There are several popular online stores, shopping cart platforms and plugins.
There are pros and cons to each of them, and one of the most SEO-friendly options is WooCommerce: a popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress.
In June 2022, WordPress powered 64.2% of all content management systems.
This puts it near the top of the CMS chart.
When it comes to e-commerce specifically, WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce technology among the top 1 million websites. The WooCommerce plugin became so popular that WordPress acquired it in 2015.
My team has been using WooCommerce for almost a decade. Although I know it very well, I was a bit surprised to see WooCommerce at number 1 with the stamina of Magento and the emergence and popularity of Shopify among several other shopping cart platforms over the past few years.
We continue to use WooCommerce because we get the SEO benefits we get from WordPress and can add the eCommerce functionality we need.
Platforms like Shopify and Magento buy content first and then content, in terms of how they’re built.
It’s hard to get the same level of CMS and other aspects to have control over which components and variables to optimize in the other plugins.
Sometimes things get locked down and you can’t access the base tier or theme to update code and manage technical SEO.
Why Does Any Of This Matter?
You may already be on WooCommerce or another e-commerce platform.
I’m all for whichever platform is best for you. There are set SEO ceilings that you will hit in what you can do on different platforms.
WooCommerce will also have caps, if you don’t take advantage of how you can set it up, how you handle your WordPress optimization as a whole, and how your overall SEO strategy is set.
Hopefully, if you are into WooCommerce or deciding which platform to choose and have SEO in mind, this article will help you on that journey.
What Makes WooCommerce SEO Unique
WooCommerce SEO is unique because it is in WordPress. Much of what you will do to optimize a WooCommerce eCommerce site is what you would do for a WordPress site as a whole.
Overall, WooCommerce SEO benefits in WordPress out-of-the-box or with a light setup include:
Best Practices
Most WooCommerce and WordPress best practices align with broader eCommerce SEO best practices.
This includes managing the technical, on-page and off-page aspects of e-commerce SEO as part of an overall strategy and at a tactical level.
If you’re new to SEO or want to make sure you don’t miss a thing, I recommend checking out SEJ’s SEO 101 guide.
Getting Started
Before you optimize, you need to make sure you’re ready.
I highly recommend working on your action plan and goals before you start.
Knowing your current performance and researching the keywords and topics you want to target are important parts of both.
WooCommerce Analytics
I recommend using Google Analytics as the primary analytics data source and platform for WordPress.
Digging deeper and specifically into the e-commerce analytics you can integrate into GA from WooCommerce, the GTM4WP plugin is a great way to get that data.
Be sure to measure the data you want and need on your site for SEO and tracking your broader marketing goals. I recommend prioritizing data before you jump into optimization so you can capture some benchmark data to compare if you don’t already have it in the right place.
Transactional Emails
Another basic thing you’ll want to do is set up transactional emails. Several email platforms integrate with WordPress and WooCommerce.
A favorite of my team for ease of use and good work is Mailchimp’s transactional emails feature.
It used to be called Mandrill and can handle post-purchase email communications, such as order and shipping confirmations.
Mailchimp itself can also be used to create automated email campaigns based on customer journey or shopping behavior, such as cart abandonment emails, win-back, etc.
A feature like this is key to getting the most out of our SEO investment, and for the traffic you work hard to get to the site and to the cart.
Keyword Research
Knowing what words, phrases, topics, and terms are related to the topic you want to rank for is essential. Beyond that, confirm that the people searching for these topics are your desired potential audience.
There are plenty of great third-party audience and keyword research tools like Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs.
They are paid tools with different subscription levels, but they are leaders. They have their respective strengths to help you find topics that match your content, products, and categories and drill down to the right targets for your SEO plan.
Build your lists, associate them with your content, and use them as context as you work out which optimization best practices to follow.
Technical SEO
As with any site, and to follow broader UX best practices, you want your site to load quickly, be indexable, and have nothing holding it back.
There are several specific technical factors that you need to consider, configure, and monitor that can hinder or unlock your ranking opportunity against peer sites.
Indexing
Getting your content found is essential.
It starts with making sure you have a clean XML sitemap and robots.txt file. Also, go to Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and third-party validation tools to make sure everything is as expected.
Use the Yoast plugin (or similar) to adjust the settings for your XML sitemap and your robots.txt files.
Yoast is great at giving you options to include or remove these files, so you don’t have to mess with code or manually adjust these files. You can get the settings at your convenience and then submit them for validation through the console/webmaster tools.
Screenshot by author, September 2022
Page Experience
There are many data points and best practices on page load times, site speed, and other factors Google looks at for “page experience.”
Overall, you need to pay attention to major web vitals and page load times to ensure you have fast-loading pages that don’t detract from the image quality and richness of the content. for users.
I highly recommend getting acquainted with these three aspects of web vitals with SEJ’s guide.
