According to Hosting Tribunal, more than 4.4 million sites use WooCommerce for their online stores and nearly 94% of all WordPress sites using this plugin to power their e-commerce stores. The huge popularity of this platform is because of its low-cost maintenance, huge collection of free plugins, versatility, it’s low cost (it doesn’t charge a per-transaction fee), and it offers a complete e-commerce solution that’s easy to use. For any business that can’t afford a custom e-commerce solution, it is a safe option to go for WooCommerce. Yet, getting your online store found, achieving WooCommerce SEO, is still a challenge to most small businesses
Getting found in an increasingly crowded online space relies on SEO (search engine optimization). That means your store and your website, in general, must optimize content and other activities to conform to the Google search algorithm (sure, there are other search engines but Google still accounts for over 92% of all search) so your products show up at the top when users search for these types of products. In this blog, we will highlight the top 5 WooCommerce SEO tricks to rank your products higher.
WooCommerce SEO
1. Proper product description
Every product in WooCommerce deserves an accurate description. Use this section properly to rank your product on search engines. Don’t make descriptions lengthy unnecessarily. A well-crafted product description with proper use of keywords boosts your page ranking. Not only are accurate product descriptions necessary for search engine ranking, but product descriptions motivate visitors to purchase and answer their questions to ensure they get the right product. This means buyers are happier and more likely to post positive reviews.
Bonus tip: Try to collect the product description from the manufacturer. Because no one has better information about the product than the manufacturer. But do not use their description verbatim. Edit their description and write your own to make it SEO-friendly by using proper keywords. Otherwise, your description matches your competition who used the manufacturer’s description, which isn’t good.
2. Enable breadcrumbs option
Breadcrumbs are a navigational tool to help users return to previous pages. See the image below to show how breadcrumbs are implemented on a website.
Pages with breadcrumbs offer a better user experience as users can revert back to the previous pages using the breadcrumbs links. Breadcrumbs also help Google understand your page structure properly, which results in a higher ranking. Use plugins like “WooCommerce Breadcrumbs” to set your breadcrumbs. Otherwise, you can enable breadcrumbs from your SEO plugin like “Yoast SEO” or “All in SEO”.
Bonus tips:
- Make your breadcrumbs link font a bit larger so that users can easily find them on the page.
- Use breadcrumbs schema to show it in place of the URL in search results.
3. Catchy meta description
Meta description display beneath your link, title, and image in search to give users an indication of your page’s contents. In September 2009, Google announced that meta descriptions and meta keywords no longer contribute to ranking. But metas do contribute to your CTR (click-through rate) as a good description entices a user to click. Also, sometimes Google uses meta descriptions to make the featured snippet such as the one below.
Try to write a unique meta for every product or service page. If you don’t write a meta description, Google will show any relevant part of your content as the meta.
WooCommerce doesn’t provide an option to include the meta description. So, you can write the meta description using your SEO plugin.
Tips for a proper meta description:
- Make the meta description length from 155-160 words.
- Use words that create a sense of emergency to entice the user to click the link immediately.
- Don’t just copy and paste a random part of your content as a meta description. Instead, leave this field blank. At least Google will display the relevant part as a meta description according to the user’s query.
4. Optimized title and URL structure
An optimized page title has an impact on ranking. Every page should contain a unique title that includes keywords related to user intent. For instance, a category page and a product page should contain unique keywords. Your category page might rank for a broad keyword while a product page ranks for more specific keywords. As an example, a category page might include the keyword “Apple mobile” and a product page could contain “Apple XR Red Color”. You can edit the SEO title using your SEO plugin. Otherwise, Google displays the page title as SEO title in SERPs (search engine results pages).
Tips to writing a title:
- Google displays only 50-60 characters of the title tag (H1 for my coding friends). So, try to limit the character to meet this standard.
- Don’t write titles only for search engines alone. Stuffing keywords in this section is not okay for a good user experience and may get you penalized by Google.
- Don’t use too many transition words in the title tag.
Another thing you need to craft is the URL format. You don’t need any other plugin in WooCommerce to edit the URL. From WordPress settings, go to the permalink setting and edit the URL structure. Ensure the permalink matches your product. Like www.example.com/product/product-name.
5. Use the Best SEO Plugins for WooCommerce
Most users install an SEO plugin to manage their SEO or use a couple of plugins for different purposes. For example, “Yoast SEO” is likely your first choice to make your pages SEO-friendly. To create rich snippet results and boost your CTR use the “All in One Schema Rich Snippets” plugin. To monitor links on your pages you can use the “Broken Link Checker” plugin to eliminate broken links, a minor ranking factor.
Bottom Line
These WooCommerce SEO tips should definitely help you to boost your website ranking and product sales. Besides these five you should optimize other basic things like image optimization, WooCommerce product attributes, etc. A proper alt text and image title can rank your image on Google even if your product page doesn’t rank well. Product attribution is not directly linked to SEO but it gives users the proper idea about the product.
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