You have amazing products on your WooCommerce site. But what if they don’t pop up when your potential buyer searches for them?
All the effort you put into producing content will be pointless!
Here, SEO optimization comes to the rescue.
It is one of the most essential aspects of running a WooCommerce store as it helps you get better search rankings and conversion.
As products are always changing on the site, you need to make sure all the elements are properly optimized to make them appear in all relevant searches.
Now, SEO might sound tricky at first, but once you learn how to implement it correctly, you will love the outcome.
Today, we’re providing a complete WooCommerce SEO optimization guide to help you understand the whole process easier.
By the end of the guide, you’ll be able to –
- learn all the important SEO optimization practices,
- implement them for your WooCommerce site to rank higher in search results,
- and eventually, bring more shoppers to your site.
A Complete Guide to SEO for WooCommerce Startups
Your WooCommerce store is up and running.
Now, before diving into SEO, there are two important things you should look at:
- Thema's
- Pagina's
Whether you want to rank a certain page or a single product, theme and page optimization play a big role in your overall WooCommerce SEO goal.
Select A Suitable Theme That Reflects Your Brand
As a WooCommece store owner, you know how important it is to have a good first impression.
WooCommerce store pages are usually loaded with image-heavy content. Hence, a responsive & accessibility-ready WooCommerce theme is crucial to have a lasting impact on your audience.
The right WooCommerce theme can instantly capture your buyer’s attention.
With so many options available, you might find it difficult to select the best one for you.
Here are some theme suggestions you can consider:
While you choose your theme, make sure the theme is well-integrated with WooCommerce and strengthen your branding.
Include All The Necessary Pages For A Smooth Navigation
From the pre-purchase phase to making the transaction take place, your pages play a big role.
When you set up WooCommerce, a certain number of pages are automatically added to your site.
They are the shop page, account page, cart page & checkout page.
Now to properly function your WooCommerce store and enhance your shoppers’ experiences; you need to have all other necessary pages.
These pages help users easily understand the structure of your site and navigate smoothly.
Below we’re suggesting a list of WooCommerce pages that you can consider:
Home Page> Shop Page> Product Pages> Category Page >Registration & Accounts Page > Order Management Page> Privacy Policy> Terms Of Service> About Us> Contact Us> Checkout Page> Thank You Page
Once you’re done with themes and pages, it’s time to dive into SEO.
Get Started With WooCommerce SEO
Let’s say you are selling in the fashion industry. Your SEO goal is to increase sales in a particular category.
Now, you need to know who is your targeted audience. Knowing your niche will help you to optimize your overall SEO strategy.
As a beginner, it’s better if you prioritize a single niche. It will be then easier for you to implement different strategies and find out what’s working better.
For example, you can start with Men’s Fashion. Then later in the future, you may gradually grow for other niches if you wish to.
Now, let’s move on to the basic steps of WooCommerce SEO optimization:
1. Identify The Right Keywords
When starting with SEO, you should know what to optimize for your WooCommerce store.
There are a lot of content that are already ranking for similar products you sell. You need to find keywords that will help you to rank for the content you provide.
It doesn’t matter in which niche you’re selling, you’re gonna always have competition.
According to UppercutSEO, Keyword research will help you to analyze your competitors and come up with a better SEO strategy.
Following are some suggestions for identifying the right keywords for your store –
- Always look for similar products that your competitors are selling.
- Have a deeper look at the titles, tags, and descriptions they use.
- Identify the main keywords these sites rank for that goes with your main niche.
You’ll find some free online tools like semrush or Ahref to conduct keyword research extensively.
Now when you choose your keywords, make sure they –
- are relevant to your niche
- are searched keywords
- have low competition
- are related to conversion
Once you have this keyword list, you are ready for SEO optimization.
2. Setup Your SEO Tool
The next crucial step is to set up an SEO tool.
After doing the basic configuration of WordPress SEO, you should use a tool for enhancing WooCommerce SEO.
There are a lot of built-in tools that can give you a detailed structure for keyword research, URL structure, and content optimization tips.
These tools will help you to manage your website’s titles, descriptions, and SEO metadata to improve your search rankings.
For example, you can use RankMath to enable Product Schema for your WooCommerce Products and assign a common OG image for the site.
You can also optimize the meta title and description of the home page to target the most appropriate keywords of your niche.
3. SEO Optimize the Home Page & Shop Page
You need to be very careful about the home page and shop page optimization. The purchasing decision of a buyer highly depends on these pages. Additionally, you need to do an on-page SEO check of the landing page to ensure it’s fully optimized for search engines and user experience.
Below we listed some major tips on home page & shop page SEO optimization –
- You must have targeted keywords for your main niche and products. Make sure you target them on the home page.
- On the front end, no matter what you display, you need to maintain the hierarchy.
- Set up Menus for each main category (if you have less than 7 categories).
- List down things like “Top products,” “Highest Rated products,” promotional banners, and a “Just for you,” section.
- Customize the shop page with a list of categories on the left or top, and popular products in the middle.
- Add a title and description on the Shop page that should be optimized with the main keyword. And these should be used as meta titles and meta descriptions as well.
- Include a link to the shop page on the menu and on the footer of the website.
4. Optimizing SEO for WooCommerce Products & Categories
When you are done with the priority pages, it’s time to optimize product pages and category archive pages for SEO.
1. Choose The Right Category Names
Product category is an essential aspect of WooCommerce SEO as it helps your potential buyers to understand your store better. It will also increase your site’s visibility.