Imagify and WP Rocket are recommended plugins for image optimization and caching to improve page load times and overall site performance.
Screenshot from Imagify, September 2022
Accessibility
Making your content accessible to everyone, including people with visual impairments, is important.
This includes encoding to common ADA standards and ensuring that alt attributes and other cues are included.
Not a plugin recommendation here – I recommend using a third-party tool like PowerMapper.com to audit pages to get the useful information you need to adjust page elements to meet the standard advised by your legal adviser (I am not a lawyer).
Structured Data
It’s important to use additional contextual clues and opportunities to categorize, catalog, and tag your topic. Leverage as much as possible for insights specific to your industry, especially using specific product attributes.
Again, harnessing the power of the Yoast plugin, you can use it to add basic schema markup to pages on your site.
I recommend reading more about the scheme and how it works before diving into the implementation if it’s a new concept.
WordPress screenshot, September 2022
Canonical URLs And Permalinks
Web stores can inherently have complexities and struggles with duplicate content.
Whether you have a product that appears in multiple categories, or you’re just dealing with the “out of the box” way WordPress and WooCommerce generate many separate URLs for a single page, you should include a single “canonical” version for search engines index, display in search results, and aggregate all link values to.
I again recommend Yoast for managing canonicals.
I also recommend the redirect plugin if you have moving pages, broken products, or need to permanently 301 redirect one specific page to another.
Be aware of how you use canonicals and redirects, and always validate with tools like Screaming Frog or other lightweight redirect testing tools.
You want to avoid conflicts between several plugins which can send the wrong signal to search engines or provide a bad experience to your users (sending in 404, redirect loops, etc.).
WordPress screenshot, September 2022
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are links on inner pages that show a user (and a search engine) where they are on a site in terms of navigation path or depth.
They allow users to see how deep they are in a specific product category, blog category, or other inner section and a way to click back up.
They are usually coded into your WordPress site theme as a default element. The Yoast plugin is great for adding schema markup to them for WordPress/WooCommerce.
WordPress screenshot, September 2022
On-Page SEO
On-page ranking factors and SEO aspects for eCommerce SEO that you’ll want to have covered in your WooCommerce site include:
URLs
Beyond the technicalities of implementing canonical tags and managing duplicate content so search engines index and rank a single version of your pages – including categories and products – you don’t want to miss out on. the opportunity to include important contextual keywords in your URLs.
Use WordPress native page naming conventions and tools to insert meaningful keywords (without going overboard or stuffing) into the URL string.
Tags
Like any SEO plan, you’ll want to have an optimized custom title, meta description, and header tags on every page. Like any large or enterprise site, if you have many products, find ways to scale tag creation with data-driven content where possible.
Use Yoast to create custom titles and meta descriptions on each page.
Just like copy and URLs, however, also look at how the defaults are set up to fetch dynamic elements and define which ones you can use. This way, you can create formulas for creating tags that don’t require you to write custom tags for each page in order to meet your unique tag goals per page.
WordPress screenshot, September 2022
Copy
Unique, optimized copy can be a challenge for e-commerce sites.
Much like beacons, you might struggle to do this at scale. Or, you may have many similar products. Find ways to invest in manual time to write best practices, avoid duplicate content, and scale programmatically when possible while maintaining high quality.
Images
Image file attributes are an area where you can include relevant contextual keywords describing the subject of the image.
This is important for product images, product category-level images, and any content on your site.
They are important in terms of meeting accessibility standards – and also, for search engines – to understand the context of an image.
Manage them in the WordPress media center while uploading or later by editing the images via the media tab or by going to the page and clicking on the image to review and edit the properties.
WordPress screenshot, September 2022
Product Reviews
Unique user-generated content can help add contextual copy complementing the copy on a product page.
Additional context and another type of potential schema element can be added with product reviews.
My team uses and recommends the stamped.io plugin for easy review management and implementation.
However, there are many excellent review management plugins available, and they vary in cost, ease of implementation, and complexity.
As a bonus, Stamped will also send review requests after purchase.
WordPress screenshot, September 2022
WordPress screenshot, September 2022
Off-Page SEO
Ecommerce SEO, like most SEO, requires off-page factors to build on your technical and on-page/content-focused tactics.
These factors are more general and less specifically related to WooCommerce, but should not be excluded from your SEO plan:
Links
Look for high-quality, industry/context-relevant inbound links to your products, categories, and content.
This includes natural associations such as manufacturers, partners, affiliates, public relations endorsements, and other quality natural sources.
Social Media
Of course, there is some debate as to whether this is a direct ranking factor.
Either way, link to your site from social media content to create context and connections and look for areas of opportunity in the social media landscape to get links and mentions.
Engagement
Look for other opportunities for online engagement and mentions.
Whether it’s part of a PR plan, influencer strategy, or other ways to get your brand mentioned, take advantage of it.
