Ways to Increase the Performance of WordPress WooCommerce SEO
Search engine optimization or SEO for any e-commerce site is very helpful as it directs the customer’s traffic towards the website you have created. Any e-commerce site developed over WordPress should be SEO-friendly. Before discussing WordPress WooCommerce SEO, let’s understand WooCommerce first.
What is WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce platform and plugin that is currently available on WordPress in the market in 2021. WooCommerce on WordPress allows the developer to create all the necessary functionalities like store categories, reviews, and payments for the online store. WooCommerce also is capable of incorporating many extensions and plugins created by the WooCommerce team or 3rd party resources that can be used to implement various features required. Now let’s see if WooCommerce is SEO-friendly or not.
WordPress WooCommerce and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
WooCommerce runs on WordPress, which is an already-optimized platform for SEO. It allows the installation of various plugins based on the business requirement and how they want the site to look and handle the merchandise. Plugins like Yoast SEO can be installed and used to configure the website for good results on search engine ranking. Therefore, WooCommerce is SEO-friendly. It is very important to configure and optimize the WooCommerce SEO to improve the store ranking on search result pages. All components like themes, products, descriptions, and images of the additional plugins should be optimized.
Steps to Set up WordPress WooCommerce SEO
- Perform The WordPress SEO Setup
Before start using WooCommerce on WordPress, it will be a good idea to set up the SEO based on the needs and features to be installed. Also, if required, have a premium membership of them so that later you don’t have to keep the development on hold waiting for the prime features. If there is a time-bound during development, it’s better to install all the required things and use them seamlessly over the development phase. One of the plugins, the All in One SEO(AIO SEO) plugin can be installed and used effectively. It will include sitemaps and a map URL properly for all the products listed on your site. Once this step is completed successfully, move to the 2nd step of the WooCommerce SEO guide.
- Write Product SEO Titles
It is a good practice to optimize every component of your WordPress WooCommerce SEO before bringing it to the end-users. One of the most important parts is to write SEO-friendly product titles that appear in the browser’s title bar and as a heading in search result outputs. Some keywords like the offer, fast delivery, discount, and flash sales can also be used to attract more customers. Simple titles like “Men’s cotton shirt by ABC” can appear simple and not eye-catching to the customer browsing for shirts during summer. Instead, if the title is “Premium blue fine cotton shirt for men – high-quality and latest design” will be more pleasant and attractive.
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Optimize Product Slug
Slug is actually a good and understandable name used by WordPress in the URL of a specific product. It is sometimes regarded as permalinks too. By default, WordPress WooCommerce SEO uses the product’s title as the slug. Sometimes it may happen that the slug may not contain the relevant keywords and the title is not the best fit. It can be changed manually if it looks inappropriate. Also, one can change the e-commerce SEO plugin setting to include all the necessary words in the slug while keeping it short and simple. For example, for men’s shirts, it’s better to use a slug as “cotton-shirt-for-summer-best-design”.
- Enable Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are used to display the path through which the user has reached a product. This path appears as a link at the top of the page. It helps the user to track back along with the links which made him land on a specific page. These breadcrumbs also appear in search results that provide extra benefit when page ranking is considered during WordPress WooCommerce SEO optimization.
- Properly Using Product Categories and Tags
All the products that are sold on the site should be attached to at least one product category and tag. It makes it easier for the customers to find the right product they’re looking for. This also increases keyword usage across the entire site resulting in a good search response.
- Add Alt Text for Product Images
In order to increase the performance of WordPress WooCommerce SEO, adding keywords to the image names can be a good start in your optimization technique. This will be good when users will search images related to the keyword and they will see the products that you are selling on your e-commerce store. Google as well as other search engines use artificial intelligence, image recognition, and other algorithms effectively to help users get the exact thing they are looking for. Adding alt text with the product details can be helpful when images are not loaded completely, but the user can read the image alt text and get to know about it. Search engines often consider the usage of alt text when they rank any website.
- Track WooCommerce Customers in Google Analytics.
It is important to enable customer tracking in WooCommerce with Google Analytics. It helps to analyze from which region the users are coming, how they found the store, what products they are looking at, and what are they doing in your store. Google Analytics can do this easily, but it’s extremely difficult to set it up properly. By using MonsterInsights, the most popular Google Analytics plugin for WordPress, this can be achieved easily. Moonlight combined with Google Analytics can help to get all this information in a few clicks. It helps you keep proper track of WordPress WooCommerce SEO.
- Optimize Website Speed and Performance
The speed by which a site loads and completely opens is of high importance. Delay by a second can degrade the SEO rank by 7-8%, 11% fewer page views, and a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction. A site should be well-optimized so that they rank on the search engines falls. The rank of a website is directly proportional to its speed. The most common reason for a slow website is less optimized media and the server on which the site is hosted. Always use the best hosts if you don’t want to fall below in the search results.
- Improve WooCommerce Security
It is preferred by search engines to show the websites that are most safe and secure. Google Chrome as well as search result warns the user to proceed on any website that is not secure. Google can easily track if a website has many links to scams, malware, and phishing websites, and marks them as unsafe. This can easily hamper the WooCommerce SEO rankings and may have a severe impact on the brand’s reputation. To prevent hackers from establishing misleading links and injecting malware or data thefts on your pages, one needs to tighten the WooCommerce store’s security. Always follow the guided process available on WooCommerce security to make it safe for yourself and the users.
Wrapping Up
Considering all these points, it will be a great boon for both the merchant as well as the customers. It will be helpful to optimize the website effectively for various search engines and attract more traffic. If WooCommerce is not SEO optimized, then surely one is missing a lot of things. Don’t forget to install the Rank Math plugin to give an instant boost to the SEO of your WordPress WooCommerce website. All the best!