Last updated - May 10, 2018
When you are running an eCommerce store, you know it is really important to get good rankings by search engines. Google and other search engines use their own algorithms to determine how to rank the search results for every keyword or phrase. As a result, it is very important to follow the expert guidance on the matter to ensure good traffic on your site. There are multiple aspects to make sure your site is ranked well by search engines. In the current digital landscape, it makes more sense to be search engine friendly in the basic essentials than looking for creative ways. This article intends to discuss some of the best WooCommerce SEO strategies to boost your store sales and conversions. You can also get acquainted with some of the best plugins that would help with your SEO strategies.
Best WooCommerce SEO Plugins
There are quite a few good plugins in the WordPress WooCommerce community that will help you with your SEO strategy. Let’s look into some of the most popular ones in more detail.
Yoast SEO Plugin
This is one of the most popular SEO plugins available in the WordPress community. It enables you to get more visitors from search engines like Google and Bing. It also helps in finding more visitors through social media. As it helps to improve the user engagement on your site, the traffic will be better. The plugin helps to optimize up to five keywords for each page. In addition, there is a readability indicator, which helps you understand how easy the content is to read.
Regular updates of the plugin make sure your site is always keeping up with the algorithms of Google. The premium version of the plugin also offers suggestions for internal links. In addition, it will show you a set of popularly used words on the page, so that you can be sure about the keyword relevance. Furthermore, you get previews of your pages to resemble how it would look like on Google, Facebook or Twitter. Moreover, the redirect manager helps you to manage permanent redirects quite easily.
The price of the premium version starts at $89 for a single site license. There is also a free version of the plugin, which does a decent job. You can find the free Yoast SEO plugin here.
Yoast WooCommerce integration plugin
When you are managing a WooCommerce store, you need to ensure there is perfect integration between WooCommerce and the Yoast SEO plugin. This plugin helps you achieve a smooth integration of Yoast SEO with your WooCommerce store. It also helps in improving the sharing on Pinterest, by improving OpenGraph enhancements. Moreover, you can use Yoast breadcrumbs instead of the default WooCommerce ones. Basically, with the help of this plugin, you will be able to promote your products in a more efficient manner. Prices start from $49 for a single site.
Yoast Local SEO
Another great addition form the Yoast family, this one helps you sell in a more efficient manner locally. The plugin helps you enhance your contact pages with Google maps, your business timings, store locator, etc. You can allow your customers to pick up products directly from your store. Your store will be highlighted in the local Google searches so that local customers would find your store more easily.
Maintaining accurate contact information will really help you enhance the local presence of your business. Moreover, a lot of customers prefer it when they have an option to pick up the product directly from a store. The plugin also helps to provide the status of the order. This way, the customer will have a better idea as to when the product is ready for pickup at your store. A single site license of the plugin is available for purchase at $129.
Visser Labs All in One SEO Pack
This is another popular free option in the WordPress community that will help you optimize your site’s SEO. It provides great features to help beginners as well as advanced users to work with it smoothly. The plugin offers support to submit an XML sitemap to Google and Bing. It also helps with image sitemap, so you don’t have to worry about the SEO aspects of the images you use on your site as well.
Moreover, the plugin supports Google Analytics and Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP). Advanced Canonical URLs will help you make sure content duplication won’t affect your site. The plugin also takes care of any changes on your site, as it notifies search engines promptly.
For better integration of this plugin with your WooCommerce store, there is another plugin. This one, WooCommerce pack of All in One SEO, too is free and you can download it from WordPress plugin repository. Basically, it’s an add-on for the All in One SEO plugin. It helps to edit the meta details from within the WooCommerce admin. With the help of it, you can edit the title, description, keywords, etc.
SEO add-on by premmerce
This one is an add-on that enhances the functionalities of Yoast SEO plugin that we discussed above. It is seamlessly compatible with WooCommerce, Yoast plugin and WPML. In terms of functionality, it helps you display store information on the homepage through a micro layout. You will be able to display price, stock and currency details on the product page using SEO friendly protocols. Moreover, it helps you display brand information and helps to generate alt text to all product images.
Code-Ninjas SEO Plugin
This WooCommerce SEO plugin helps to make adjustments in WooCommerce to make your store more SEO friendly. Primarily, it helps to enhance your URLs with descriptive options other than the default settings. Another interesting feature of this plugin is that it helps you create a meta description automatically. In fact, this will save quite a bit of time and effort while generating content on your site. And, it is quite flexible if you want to create a custom title and meta description for your store. It also significantly improves the default breadcrumbs settings of WooCommerce. That means, your customers will be able to navigate your site more effectively.