To implement proper categorization in your WooCommerce store follow the steps below:
- First, list down all the products you have.
- Find out similar products by searching on Google.
- Visit their product pages and find out the category they put the product under.
- You may also search for this product on eBay and visit the product page here.
- Once you are there, you will see there is a navigation breadcrumbs of the categories this product fall under. For example, if you search Men’s jacket on eBay, you will find it falls under the following: Clothing, Shoes & Accessories > Men > Men’s Clothing > Coats, Jackets & Vests
- You may follow the same category structure in your WooCommerce store. But it’s not mandatory to follow it word by word. You may wish to further break down a category into subcategories.
- For example, in the scenario above, the category “Coats, Jackets & Vests” actually covers more than just jackets. But let’s say, you do not want to include all of them in a single category. In this case, under that category, you may further introduce 3 more sub-categories, named “Coats,” “Jackets,” and “Vests” respectively.
- Then, in WooCommerce, create these categories and sub-categories.
2. SEO Optimize Category Archives
When you create a new category on your store, that category will have an archive page. All the products related to this category will be listed there.
If you optimize the category archive pages, they can also rank for search terms like a regular page.
Here’s a checklist for your category archives SEO optimization:
Each category and sub-category should have its own archive.
The main keyword for such a page should be the category name itself.
Add a Title and short description on that page that should include the keyword. These will be used as Meta titles and meta descriptions as well.
Use a relevant featured image. Its name and alt text should be the keyword itself. This will act as the OG image. It’s best to have different OG images per category.
3. Optimizing Product SEO for WooCommerce
Once the categories are set for SEO, it’s time to focus on your products.
Following are some tips to accomplish your SEO goal:
>1. Search for a product on google and find out the top 3 pages that are ranking for the product you want to sell.
>2. Next, search in Ahref with the Page URLs of those product pages and find out the top commercial keywords that are generating traffic to these pages.
>3. Your target will be to rank for these keywords for your product, but initially, choose 3 main keywords that are commercial for this product.
>4. Use the product schema from RankMath.
>5. Write a detailed product description with all the keywords you found earlier. And mention the category name in the description at least once.
>6. Modify the product title with a keyword and its USPs in the title.
>7. Create attributes using keywords relevant to the product features. If none were found, then include one or two of the product features that are visible or notable, such as its USPs or color.
>8. Add multiple images of the product where the main image must have the same name as the product itself, along with its alt text. The rest could be named with relevant keywords (having the same for the alt txt as well).
>9. Create tags that match the keywords.
>10. Enable breadcrumbs to have a navigation menu above, showing which category this product is under.
>11. Add a reviews section to accept reviews
>12. Enable commenting to allow Q&A related to the product. (which will create engagement and signal to SERPs that this page is more desirable)
4. Blogging SEO for WooCommerce competition
Now, this is a broader approach where you need to do in-depth keyword research on your competitors and your product keywords and write informational blogs that people read before making a commercial decision. You can always take the help and advantage of an AI writer to streamline the creation of informative blogs part by part tailored to strategically target keywords, enhancing your online visibility and driving potential customers”
For example, if you have Track Suits for Men, and you found that “tracksuits for men” is a keyword that your competitors are ranking on and getting good traffic, you may write an article on “Effective Ways To Improve Your Exercise Activity”
In this article, you can rank for “Tracksuits for men” and you may look to rank for other products (if you sell them), such as tank tops, sweatpants, joggers, gym clothes, etc.
Similarly, you may plan other content that is useful to your ideal customers. In the articles, you may add links to your products for healthy internal linking, and often get direct sales via these articles.
But you have to be careful that since it’s a WooCommerce website, your product collection may change and you may choose to stop selling a certain type of product. In that case, you need to remember to update your blogs with the right products and remove irrelevant links and content.
What’s next?
Once you have optimized your site for SEO, you should focus on getting traffic to your site.
A good option here would be to list your products on large online marketplaces, especially popular local marketplaces. For example, if you are in Germany, listing your products on Idealo.de would be a great option. Plus, you could go for universal marketplaces such as Google Shopping, Facebook Marketplace, Pinterest, etc. they can give a good early boost to your products.
You may also open up social profiles on Facebook and Twitter, where you may regularly share your products from time to time.
Another great option would be to start affiliate marketing for other bloggers to promote your products for a commission. However, this normally won’t help a startup. Once your business is established, then the affiliate program can do wonders in terms of revenue.
Apart from these, you may choose to run Paid Ads, and initiate re-targeting Ads for your products. Plus, you may set up abandoned cart recovery campaigns to bring back buyers that left without completing the purchase.
Laatste gedachten
SEO plays the most important part when it comes to your WooCommerce store’s growth. Without proper SEO optimization, you won’t be able to reach your targeted buyers, let alone produce sales.
This guide will help you start your WooCommerce SEO strategy and will give you an instant SEO advantage.
Let me tell you, these SEO for WooCommerce tactics are proven to grow results for more than 6 months.
So, start optimizing your SEO and get the most out of your WooCommerce store.
However, If you want to find some more amazing guides click here:
Let us know in the comment section if you have tried any of the strategies and got results.
Another very important point on SEO is the optimization and compression of images.
Yes, indeed. Thank you for your input.
Thank you, this is the article I was looking for. Btw may I know what you use for your great and fast website? I’m also planning to create a simple website for my business, but I need a domain and hosting recommendation. I hear asphostportal has a good reputation for that. Can you recommend them or are there any alternatives?