Every online business, whether small or large, needs to be well positioned on search engines to become succesful. Search engine optimization (SEO) should not be overlooked.
Every online business, whether small or large, needs to be well positioned on search engines to become successful. Search engine optimization (SEO) should not be overlooked. According to research, nearly 94% of online activity originates from a search engine and 93% of people do not scroll past the first page of results. Therefore, if you want to drive traffic to your website, you should work on SEO, that is why we have prepared this article with 10 WooCommerce SEO tips for product pages.
SEO for Woocommerce is a real job for anyone who manages online stores using the plugin. As much as the WordPress structure is already minimally optimized, taking care of some other essential points contributes to the best performance.
Undoubtedly, good products, impeccable service, and competitive prices are some of the main factors for online stores to stand out. However, competition is high, and most companies are working strategically. To be seen, your website needs to stand out on Google, which leads us to invest in SEO for Woocommerce.
Online stores on WordPress have gained a lot of space in today’s e-commerce, as they are easy to manage and maintain. For entrepreneurs and even large companies, the practicality when managing an online store counts a lot. In addition, this platform allows you to work with plugins that practically structure stores, as is the case with Woocommerce.
All this infrastructure, however, will make no sense if you can’t optimize your site for search engines. This article will cover the following topics to understand the subject better.
What is SEO?
SEO is the acronym for “Search Engine Optimization.” In practice, it is a set of techniques and adjustments that ensure that web content stands out in Google searches. These optimizations aim to meet some already known parameters that the search engine algorithms consider to rank websites.
When talking about this prominence in searches, we refer to the first positions on the Google results page. If your site manages to appear on the first page or in the first results, be sure that it is standing out considerably from the competitors.
A recent survey showed that 44% of people who are going to buy an item of value only access the first three results of the Google results page.
Generally speaking, SEO is important to get visibility and thus attract more people to your website’s content. If the business’s presents in e-commerce are perfect, then the chances of conversion increase significantly. Therefore, SEO is a great showcase and the main driver for sales to happen on the web.
How does SEO work?
Search engines, like Google, try to direct users to websites or pages most relevant to their query. They consider various factors to rank and list websites in the search results. SEO will help you optimize your website to rank higher in the search results.
The algorithms employed by search engines are constantly optimized to generate the best results. Consequently, SEO can be a complex endeavor. This post will focus on one of the most fundamental factors in optimizing your page ranking.
WordPress users who use WooCommerce can already count on some technical and structural optimizations automatically offered. However, this is not a free pass for content to be published without any adjustment. Doing this means that your e-commerce will not reach the expected prominence.
Working with SEO for Woocommerce generates critical competitive advantages and automatically results in business development. It’s not just about selling more on your e-commerce but also making that store gain online authority. Continue to read to discover the 10 WooCommerce SEO tips for product pages.
The better the ranking, the greater the visibility of your page.
What are the best SEO tips for WooCommerce?
A good Woocommerce SEO work will ensure that your WordPress e-commerce performance is the best. As much as the platform is developed to offer this structural optimization, some adjustments and best practices will raise the results even more. See what they are below!
1. Identify relevant keywords
No matter what product you are offering on your website, most likely, there are hundreds of others already available online.
How do you ensure your product is at the top of the search?
Search engines look for ranking cues to match a particular search with a relevant result. Finding the right keywords that match your product will make you visible to users in the search results. Keywords are the search queries a user might enter into a search engine. For example, if you’re selling pet supplies, the ideal keywords may be “buy pet supplies,” “pet food,” “pet toys,” or other related terms.
To detect the right keywords, use tools like:
1.1 Improving product pages
Once you have found the focus keyword, it is recommended to use a secondary keyword (synonym) in the content to enrich the text. Place the keywords around the text wisely and don’t overuse them. Make sure your keywords appear in the most relevant sections of your product page. Namely, the product URL, title, description, and content.
- URL: Including a search term in a URL is considered a strong ranking signal. It’s a good practice to include a focus keyword in the URL when you create new product pages.
- Product title: the focus keyword must be present in the product title to help the page rank.
- Product description: product pages should contain a detailed description of the product with the focus or secondary keywords appearing 2-3 times in the text. Frame the content naturally and don’t overuse keywords.
- Images and videos: including an image or a video in a post increases organic traffic. In addition, they help to better explain the characteristics of the product. Don’t forget to add ALT text to the images that contain your focus keyword.
- Reviews: customer reviews count as user-generated content on your online store and it can add SEO value to the product pages.
2. Choose an SEO-friendly theme
SEO Friendly themes are those that are designed not to interfere with the performance of your website in a way that makes it, for example, slower. There are many factors to consider, but the most important thing is that these themes only have the features they need to perform well.
It is also worth noting that an SEO-friendly theme is designed to optimize the web site’s performance with some critical tweaks. Overall, it’s the right choice to get a good ranking.
