You can put yourself in the shoes of the customer and determine the words you would search to find your product. However, this is somehow trial and error. The best way is to use SEO tools. These tools provide the best suggestions and display the strength of potential keywords for your brand/website. Some of these tools include SEMrush, SpyFu, Serpstat, and Ahrefs.
25. What is the best way to use keywords?
Using keywords correctly is important for better SEO ranking. First, identify your main keyword and use it across titles, Meta description, H1 heading, and first paragraph. The search engine algorithms are fast-evolving and are smart enough to detect the wrong usage of keywords. Even if you are trying to boost your keyword density, just use them naturally and avoid keyword stuffing.
26. How many Blogs should I write to boost my Website ranking?
Quantity and quality go in tandem. The most important thing is to post quality continents consistently. This increases traffic to your website and the ability to generate new leads.
27. Can YouTube Videos Grow Your SEO Rankings?
Video and graphic triggers more social shares than content alone. YouTube videos can generate more traffic to your website, make visitors stay a bit longer on your page, and give you more links and backlinks that are essential in SEO. However, you should add relevant video content to your website.
SEO FAQs on Link Building
28. What are backlinks, and are they important?
Backlinks are like thumps up by another website recommending your content to other readers. It is basically a link from one website to another and is one of the most consistent factors in the search engine ranking algorithms.
Although Google tries to discourage buying backlinks, it still continues, and many websites use this strategy to improve their overall ranking. If many websites provide links to your website, your brand discussion is largely widened and boosts your website traffic. All these factors will undoubtedly improve your SEO ranking.
31. What is the difference between internal links and external links?
Internal links are the hyperlinks that help you navigate to another page within your website. External links, on the other hand, direct you to another page on another website (that does not belong to you). When building external links, ensure they are from a reputable site and are not your competitor.
SEO FAQs about Implementing an SEO Strategy
32. How should I begin my SEO Strategy?
Often, hiring a top SEO agency is the best way to kick off an SEO strategy. However, financial constraints and other factors may not initially allow you to hire them. Therefore, you will need to begin your SEO strategies independently. Find some of the best SEO strategies to build your website ranking on search engines and get started.
33. Is it possible to analyze my Competitor’s Performances?
Analyzing your competitors’ performances in every competition is important for many reasons. Using some of the best SEO tools, you can analyze your competitors’ performances on various SEO grounds like web traffic, domain score, number of backlinks, top-ranking keywords, and domain score, among others.
34. What is the difference between Black Hat and White Hat SEO?
Black Hat SEO is SEO tactics that are not ethical nor follow the search engine’s best practices. These tactics include keyword stuffing, cloaking, content spinning, sneaky redirects, and link schemes. On the other hand, white Hat SEO is a clean SEO tactic that does not breach ethical practices or the search engine’s best practices. These include making your website mobile-friendly, providing quality content, consistently posting, and improving your site speed.
35. Are SEO Companies Really necessary?
Improving your website visibility and traffic is easier said than done. The crux of the matter is that you need to hire a professional SEO marketing company to actualize your SEO needs. SEO professionals have the experience and expertise to turn around your Website traffic and visibility with ease and speed.
Outreach Monks: White Label SEO Solutions for Your Business
If you are a business owner who understands the value of quality SEO or an SEO agency that needs to scale your business, Outreach Monks will make you achieve your goals smoothly and within your budget. Outreach Monks is a one-stop for all SEO needs. We use clean White Hat SEO strategies to generate more organic traffic and boost your online visibility. We provide essential SEO services like white-label link building, blogger outreach, country-specific outreach, and link insertion. In a nutshell, Outreach Monks helps your website improve its ranking, excel in targeted traffic, build a brand and above all, multiply its revenue.
Get to us today and talk with our top SEO professionals to solve your SEO needs and grow your brand like never before.