Research them and look for high-quality content to reference yours.
Popular SEO Plugins For WooCommerce
You can boost WooCommerce with other WordPress plugins, many of which are free.
Here is a rundown of the plugins I noted related to the individual elements you want to optimize.
WordPress plugins recommended by my team for use with WooCommerce (and in many cases in general for WordPress) SEO include:
The great thing, for the most part, about these plugins is that if you have some WordPress experience, you might not need a developer to set them up.
Like any plugin, your WordPress infrastructure can impact your level of access and any custom aspects required for implementation depending on how they interact with other plugins or features.
Conclusion
You’ve probably picked up a few themes already.
These include the fact that all of the great benefits of WordPress for SEO translate to WooCommerce, as do most eCommerce SEO best practices.
I’m biased based on experience, and I guarantee many can point to Magento, Shopify, and other e-commerce sites that are extremely optimized and have SERPs and their industries.
I love it, which is one of the great things about SEO.
For now, I’m still on the WooCommerce bandwagon.
I have found it to be cheaper to implement than some enterprise solutions, more feature rich than some that are advertised as very easy to set up, and provides an overall user experience richer.
Plus, it has the SEO benefits of WordPress and WooCommerce combined.
Feature image: Ashan Randika/Shutterstock
Shopify has better selling features than WooCommerce Having built-in, out-of-the-box functionality makes Shopify more accessible – important features like abandoned cart recovery are vital for any large business, and that’s just one thing WooCommerce does not offer.
Does rank Math work with Elementor?
SEO Settings & Optimization natively built into Elementor Once installed, Rank Math enhances the experience in a non-intrusive way that makes an SEO settings tab available when working with Elementor posts and pages.
Is Elementor good for SEO? Summary: Elementor Rank Math = An SEO Powerhouse Not only have they made it easy to visually design WordPress websites, but they are one of the only page builders that produce truly clean code. And Elementor does all of this while allowing you to develop websites blazingly fast.
Can I use rank math and Yoast?
2 Using Rank Math Import & Export If you skipped or missed importing data from the Yoast SEO plugin during the setup wizard, no problem – you can still import it with the Rank Math Import & Export feature .
Is rank Math good for SEO?
Impressive features. Rank Math gives you a competitive edge with its powerful and easy to use features. Whether you’re an SEO novice or an SEO veteran, Rank Math can take your SEO game to the next level.
Can I use Yoast and rank Math at the same time?
No, you cannot use Rank Math and Yoast on the same website. You need to migrate from one plugin to another. If you don’t know how to do this, just follow my step by step process.
Can I use Yoast and all in one SEO together?
Yes, you will need to disable Yoast SEO plugin once you enable All in One SEO, as enabling two SEO plugins at the same time can lead to critical SEO issues.
Which is better rank Math or Yoast?
Yoast SEO is a great tool for beginners. This will help you write better articles and optimize your content for the targeted keywords. However, you will need to upgrade to access advanced settings. Rank Math is a clear winner for SEO specialists who need to dive deeper into content analysis and optimization.
Can I use other plugins with Elementor?
Sure you can! Plugin widgets that appear in the WordPress widget menu will also automatically appear in Elementor. Just drag and drop them onto the page.
Does Elementor work with other Plugins?
Elementor works great with any well written plugin including Yoast SEO, CSS Hero, WooCommerce, WPML, BuddyPress, Polylang, CF7 and more.
What Plugins are not compatible with Elementor?
The following plugins are not allowed to be installed on Elementor Cloud websites.
- Backup guard.
- Beaver builder.
- Beaver Builder Lite.
- BlueHost Site Migrator.
- Brizy.
- BWP minification.
- Customizer export/import.
- Divi builder.
Can Gutenberg and Elementor work together?
Elementor and Gutenberg already work perfectly together. As a user, you can easily decide which editor to use at each stage of editing your site. Create a blog post layout in Elementor and then implement it, so every new post you write with Gutenberg automatically gets the Elementor design.
Is there anything better than Elementor?
One of the best Elementor alternatives available is Divi. This page builder offers a comprehensive design framework that you can use to customize your entire website. Website owners of all experience levels can benefit from Divi’s easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface.
Is Yoast or rank better math?
Yoast SEO is a great tool for beginners. This will help you write better articles and optimize your content for the targeted keywords. However, you will need to upgrade to access advanced settings. Rank Math is a clear winner for SEO specialists who need to dive deeper into content analysis and optimization.
Which is better rank Math or All In One SEO?
Rank Math takes the content analysis feature a step further and also includes an Extra tab, which checks for more advanced SEO metrics. But All in One SEO tops both competitors with a quick and easy overview of your overall SEO score in the top right corner of your page.
Is rank Math good for SEO?
Impressive features. Rank Math gives you a competitive edge with its powerful and easy to use features. Whether you’re an SEO novice or an SEO veteran, Rank Math can take your SEO game to the next level.