3. Use an SEO analysis plugin
SEO analysis plugins are tools that will monitor the contents of your website. The proposal is that every new publication on Woocommerce undergoes an automatic audit that will indicate strengths and weaknesses on the page, considering SEO.
One of the best free WordPress plugins in the SEO category is Yoast. It works precisely, indicating which improvement points should receive attention and for what reason. Thus, you publish content with the certainty that it is optimized.
4. Simplify and optimize your URL structure
It might seem like your URLs aren’t highly significant for SEO. However, if your page addresses are too complicated and don’t follow a logical URL structure, search engines are likely to be confused by them.
First, short, neat URLs like “yoursite.com/products/product-name/” are more accessible for users to copy and paste into their address bars correctly. This can improve your site’s overall user experience (UX), which is an indirect ranking factor. Second, long and confusing URLs make your pages more difficult for Google to crawl, which can negatively impact your SEO.
So it’s wise to avoid bad practices like using dynamic URLs, special symbols, random letters, or too many subfolders. Instead, include keywords, use hyphens to separate words, and ensure users can easily retrace their paths based on the structure of the URL.
Friendly URLs have great power in a page’s ranking ability. Google’s algorithms understand that the URL also needs to clarify what the user will find on the page in question. So avoid numbers and letters in meaningless sequences.
5. Create an internal link structure
The next WooCommerce SEO tip is to create an internal link structure. Instead of randomly referring readers to your other articles/products, make sure you develop a logical plan and stick to it.
For example, you might want to create a hub and spoke content strategy on your website. In short, the hub is your main page, and the spokes are supporting topics or categories that lead back to total posts/products.
Additionally, an effective internal linking strategy helps Google understand the relevance of your pages, the relationship between them, and the value they provide to readers. So it’s wise to think of your link structure as a pyramid. Your homepage is at the top, your categories are in the middle, and your posts/products are at the bottom.
6. Insert the website on Google Search Console
Search Console is a Google tool for analyzing websites, mainly from the point of view of SEO performance. So you can frequently monitor this URL and understand what Google tells you about critical issues to look into.
To do this, you need to choose “HTML tag” as the analysis method by Search Console. In Yoast, go to “SEO,” then click “General” and go to the “Webmaster Tools” menu. In the HTML tag content, go to “Google verification code.”
Right after checking out the site, enter your XML map in Sitemaps. This map is found on Yoast.
7. Optimize the images used on the site
There are several best practices when uploading images to the site. The first one is to optimize the size. The smaller, the better the load. Therefore, use tools that decrease the image size without losing quality.
Also, upload images in files with names that describe exactly what can be seen on these media. If it’s a photo about pet toys, write something like “pet-toy-in-natural-cotton.jpg.”
Finally, also use the alt text tag in WordPress. To do this, select “Image Settings,” which you find under “Blocks.” There, you have the option to describe the exact image of that image, that is, what it contains.
8. Link building
Redirecting your readers to relevant, high-authority pages is an excellent practice, so it’s wise to include links to a few to support your arguments. Unfortunately, getting other sites to link to your content is more challenging. However, a backlink from a reputable source can elevate your pages in the rankings, so it’s worth the effort.
Link building takes time and patience, so don’t expect results to come overnight. Still, there are some practical strategies you might want to try. For example, you can contact other website owners and let them know when you link to their articles/products.
9. Fix broken links
In addition to optimizing your URLs, creating a logical link structure, and gaining some quality backlinks, it’s a good idea to check your content for broken links regularly. This can frustrate your readers and waste a precious link, so you’ll want to get them fixed ASAP.
Scrolling through all the external links can be time-consuming if your site is large. So, it’s best to use a tool like Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, which scans your site for all active and broken links.
The Semrush website is another tool to help you find broken links. However, you have to pay to use all the features of both sites, but the good news is that you can try it for free before making your purchase.
You can usually quickly fix inactive external links by removing them if they are unnecessary, providing an alternate source, or correcting typos in URLs. However, you may not have much control over broken backlinks, especially if the source links to your page incorrectly.
In this case, it’s wise to use 301 redirects, which send users and search engines to a new URL. This method still passes significant ranking power to the new page, so it’s worth the effort. You can also use it whenever you remove or change content on your site.
10. Increase your page loading speed
No matter how many SEO tips you implement for websites, if your pages take a long time to load, it can seriously affect your rankings. Therefore, you should look at some practices to speed up your website and aim for a load time of two seconds or less.
There are many reasons why your site might be slow. For example, you might be having issues with your web hosting provider, or your database might need a clean. However, cluttering your site with images tends to be the most common culprit.
Graphics and photos account for up to 60 percent of a website’s average load time. Therefore, these files must be optimized.
Conclusion
Throughout this post, you can check out 10 WooCommerce SEO tips so that your WordPress online store can be well positioned on Google or other search engines.
Search engine optimization is about the quality of the content and the amount of the content. The more relevant content related to your products, you produce, to better search engines will rank your website.
To the next!
