Scroll to top

The Woocommerce Store Owner’s Practical Guide to Being Search Engine Friendly

E-commerce SEO

We have been talking lately about the importance of doing SEO for a Woocommerce store. As we are aware, SEO is the process by which a Woocommerce store ranks high on the search engine result pages. But as a Woocommerce store owner, it is very important to know the difference between doing SEO for your website and making it search engine friendly. While SEO is a continuous and ongoing process, making a site SEO-friendly is a one-time process with minor tweaking at regular intervals of time.

Investing time and money in Woocommerce SEO can only fetch results if your website is search engine friendly.
By following this guide, you can be confident that your store meets Google’s basic best practices.

Being search engine friendly vs. “doing SEO”

Being search engine friendly is the first step towards building a website. It comes way before you start implementing practical SEO on your site. Google’s official guidelines have explained the steps in a very simple manner, which should be implemented right at the designing phase. The three main areas that Google points out in its guidelines are:

*     Design guidelines
*     Technical guidelines
*     Content guidelines

Let’s talk about some of the points to make your Woocommerce store SEO-friendly.

Content is king:

Usually, eCommerce store owners struggle with the addition of fresh and unique content for each and every product on the site. However, it is always advisable to have good content on the portal and here are some guidelines on how it can be done:

*     Always add a product description: It is very important to have unique and relevant content as product descriptions on your product details pages. This is crucial to both your potential customers and robots.

*     Use search-appropriate words and phrases: Always include keywords and search phrases related to your product, like “Golf T shirts” or “Beach capris” in the title, product description and product name. You may research the keywords or the help of your SEO agency to do the same for you.  Also, think about what other phrases your customers might be searching for and use them where appropriate.

*     Create unique content wherever possible: Do not prefer using the manufacturer’s description. Create your own unique content and add it to product pages. This will increase the possibility of ranking high many folds. Write your own content; on your homepage and other pages, your copywriting should always be original.

*     Avoid duplicating pages. Some eCommerce platforms may accidentally duplicate pages if they’re accessed through two different means (for example, via a search and a category page). Google frowns on this kind of duplicate content much more so than duplicate copywriting. If you use WooCommerce, WordPress will handle assigning a “canonical” (original) URL for your pages, but here’s how to change them with Yoast if you run into issues.

Use keywords in the page copy

It is always advisable to work with your SEO agency while creating your eCommerce store. Their expertise in the field will help you in creating a Google-friendly Woocommerce store. Ask them to do keyword research for you and suggest some good search phrases with high conversion rates. You may also have sessions with them that will help them understand your market and customers better. If you have already created your website, do not panic. You can always add fresh and unique content on the pages including good search phrases.

*     Don’t Stuff Keywords. Use them as naturally as possible: Do not stuff your copy with keywords. Use the search phrases as naturally as possible within the text. Else Google will penalize your website if it’s found to be doing this. Also, your customers will not be able to make any sense of the content.

*     Make your navigation beautiful: Google utilizes special crawling technology, called “spiders” to automatically review and index websites for its search results. A store with clear navigation and easy-to-access pages is much more likely to appear in search results than a cluttered or complicated one with tons of menus.

Here are some tips:
*     Label your pages in a sensible manner
*     Keep your main navigation simple
*     Enable “breadcrumb” links
*     Link to every page
*     Create a sitemap

Keep your URLs short, clear, and sensible

URLs play a vital role in SEO.

Here are some tips on creating SEO-friendly URLs:

*     Use words, not numbers, in your URLs
*     Use relevant keywords (but not too many)
*     Keep the URL length optimum

Make your site’s speed a priority

Research has shown that people, as well as robots, hate to wait on your website. Long loading times drastically lower the conversion rate. So, it is always advisable to have good site speed and page loading time.
Here are a few tips:

*     Optimize large images by compressing them before uploading
*     Use a caching service or content delivery network (CDN)
*     Upgrade your hosting as needed

After you are ready with a SEO friendly Woocommerce store, you may ask your Woocommerce SEO services company to implement practical SEO which further includes various steps. You may also hire an in-house dedicated SEO expert team to work on your site or look for a competent e-commerce SEO company who have experienced Woocommerce SEO experts to take care of the SEO of your website.

Author avatar
brandconn
https://www.brandconn.com
Public advisory against the common scams. Click to read more.