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Driving traffic to your online store is a must if you want to see an increase in your sales. However, constantly relying on paid traffic can be quite costly. A better alternative is to get found via organic traffic and capitalize on the power of SEO.

Once your store starts ranking in the search engines as the relevant result, you can scale back your ad budget and invest it in other areas of your business, not to mention organic traffic is more likely to result in sales as people are already demonstrating an interest in your product and actively searching for it.

In this post, I am sharing 11 tips that will help you improve your WooCommerce SEO so you can start reaping the benefits.

Use Meta Descriptions Correctly

Meta descriptions show up in the search engine results as a description when someone performs a search for keywords related to your products. As such, your meta description should include those keywords naturally.

 

Be wary of keyword stuffing your meta descriptions as this will have a negative effect on your rankings. While you’re at it, make sure your meta descriptions are between 150 and 160 characters so they don’t get truncated by the search engines.

Optimize Title Tags

Similarly to meta descriptions, your title tags should be optimized for the search engines as well as for the humans. Keep in mind that the title tag refers both your product category pages as well as individual products. For starters, make sure your title tags are between 50 and 60 characters as anything longer than that will get cut off by the search engines.

Next, use broad keywords in your product category page titles and use more specific keywords in product titles.

Lastly, include your main keyword towards the beginning of the title but avoid overusing keywords so that your title is still understandable by humans.

Implement Proper Schema Markup

Another way to optimize your WooCommerce for SEO is to use the appropriate Schema Markup for e-Commerce stores. This means your site needs to use Rich Snippets which will help improve how your products appear in the search engine results.

While you could add rich snippets manually, doing so is an involved process. There are, however, several WooCommerce extensions that will help you implement proper Schema Markup for your store. Alternatively, you can use a plugin like All In One Schema Rich Snippets.

Improve Your URL Structure

One of the best things about WordPress is that you can set pretty permalinks for all the content on your site. Choosing the right URL structure for your shop and all the product categories, and products in your store is crucial as you don’t want to confuse your visitors with long URLs. Not only does this make your content harder to remember, it also makes it harder to share on social media.

Consider avoiding using permalinks with dates in them and opt for the cleanest and shortest combination possible. Keep in mind that your shop URL as well as product URLs should contain the keyword you’re trying to rank for so do incorporate those in your URL naturally.

Optimize Your Images

Your product images can help you sell more of your product and they can also help you get found in the search engines. That’s why you need to make sure your product images are optimized for SEO.

This means the title of your image should accurately describe the product in question. You should also add an ALT tag to each product image you upload to your store as ALT tags help search engines learn more about the page the image is on, not to mention they are used by assistive technologies used by people with disabilities.

Use a Mobile-Friendly Theme

According to stats, 79% of smartphone users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months. As such, using a mobile-friendly theme that makes it easy for your visitors and potential buyers to make a purchase is a must.

Luckily, almost all of the WordPress themes are mobile-friendly and responsive, however, if you’re using an older theme, make sure to check how your store looks on mobile devices. You can also consider upgrading to a theme like Flatsome which was built with WooCommerce in mind and is fully responsive.

Use an SEO Plugin

It goes without saying that you should use an SEO plugin on your site to help with your SEO efforts. While the plugin itself won’t magically make you appear at the top of the search results, it will help you improve your content and make sure it hits all the important elements necessary to rank better in search engines.

A great SEO plugin to get started with is Yoast SEO and it even has a WooCommerce extension that will help you optimize your product descriptions and titles for search engines.

Enable Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs appear at the top of your product pages and other pages on your site. They are useful for visitors as they make it easy for them to go back to the previous page or category on your page. They are also useful for the search engines as they help them understand how your site is structured.

You can enable breadcrumbs easily if you’re using the Yoast plugin. All you have to do is go to SEO > Search Appearance > Breadcrumbs and make sure the option is enabled.

Make Reviews Always Visible Without User Interaction

When your product reviews aren’t hidden in a secondary tab, they have a higher chance of being indexed by the search engines and showing up as a result. Consider using a theme that displays product reviews directly on the product page. Alternatively, consider using a page builder like Elementor that allows you to add product rating widgets directly on your product pages.

Improve Your Site Hierarchy

Lastly, make sure your site hierarchy is easy to understand. In other words, avoid using too many categories and subcategories as this complicates your site structure unnecessarily. Instead, keep everything accessible within 3-4 clicks.

Use drop down menus to create an easy navigation and make sure your breadcrumbs are enabled, as mentioned earlier.

Don’t Forget Product Descriptions

Finally, don’t forget to optimize your product descriptions. For starters, avoid overusing the product keywords. Next, make sure to use natural language and phrases that your target audience would be looking for or using to describe your product.

You’ll also want to make sure that your product descriptions are easy to read by using short paragraphs and bullet points when possible.

Final Thoughts

Improving the SEO of your online store is a must if you want to get more organic traffic and stop relying on paid advertisement. Keep in mind that SEO is a long-term strategy so it will take a while to see the results but the benefits are too good to pass up on. Use the tips in this article to boost your store’s SEO rankings and show up higher in search results.

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