Best SEO Tips for WooCommerce to Rank #1
Published December 30, 2021.
Even though social media has taken the world by storm, search engine optimization (SEO) continues to play a critical role in marketing campaigns. In short, SEO refers to strategies that businesses put in place to help their sites rank higher in the results pages of search engines like Google. In 2022 and beyond, it will remain one of the most effective ways to drive more traffic to your online store.
In this article, we’ll share some practical tips for how you can tweak your SEO, including a few apps for WooCommerce that can help you give your SEO a boost.
Why SEO Is Important for E-Commerce
While SEO can get quite technical, the reason for its importance is pretty straightforward. If done right, it can help drive more traffic to your website to make selling in a saturated market easier. And, the more website visitors you get, the more opportunities you have to turn your target audience into paying customers. In addition, it can also help make your online store appear more credible as consumers and Google both typically view the websites that rank the highest as the most authoritative.
The Different Types of Onsite and Offsite SEO
When it comes to SEO, you can optimize your site’s individual pages (this is referred to as onsite or on-page SEO) and concentrate your efforts on link building (aka offsite or off-page SEO). A big part of onsite SEO is the use of keywords. In addition to adding the relevant keywords to your website content, you should also include them strategically in your page URLs, meta titles, meta descriptions, and image alt-text.
Offsite SEO can be more challenging as less of it is in your control. As mentioned, link building plays a key role. Other examples include guest blogging, influencer marketing, and social media marketing.
3 Ways to Boost Your SEO
1. Use the relevant keywords in your product descriptions
All products should have product descriptions. Since these don’t have to be long, you don’t have any excuse for neglecting this critical element. The most effective product descriptions are engaging, well-written, and incorporate the relevant keywords for extra audience optimization. While you can use the descriptions provided by the manufacturer, search engines don’t like duplicate content. So, it’s best to write your own from scratch and only use the manufacturer’s descriptions as guidance.
2. Use an SEO theme
If you’re wondering what's better for SEO – WooCommerce vs. Shopify – know that a WooCommerce website can be SEO-friendly too! To optimize your WooCommerce store for SEO, you should use a theme that’s created for that purpose. For example, a theme like Divi has built-in SEO optimization to help you to make sure that your e-commerce site is optimized for search engines.
3. Improve your navigation
If it’s easy for potential customers to find their way around your website, you can decrease your bounce rate (customers leaving your page shortly after arriving) and improve the time spent on your website. This is key if you want your site to appear on the first page.
To simplify your website’s navigation, there are two main strategies. Firstly, the main navigation should include links that go to all the main web pages. Secondly, you should use breadcrumbs. In short, breadcrumbs show at the top of pages and make it easier for website visitors to return to the previous product category. The best way to do this is to use a WooCommerce SEO plugin, which brings us to our next section.
The 2 Best SEO Tools for WooCommerce
1. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is an excellent tool for WooCommerce. Its goal is to make SEO-ready site structure accessible to all. In short, it can help you with basically every facet of SEO, including meta description optimization.
Price: $89/year
2. All in One SEO
All in One SEO is one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress. One of its most useful features is that it will give you recommendations for including key phrases, making it a great tool if you need to optimize your WooCommerce site for onsite SEO.
Price: $49-$299/year depending on the package
Will SEO Still Be Important in the Future?
In the foreseeable future, SEO will remain important for the e-commerce industry. With the increasing number of stores taking their business online, the space will only become more crowded with tougher competition.
While posting on social media can be an effective way to increase brand awareness and drive more sales, you'll need other ways to stand out – something that SEO can help you with. With the help of these best SEO practices and plugins for WooCommerce, climbing your way to that top spot has become a whole lot easier and cheaper.
