If you’re a shop owner on WooCommerce, your primary goal is to reach your target audience and increase sales and profits at every turn. If Google doesn’t differentiate your small business from others like yours, neither will your potential customers. Use proven SEO tools and strategies to enhance your online presence, landing high in the SERPs and leading buyers directly to you.
While WooCommerce already has built-in SEO (search engine optimization), consider additional WooCommerce SEO tips, products, and assistance that will please the Google algorithm. WooCommerce marketing services by Bear North Digital create a custom growth plan that drives permanent results in no time.
What Is SEO and Can I Do Without It?
SEO, or search engine optimization, involves numerous tactics that align your webpage with current Google algorithms. The Google algorithm comprises a system that collects keywords, page titles, and other key elements from all sites in its database. The system sorts through and lists them in order of relevancy according to each search query.
If you condition your webpage with the algorithm in mind, your website will rank at the top of SERPs (search engine results pages). It’ll be one of the first presented links in searches related to your business. But the real question is, “Can I do without SEO?”
Just as having SEO strategies places you at the top of SERPs, not having them lowers your online store page below those who use SEO. As a result, when online shoppers are looking for products like yours, other shops selling the same things pop up first, leading your buyers straight to your competition.
If you’re on the second page of Google or further down, there’s a chance most shoppers won’t even ever see your store.
The Best SEO Strategies for Your Company
For the reasons outlined above, it’s best to spend the extra time, effort, and funds to enhance your online presence. Still, the question remains: what are the best strategies for your company?
Below are our top seven WooCommerce SEO tips that guarantee a turnaround with improved traffic, higher profits, and growing popularity within days.
1. SEO Plugins
An SEO plugin is an extension module that works as an add-on for your current application. It widens the functions and tasks available to you to optimize your online marketing and SEO. While there are thousands of WordPress plugins to choose from—some free and others with a monthly cost—pick one that is compatible with your application. It should also offer enough features to help you reach your SEO goals.
The All-In-One SEO Plugin is one of the best WordPress plugins for WooCommerce businesses. It combines existing WooCommerce SEO tools with additional plugin tools. This add-on is also user-friendly for ease of use.
The first thing you’ll notice with this plugin is its editing ability, which creates a compelling title and meta description for your website. It utilizes traffic keywords, reducing the chances of Google rewriting your meta description, and creates an accurate synopsis of the page’s information within the 155-character limit. It also offers on-page SEO analysis, image optimization, social media sharing tools, and more.
While more than 3 million business owners take advantage of the All-In-One SEO Plugin, others prefer other leading plugins, including the following:
- OptinMonster is best if you want to improve sales through leads. It looks at where you’re losing sales, whether from a weak email list, loads of abandoned carts, or low page viewership. This plugin uses unique campaign types, triggers, and targeting tools to grow your business.
- Broken Link Checker ultimately reduces your bounce rate by examining all links, then remedying broken or incomplete links that cause errors. Use this resource bi-annually to ensure buyers have access to your online store, increasing purchasing ability.
- TrustPulse uses notifications and customizations to entice customers to stay on or return to your site. Its popular visitor activity tool examines user activity, letting shoppers know about preexisting customers’ purchases and ratings. It also offers other popups like action messages and analytics notifications, increasing conversions by as much as 15%.
2. Utilizing Keywords
Now that we’ve touched on the types of plugins that assist with SEO tactics, including keywords, let’s delve into actual keyword research. Of all WooCommerce SEO tips, keyword usage is one of the strongest ways to increase traffic and improve sales. All customer searches consist of keywords.
Let’s say a potential buyer is looking for live plants. They may search the official plant name (pothos, cacti, orchids, etc.), the type of plant by style or characteristics (vining, structural, drought-tolerant, etc.), or just by the word “plants.” Anticipating what customers may type in their search boxes helps you determine the keywords that’ll create a match, bringing those customers to your website.
Make each page for your small business rich in all relatable keywords so that Google recommends your site.
If you need assistance uncovering the most relevant and beneficial keywords, try a keyword tool like Keyword Generator or SEMRush. They take your primary keywords and show you relatable ones that drive a lot of traffic. You can use Google Analytics 4 to understand what organic visitors want and which keywords of yours aren’t working.
