WooCommerce SEO is a term that you may have come across over and over again as you search the net on how you can get more people to your website. However, despite coming across this word multiple times, some people still don’t know either:
- What it means
- What it does
- How does it work
In that case, in this article, we will try our very best to explain to you what SEO is. In addition, we will also tell you how you can actually implement some optimization techniques and methodology onto your website. As a result, you will find that your site will rank higher on SERPs (more on this later), and you will notice more traffic coming to your webpages.
What is SEO?
Before we begin with WooCommerce SEO techniques, let’s take a moment to lay down the foundation first by defining what it is.
SEO stands for “search engine optimization”, which are ways to improve your website so that it ranks higher on SERPs (Google Search Pages). Therefore, your site will be visible to more people who search online. As a result, your web traffic will have more chances to increase because more people will notice your site if it ranks higher.
In other words, online optimization acts like a big online advertising board for your target audience. Furthermore, just as a physical advertising board makes people aware of a physical business, similarly, online optimization makes online visitors aware that your online presence exists.
For example, if you sell second-hand furniture online through the internet, and you properly optimize your website for search engines by enhancing technical aspects such as site speed, keyword association, and mobile compatibility. Then, whenever someone searches for “used furniture”, your site will most likely appear on the first page of the search results. As a result, you will have more chances of this customer coming to your online location than if you had ranked lower due to poor optimization for search engines.
Is SEO Important?
By reading the above section, you may have already guessed the answer to this section.
Online is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to generate organic traffic for your web pages. Instead of relying on paid ads to get more people to come to you, you can simply use SEO techniques to make your web pages more search-engine friendly.
Since 68% of online searches are done using search engines, it’s a no-brainer to make your web pages as search-engine-friendly as possible. Furthermore, once your online site is search-engine friendly, it will rank higher on SERPs (search engine result pages).
One interesting SEO stat is that 75% of online visitors don’t scroll past the first page of the search results. Therefore, it is important to make sure your website ranks as high as possible on SERPs.
As a result, SEO is a way to get more organic traffic to your site, and the best part is you won’t have to pay huge amounts of money to do so. Moreover, about 61% of marketers say that search optimization generates more leads than any other marketing strategy.
Benefits of SEO
SEO is one of the best ways to raise awareness for your website without having to rely on paid ads to drive traffic.
Here is a quick summary of how implementing search improvement techniques will benefit you:
- Let’s suppose you have a normal site that is not getting enough traffic
- You decide to use a few techniques to optimize it
- By using improvement techniques, your site will rank higher on SERPs
- The higher it ranks on SERPs, the more chance it has to be clicked by online visitors
- The more visitors that click on your web pages, the more chances you have to make them perform a useful action (purchase products, subscribe to a newsletter, etc.)
- 14.6% of SEO-generated leads are converted into sales
SEO in WooCommerce
To get a good start in SEO, it is better to start off with a platform that is SEO-friendly, and in this regard, WooCommerce (WC) is one such platform that is SEO-friendly.
Certain WooCommerce SEO features are already in place to help you get started on your SEO journey. In addition, you can also improve SEO by installing SEO-friendly plugins, picking the right hosting provider, choosing an SEO-friendly theme, etc.
All these techniques can easily be implemented in your WooCommerce store. Therefore, SEO is one of the easiest tasks to carry out, thanks to the SEO-friendly nature of WooCommerce and its parent site, WordPress.
On-Page WooCommerce SEO techniques
Optimization on WC can be separated into two groups:
- On-Page WooCommerce SEO – Techniques that are implemented directly on your website, such as meta descriptions, outbound links, images, etc.
- Off-Page WooCommerce SEO – This group includes techniques that are implemented away from your site, such as content marketing, social media posts, guest blogging, etc.
In this section, we will be looking at around a dozen on-page SEO techniques that you can use to optimize your WooCommerce web pages.
Please note, that it is not a requirement to use all these techniques. You can just go with the one that you can easily implement if you choose to. However, the more techniques you use, the more chances your website will have to rank higher on SERPs.
That being said, let’s get on with the list of on-page SEO techniques.
1- WooCommerce SEO: Keywords
One of the simplest SEO techniques is using the right amount of keywords in the right place. Moreover, you should strive to use keywords that are related to your business.
For example, if your site is about selling flowers, then you should include related keywords such as “flowers”, “plants”, “gifts”, “roses”, “petals”, “garden”, etc. in it.
Appropriate keywords will please your customers and the search engine, and make your website rank higher.
