10 WooCommerce SEO Tips To Boost Store Rankings In Search
Have you just launched a new online store? Want some actionable WooCommerce SEO tips to help you climb the search results?
Search engines play a pivotal role in how we all use the internet. If you have an online store, appearing in searches can make or break your business.
According to Backlinko, appearing in the top 3 search results gets more than half of all clicks. Moving up a single position could increase your clickthrough rate by over 32%!
That’s how important WooCommerce SEO is!
If you’re struggling to get to grips with WooCommerce SEO, this guide will explain how SEO is about so much more than backlinks.
It will also share some actionable tips you can implement in your store for an SEO boost!
Why is WooCommerce SEO important?
Use your own shopping experiences as your guide to how important SEO is to online stores.
How often will you use a search engine to find a particular product?
If you’re anything like us, you’ll first visit your favorite stores to check their stock. Then you’ll use a search engine to see what else is out there.
Millions of other people do the same thing, which is why WooCommerce SEO is so important.
Something else from that study from Backlinko sums up WooCommerce SEO perfectly:
“Moving from position #10 to #9 will result in 11% more clicks. However, moving up from #2 to the #1 spot will result in 74.5% more clicks.”
If you want your store to be found in search, SEO is a big part of what makes it happen.
Effective WooCommerce SEO can help with:
Attracting more organic traffic
We have already seen how climbing just a couple of sports in search results can yield much more traffic.
If you’re just starting out or want to improve your SEO, an increase of 74.5% in clicks should be great motivation!
Build brand credibility
WooCommerce stores that appear at the top of search results always seem more credible than those lower down.
Ranking has nothing to do with trust, but in the eyes of a visitor, the two are inextricably linked.
Boost website visibility
When was the last time you checked page 2 in search results? If you’re anything like us, it was a while ago.
First page gets the most traffic. Position 1-5 on the first page gets the vast majority of clicks.
10 Best Woocommerce Seo Tips For Online Stores
Now let’s share 10 actionable WooCommerce SEO tips that anyone can use. Whether you’re just starting out or are more experienced, everyone can use these tips to perform better in search.
1. Optimize The Speed And Performance Of Your Website
Shoppers have little patience to wait for a store to load. Unless it’s Black Friday and everyone is visiting at the same time, a WooCommerce store should load in less than 2 seconds.
Any longer and you risk losing visitors.
Google says “the probability of a bounce (a visitor leaving right away) increases 32% as page load time goes from 1 second to 3 seconds.”
Because of this, Google ranks slow loading pages lower than faster loading pages.
One of the key benefits of using WooCommerce instead of Shopify or other platforms is the ability to control everything, including performance.
Use a fast web host, use a speed optimized WooCommerce theme, use a caching plugin and consider using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) to deliver the speed visitors demand.
2. Choose An Seo Friendly Woocommerce Theme
An SEO friendly WooCommerce theme provides the framework for your SEO efforts. Along with a fast web host, a high performance WordPress theme loads fast and gives visitors what they want quickly.
SEO friendly WooCommerce themes are also fully responsive, support schema markup and provide the tools you need to build an amazing website.
Without slowing it down.
Fortunately, there are a wide range of SEO friendly themes on the market.
Many are designed to work seamlessly with WooCommerce and make it as easy as possible to build an online store.
If you’re lucky, your SEO friendly WooCommerce theme will also come with store templates all ready to go!
3. Create A Mobile Friendly Woocommerce Store
Creating a professional-looking mobile site for your store is incredibly important. With mobile traffic overtaking laptop and desktop, you need to cater to this audience if you want to make a profit.
mCommerce sales are expected to account for 43.4% of total retail ecommerce sales in 2023, up from 41.8% in 2022.
Google also has a mobile-first approach to indexing. This is a key point to address as early as possible when you’re building your website.
The good news is, most SEO friendly WooCommerce themes are also mobile-friendly as the two go hand in hand.
Make sure before you choose your theme carefully. Test it thoroughly on all screen sizes and make sure all store functions work as well on mobile as they do on larger screens.
4. Use an SEO Plugin
SEO plugins are essential when you’re getting started and aren’t yet in a position to hire your own SEO.
They provide all the basic tools to help you optimize pages and posts for search and make it easy to perform basic optimizations.
They provide space for meta titles, and descriptions, assist with keyword placement and perform many essential SEO tasks to benefit your WooCommerce store.
Three SEO plugins worth checking out include:
Backlinks are essential for WooCommerce SEO and something most plugins cannot help with.
Our own link building services can provide high authority links, international links, local links and fully managed link building services for your store.
5. Write SEO Product Titles
Writing SEO titles means framing the product title in a way that appeals to humans and search engines.
The good news is that the two align in many ways.
Search has changed a lot in recent years to put people first. Rather than putting the product name on its own, combine it with keywords so it can rank in search.
For example, rather than a product title like ‘Arctic Insulated Parka’, choose something like ‘Black waterproof parka for women from Arctic Insulated’.
That way you should capture searches from people looking for black coats, waterproof coats, parkas, women’s parkas, women’s coats and our (fictional) Arctic Insulated brand.