3. Creating Appropriate Titles
Each category, home, or product page on your website must have a title containing primary keywords that increase SEO and tell the viewers what that specific page offers. Rather than stuff each page title with keywords that make it long and wordy, limit it to a basic description.
For instance, rather than saying “long-vining, green philodendron cordatum plant with heart-shaped leaves,” scale the keyword back to “philodendron cordatum.” Doing so allows you to keep your primary keyword without confusing your viewers. You may decide to put the edited-out words in your description instead.
4. Incorporating Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs aren’t just for finding your way back home. This strategy helps your customers find their way back to the homepage they initially clicked on.
Let’s say a customer Googles bathing suits and comes across your website. They’ll click on it, but that usually leads them to click on other links as they narrow down their searches. They may become more specific with their search by going from “bathing suits” to “onesie bathing suits” or “blue swim trunks.”
The small chain of page titles at the top of the current page, also known as breadcrumbs, shows recently visited pages. Customers can see where they’ve been on the company’s website.
Page titles also link to their respective pages, providing easy navigation for returning to a previous page. Customers can then return to an older keyword search and take their search in a different direction.
5. Internal Website Links
Another of our WooCommerce SEO tips includes linking. Internal website links work like breadcrumbs but on a larger scale. Instead of showing you where you’ve been, SEO encourages scattering these links on any page to further a viewer’s reading material or understanding of a topic.
Links can also direct a user to another product that the current page only briefly touched on.
Let’s say a page describes houseplants known as pothos and explains that they’re commonly confused with the philodendron species. The page doesn’t focus too much on the latter plant since this given page highlights pothos. The SEO suggests an internal link to another page on your website that speaks specifically about philodendrons.
Internal links create an effortless segue into related topics for your viewers. Aside from easy navigation, they produce SEO-friendly content since search engines like Google believe the heavier the internal link usage, the more important the content and the higher your page ranking should be. These links also help you boost search rankings for pages that don’t get much traffic.
6. Take Advantage of Alt Tags for Images
Alt tags or texts sit below pictures on your webpage, aiding the visually impaired so they better understand what they’re viewing. If a viewer blocks images or the webpage won’t load the pictures, the text shows up instead, elaborating on what’s in each image in detail.
Besides benefiting a wide range of viewers, alt tags improve SEO ranking since algorithms cannot process images. Images without these alt texts look like strange files that the algorithm doesn’t know how to rank, almost guaranteeing you won’t be at the top of SERPs. Simply incorporating alt tags allows the search engine to break down each page further and recommend its content to web searchers.
Alt tags should be detailed but condensed so you get as much descriptive information on the image as possible, written down within one to two simple sentences. Reducing unnecessary or redundant words like “image of” helps you limit your alt text without jeopardizing valuable, informative content. Your alt text should be no longer than 140 characters.
7. Don’t Be Redundant
Of all WooCommerce SEO tips, avoiding redundancy with duplicate content is the most vital. If you have competitors, they’re your rivals for the top spots on Google and other search engine results pages. Their products mirror yours, which means they generate nearly identical search results to satisfy customer interests.
If the content on one of your web pages reflects the information you have on other existing product pages, these pages will directly compete with one another. This competition will sacrifice your website’s ranking since some viewers will move toward one page while others visit another page with the same content on your website.
The best way to prevent this mix-up is by creating original webpage content rather than copying and pasting existing content onto a new page. Try conducting a clean sweep of all your webpages and thoroughly examine all content. If you find duplicates, delete redundant pages while redirecting links to the remaining page or combine all information into one informative page.
Learn All These Tips and More with Bear North Digital!
Are you looking for a unique WooCommerce theme that will highlight your webpage with infinite scroll or lightweight themes for speed? Maybe you’re interested in a URL structure that keeps permalinks succinct and accessible for consumers and SEO. Whether you’re a new shop owner or looking to better your existing online presence, we know and have what you need.
Our team has experience improving online growth within an average of six months while using our foolproof tools and long-standing repeatable services. If you want to learn about the best marketing plugins for WooCommerce or desire further assistance with WooCommerce SEO tips, call Bear North Digital at (218) 216-8692 for a free growth plan today!