At the same time, it is important not to use too many keywords. You do not want to over-optimize your web page by randomly filling in keywords, as this will negatively affect your search ranking. As a rule of thumb, try to maintain a keyword density of 2%-5% per page on your website
2- Research Your Competitors
Another simple yet effective optimization “technique” you can do is to research your competitors and implement whatever techniques you notice into your website. For example, you can use similar keywords, write similar articles and blogs, try to design a better web page, etc.
3- Reliable Links
The next WooCommerce SEO technique on this list is to smartly use links on your website. These can be either internal links or external links.
Internal links are an excellent way to connect the content on your website with each other and make an organized structure. As a result, search engines will also get a better idea about the structure of your site, and this will make it easier for search engine bots to “crawl” your website. After a search engine “crawls” your web pages, it is ranked on the SERPs based on how the “crawl” went.
External links are a great way to improve the credibility of your website by referencing stats, facts, information, etc. on other credible places. However, as is the case with most search result improvement techniques, you should not provide too many external links as your site might get penalized for this.
4- Clear URL Structure
The fourth search result improvement technique on our list is very simple because all it involves is having a clear URL structure for your website.
Your website’s URL is how people will actually get to it. Therefore, a few things need to be kept in mind when forming your a URL so that is both useful for online visitors and search engines:
- Make sure the URL is short and simple, without any complex characters (@#$%) as this can diminish the credibility of your site
- Be sure to include keywords of your website in the URL so that search engineers can immediately bring your site to the SERP, and also so that visitors can tell what your web pages are all about from just reading the URL. For example, if you sell second-hand cars, then putting words like “used cars” in the URL will help online visitors immediately determine what you are selling.
5- Image Optimization
Another improvement technique that can improve the ranking of your website is Image optimization
Image optimization usually involves the following steps:
- Reduction of Image Size – reducing the image size on your site (without sacrificing quality) will greatly improve your website’s load time, and this will in turn improve user experience. Moreover, quicker-loading sites tend to rank higher on SERPs.
- Associate keywords with the images – This can be done either in the file name, image alt text, caption, heading, etc. Including keywords with the images will have an excellent impact on your SEO
6- Quality Content
The next optimization technique on our list is to provide quality content to your users.
The content you provide on your website can take the form of articles, product descriptions, guides, news and updates, etc.
Provide quality content in these 2 ways:
- The first is by actually providing quality content, such as well-researched articles, product pages with no spelling or grammatical errors, informative blogs, credible links, etc.
- The second method involves constantly updating and upgrading your content so that it remains relevant with the changing times.
By providing quality content, you will most likely get two outcomes:
- Search engines, like, Google, will find your website worthy of being shown to more people
- Your visitors will also appreciate the quality content on your website, which might lead them to be regular visitors.
7- QC/QA Website
The next simple optimization technique on our list is to QA/QC your website.
During the QA/QC, you should be checking that everything on your website looks and works properly. This includes things such as:
- No broken links
- No spelling or grammatical errors
- No technical glitches or bugs
By making your website close to perfect, you will gain the attention of search engines which will then rank your website higher due to the spotless nature of your website.
8- Mobile-Friendly Site
The next WooCommerce SEO technique on our list is one of the most important search result improvement techniques that need to be implemented by website owners, and that is making your website accessible on mobile devices.
These days people prefer to use mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, etc. to browse the web. About 55% of worldwide internet traffic is through mobile devices. Therefore, having a mobile-friendly website is one of the most obvious SEO techniques that you can implement.
The performance of your site on mobile devices will determine how other versions of your site rank according to Google’s mobile-first indexing new policy.
10- Optimize Your Product Pages
The next technique that we will discuss involves optimizing your product pages.
Most likely, your product pages will be where your visitors will spend the most time deciding on whether to buy a product or not. Therefore, you must make sure search engines find your product pages worthy of displaying to your visitors. To achieve this, you can:
- Write SEO-friendly product titles with your focus keyword
- Provide a unique meta-description
- Create product URLs with your focus keyword
- Sort Products using categories or tags
- You can use a product locator plugin, such as WP Maps, to organize your products into categories on your website.
By following the above steps, you will, no doubt, take the first steps in optimizing your product pages which will result in a better ranking on SERPs.
11- Better Product Descriptions and Headers
The next technique is a very simple one, and all it involves is having product descriptions and headers for all of your products.
Product descriptions and product headers are two areas that may want to consider optimizing with your focus keyword so that your products are recommended by search engines, and customers are encouraged to click on your product pages.