The regular license of the plugin is available for purchase at $30.
Guidelines for WooCommerce SEO
Search engine algorithms are bound to change regularly. So, it is important to stay up to date with all the important updates that are happening. However, due to the same reason, it is not really advisable to focus too deeply on a single SEO strategy alone. So, experts advise keeping the fundamental SEO aspects intact, while continuously improving product line and content. Here is a list of guidelines approved by WooCommerce SEO experts that you can follow.
Get the basics right
SEO strategies have evolved quite a lot in recent times. However, some of the fundamental aspects to ensure the good ranking of your site remains the same. Firstly, you need to ensure your content is unique, product driven, and useful to your customers. Secondly, you need to make your easily accessible to visitors. If your site scores low in the accessibility aspect, then irrespective of the traffic you may find conversions low. Similarly, an important factor is to get referred by other popular domains. That means you need to have a lot of external links that lead to your site. Another basic aspect when you talk about SEO is not to overdo it. Trying too many strategies to trick Google to rank higher might only help you to get penalized.
Generate good content
Content is the fundamental aspect of how Google perceives your site. Fundamentally, you have to maintain a content strategy that is in alignment with your product line. For a WooCommerce store, some of these aspects are quite obvious. First and foremost, you need to have unique descriptions for all your products. This is equally relevant for the potential customers visiting your site and the Google bots that index it. A unique copy of your home page and other pages also contribute to good SEO.
In addition, you need to make sure your content has searchable words and phrases. This is because this helps your store to reach out to those who are searching for those relevant keywords. Duplicating pages is another potential risk that may lead to a negative impact in search engine rankings. Some of the plugins that were discussed above help in maintaining this canonical URL with advanced features.
Use a flexible keyword strategy
You need to pay good attention to have an all-inclusive strategy for your store and products. For this, you need to make sure that your store content has the optimal presence of both broad and targeted keywords. Your homepage, along with product and category pages should have a good share of actionable keywords. This is because there are better chances of conversion when users are more specific with their searches. Your site should be a combination of short and long tail keywords for best results.
And, when you start working with keywords, you need to think from an actual person’s perspective. If you end up mechanically stuffing a lot of keywords everywhere it will repel both human users and search engine bots. You need to creatively think to come up with natural keywords that are relevant to your store’s purpose. Moreover, you need to be consistently measuring your site performance and make appropriate changes based on analytics insights.
Improve navigation
Your customers should be able to navigate effortlessly on your site. If they are not able to easily find content on your site, they are going to leave it pretty soon. This would only help to increase bounce rate, which will have a negative impact on search engine rankings. You need to label all your pages in an appropriate manner to help the users navigate easily. Instead of cluttering the navigation menu with too many options, keep it simple and relevant. You also need to maintain breadcrumbs in such a way to help users navigate through your site. There are plugins that would help you set up advanced breadcrumbs instead of the default WooCommerce ones. You also need to create a sitemap to inform Google about the existence of a page.
URLs should be clear
The URLs of your site should be clear and precise so as to not confuse the users. For a product URL, you can use a combination of category and product name to let customers identify it. You should also take care to not make the URL too long. In an attempt to target customers by being too specific, you might make it illogical and spammy. Avoid this at all costs.
Focus on site performance
How your site is performing also plays an important role in search engine optimization. Moreover, your site performance is directly linked to customer experience as well. No potential customer would like a slow loading shopping site. Thankfully, WooCommerce community has abundant tools to ensure the best site performance. Read out the article to find out some useful tips to speed up your WooCommerce store here.
Optimize individual pages
Just like improving the search engine friendliness of the entire site, you can focus on similar aspects on every individual page. For example, custom meta descriptions are one of the important things you need to ensure on every new page you create. You also need to add alt text to your images that will help visually impaired users identify it. Moreover, this can provide another opportunity to use keywords. And, without saying, all your pages need to be responsive to accommodate users of all devices.
Conclusion
Search engines are an essential part of how you establish a successful online business. Your site and its pages need to be friendly to the search engines so that you get better search engine rankings. This would mean more visitors and a possibility of improved conversions. WordPress WooCommerce community has a good number of plugins, like Yoast, to ensure search engine optimization. This article has compiled some of the best ones that will help you improve SEO, and consequently sales. Leave us a suggestion, or a unique insight.