6. Create SEO Friendly Product Descriptions
Use the same approach with writing product descriptions. You want to appeal to people first but also the search engines.
Perform your keyword research and include them throughout the page wherever they fit naturally.
Write for people and what they are likely to search for and want to know.
Include a section on features and benefits, add all the technical information at the end or in a separate tab and make every description unique.
Check competitors and well-known stores and see how they write their product descriptions. Copy the parts you like and make them your own.
Make sure every description is unique and they should begin ranking in no time!
7. Use SEO Friendly Product Categories and Tags
Organization is key when you’re creating an online store. Even if you don’t have hundreds or thousands of products, making it easy for customers to find things is key.
For example, having a ‘coat’ category is descriptive, but if you sell different kinds of coats it doesn’t help the customer much.
Separating categories into ‘dress coats’, ‘waterproof coats’, ‘casual coats’ and so on is much more helpful.
Descriptive product categories also help search engines when indexing your site, so it’s a double win.
Tags can also help customers find what they are looking for.
You can use them generically, ‘coats’ or ‘waterproof coats’ but also specifically ‘Black waterproof parka for women’ or ‘Arctic Insulated black waterproof parka for women’.
By helping customers, they stay in your store longer and make it easier to find an item and purchase.
Time on page is an SEO signal and helps with SEO as well your bottom line!
8. Add Alt Text To Product Images
Alt text has a dual role on the web. It’s good for SEO as search engines can better understand what the image is about. It’s also good for screen readers used by the visually impaired.
We recommend adding alt text to every image you feature in your WooCommerce store for these reasons.
That alt text should be descriptive and include the focus keyword.
For example ‘Woman wearing black Arctic Insulated waterproof parka in the rain’.
It describes what the image features and includes your focus keywords so will work for everyone.
9. Enable Breadcrumbs
For such a small thing, breadcrumbs punch way above their weight in terms of usefulness.
Breadcrumbs look something like Home > Outdoor clothing > Coats > Arctic Insulated
They help visitors navigate around your website quickly and easily and let them go back and forth as they explore products.
It also keeps visitors on the site longer, which is vital for WooCommerce stores.
Breadcrumbs also help search engines figure out your site structure. Like your XML sitemap, breadcrumbs provide directions to what page comes next and which one preceded it.
That’s a small but important part of website indexing.
You can add breadcrumbs using a plugin or by adding code. Some WooCommerce themes also include breadcrumb support.
10. Secure Your Woocommerce Store
One element of SEO that should never be underestimated is security. If you have put your heart and soul into building a successful store, you want to protect it.
Website security is about you, your customers and your reputation. We recommend doing everything you can to secure your store as much as possible.
Google is very quick to pick up on security issues. Whether that’s a hacked site, insecure pages, poisoned links or something else.
Once it detects a security risk, it adds a big red warning to anyone landing on that page.
You don’t need us to tell you what kind of impact that would have on your business!
Fortunately, there are a number of very good security plugins for WordPress that will also help protect WooCommerce.
Alongside a web host that takes security seriously and SSL encryption, a good security plugin should go a long way to protecting your store.
WooCommerce SEO For Online Stores
While we have tried to cover all the bases, this post only scratches the surface of WooCommerce SEO.
It’s enough to get you started and encourage search engines to crawl and index your pages. What happens next is up to you.
The more active marketing and promotion measures you take will have a direct impact on how many visitors you get and how well your store performs.
The good news is, by using WordPress and WooCommerce, you are giving yourself the best possible chance to make your business a success.
Good luck out there!
About Author
Sujay is the CEO and Co-Founder of Brainstorm Force, the company behind Astra. He’s passionate about the online space and writes articles to help entrepreneurs and freelancers succeed online. A father, a Youtube addict, and the brain behind numerous world-class products, you can connect with him on Twitter. @sujaypawar.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does WooCommerce have good SEO?
WooCommerce is good at SEO, as is WordPress, but there are many ways you can improve it, such as using a fast web host, SEO friendly theme, descriptive product categories, unique product descriptions, SEO optimized titles, schema, images with alt text and so much more.
How do I improve SEO in WooCommerce?
You can improve SEO in WooCommerce by following the 10 tips in this guide. Each is easy to do and can have a dramatic impact on your position in search engines. The good news is, most of the improvement you make also improves the user experience so it’s a win win! Consider good website security, using a speed optimization plugin, SEO optimized product titles and descriptions, breadcrumbs and other techniques to improve your SEO.
Is Shopify better at SEO than WooCommerce?
No, Shopify is not better at SEO than WooCommerce. Shopify has some very useful SEO options but they are limited and you don’t have much control over the overall SEO performance of your store. One of the reasons WordPress and WooCommerce is so popular is that everything is yours to control. It means more work for you and your SEO plugin but also means more control over how you appear in search results.
How do I increase traffic to my WooCommerce website?
You can increase traffic to your WooCommerce website in a number of ways. SEO is at the core of your efforts so your store attracts more organic traffic. You can also consider attracting backlinks, outreach, paid ads, creating a newsletter, setting up a YouTube channel, social media marketing and a number of other techniques. There really is no limit to what’s possible if you put the work in!
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