To be more effective, your product descriptions will need to be unique, and they must capture the essence of each product with genuine emotion. Moreover, the product header should utilize your focus keywords, and capture the attention of online visitors.
12- Website Speed
Improving user experience is another WooCommerce SEO technique you can use to boost your ranking on SERPs.
One way to improve user experience is to ensure that your website loads fast and is responsive. Moreover, the loading speed also determines how high or low your website will rank with search engines. The faster the site loads, the better it will rank.
Here are a few ideas on how you can improve your website’s speed:
- Install a few key plugins, unnecessarily installing a lot of plugins will slow your website’s speed
- Go for a lightweight, simple theme that does not have many “flashy” parts
- User smaller image resolution for your images without sacrificing quality.
13- Organize Your Site Structure
The next WooCommerce SEO technique on our list is organizing your site structure.
An organized and streamlined website structure will result in two things:
- Search engineer bots will have an easier time “crawling” your site, which will result in a better ranking for your site
- Your visitors’ experience will also increase because an organized web page structure results in a faster loading speed, and it will also help visitors navigate more easily around your website.
Some methods to organize your website structure include:
- Interlink different pages together
- Make sure all your pages are a few clicks away from the home page
- Create categories for your products
- Add a search bar
- Having simple menus instead of large complex ones
14-Use SEO Plugins
The last on-page WooCommerce SEO technique on this list that you can use is to install SEO plugins that can provide your site with a boost in various aspects of SEO
Even though a WooCommerce website is already SEO-friendly, it won’t hurt to install a few additional plugins to help you along in your SEO journey, you can install one or more of the many SEO plugins available. These plugins will add new functionalities to your website and will improve your on-page SEO. In addition, SEO plugins can also help rank your site higher on SERPs by optimizing features that are sought out by search engines.
Here are a few examples of SEO plugins:
Off-Page WooCommerce SEO Techniques
Besides the above-mentioned on-page search engine improvement techniques, there are also certain off-page techniques that you can use to boost your popularity on the internet. Moreover, off-page improvements can help increase the awareness of your website in ways that on-page improvement techniques won’t be able to do.
1- WooCommerce SEO: Content Publishing
The first off-page WooCommerce SEO technique we will discuss is content publishing.
Content publishing involves producing informative content such as articles, videos, images, social media posts, etc., and publishing it on the internet. In addition, these pieces of content should organically mention your website and products. Moreover, if the content is shareable, it will be an even better way to raise awareness for your website by generating backlinks.
Websites with simple and informative content that addresses user intent tend to rank higher in search engines. For more information on how you can promote your business, please see the following article.
2- WooCommerce SEO: Email Marketing
The second off-page WooCommerce technique on this list is email marketing.
Email marketing involves sending a promotional email about your website to potential customers. The hard part is creating an email list of potential contacts. However, once you have a sizable list, the next part is easy, all you have to do is send emails to your contacts introducing your business and website.
When you are email marketing, be sure not to “spam” emails, as this will only make your contact lose trust in your business.
3- WooCommerce SEO: Social Media Posts
Another great search result improvement technique is posting content on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
Since social media platforms are visited by millions of people daily, posting content on these platforms is bound to be noticed by someone. In addition, content on social media platforms can also be shared amongst users, increasing the chance for your content to be circulated amongst many potential customers. As a result, the popularity and awareness of your website will increase, which will, in turn, allow it to rank higher on search engines.
You can even join certain “groups” on social media platforms that are centered around a topic that relates to your website. Moreover, once you join these “groups” you can create a post introducing your web pages to all the group members.
4- WooCommerce SEO: Guest Blogging
Last, but not least, the final SEO technique on our list is guest blogging.
The concept of guest blogging is as follows. Let’s suppose there is a website “A” that gets a fairly large number of viewers, you, therefore, offer to write content (or a guest blog) for this site which will also contain references to your web page. Therefore, the site “A” gets a piece of content from you for free, while you get the chance to allow the visitors of the site “A” to read your content and gain awareness of your web page. It is a win-win situation for both parties.
The challenge here lies in actually finding a website that will be willing to take guest blogs. Moreover, usually, you will need some credibility to be able to guest blog, but that is not always the case.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are plenty of WooCommerce SEO techniques that you can use to boost the attractiveness of your website to both customers and search engines. This list only scratched the surface of SEO techniques, there are still plenty more SEO techniques out there.
Nevertheless, we are sure that the SEO techniques mentioned in this article will also help you get started on your SEO journey.