Is Yoast still the best?
Yoast SEO is one of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time. It is also one of the best SEO plugins for WordPress powered websites.
What are the disadvantages of WooCommerce?
Disadvantages of Using WooCommerce
- This is specific to WordPress. WooCommerce is still a plugin; so you can’t use it on sites that WordPress doesn’t host. …
- He has many expenses. Although WooCommerce itself is free to download and install, some extensions may require payment in order for your site to operate at its optimum capacity.
Does WooCommerce slow down the website? Most definitely, WooCommerce is slow and it’s a heavy plugin, as I wrote about in my article about plugins that slow down WordPress. It adds a bunch of javascript and CSS to your site’s pages to work, and of course it performs additional queries against the database.
Is it better to use Shopify or WooCommerce?
Product Limit Shopify’s biggest advantage over WooCommerce is that it eliminates the complicated technical aspects of running an online business. Instead, it offers easy-to-use tools allowing easy setup in minutes.
Is Shopify or WooCommerce better for dropshipping?
The right hosting can make all the difference If you want to set up multiple Shopify dropshipping stores, you need to start from scratch and recreate a store. But with WooCommerce, you don’t have to start from scratch, just install a Duplicator plugin to replicate your store.
Is it better to use Shopify or WordPress?
Shopify is often best suited for e-commerce businesses, while WordPress is best suited for bloggers. Shopify is built for e-commerce and includes features like discounts, gift cards, unlimited products, fraud analytics, employee accounts, and more. Like WordPress, you can also create a blog on Shopify.
Which one is cheaper WooCommerce or Shopify?
Overall, WooCommerce is technically the cheapest solution because the software itself is free. Still, running a real eCommerce store on WooCommerce essentially costs the same as Shopify, if not more.
Can I trust WooCommerce?
Is WooCommerce secure? WooCommerce is designed to provide a convenient and secure platform for eCommerce websites. Therefore, WooCommerce is secure on its own. However, it does not protect you against external security threats such as hacks or brute force attacks.
Is WooCommerce a good site?
WooCommerce is a popular choice among dropshipping businesses. Mainly because of the flexible WooCommerce dropshipping plugins that make the whole process quite easy to configure. You can easily find extensions that allow you to instantly import products, process orders from your website, and more.
Can WooCommerce be hacked?
Can a WooCommerce website be hacked? Yes, like any site, a WooCommerce store can be hacked. However, both WordPress and WooCommerce include features that will help protect your content and customer data.
Is WooCommerce safe to use?
WooCommerce already has built-in features that make it completely safe as an e-commerce platform. Your business deals with a lot of sensitive information on a daily basis, so it is recommended that you follow WooCommerce security guidelines to avoid data loss or any form of cybercrime.
Which is better WordPress or WooCommerce?
If you need a more complex website with eCommerce functionality, WooCommerce is the way to go. Conclusion: WordPress and WooCommerce are great choices for building websites. WordPress is best for simple sites while WooCommerce is better for complex sites with e-commerce functionality.
Do you need WordPress for WooCommerce?
WooCommerce is a plugin, so you’ll need a WordPress site that can use plugins. The very first thing you will need to do is choose a host for your store and purchase a plan. It’s actually quite easy. WooCommerce and WordPress both recommend hosts like SiteGround, Bluehost, and Pressable.
Who should use WooCommerce?
All business owners need is an active domain through WordPress – and if you don’t have it, you can buy one for just $180/year. Who should choose WooCommerce? Both mid-sized businesses and large enterprises would benefit from WooCommerce.
What’s the difference between WordPress and WooCommerce?
What is the difference between WooCommerce and WordPress? WordPress is a content management system (CMS). WooCommerce is an eCommerce plugin that works with WordPress. WooCommerce turns your WordPress website into an online store, where you can sell products.
Is WooCommerce the best eCommerce platform?
Many e-commerce systems offer functionality to create an e-commerce website. WooCommerce, on the other hand, is the most widely used e-commerce platform due to its reliability and adaptability for a wide range of businesses. WooCommerce offers premium add-ons that can help your business reach its full potential.
Is WooCommerce good for SEO?
WooCommerce SEO (search engine optimization) is essential to any successful e-commerce business. This can help your business appear higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). Products that rank high on search engine results pages (SERPs) reach more people.
Is WooCommerce SEO friendly? The short answer is “yes”. Just like WordPress itself, WooCommerce is SEO friendly, but you’ll need the help of an SEO plugin to unlock this feature. With the right plugin, you will be able to perform all the search engine optimizations you need to rank your store in Google.
Is Shopify or WooCommerce better for SEO?
Unlike Shopify, you have to purchase SSL certificates for WooCommerce sites yourself. You can either create it for free, but it requires technical skills to perform the task. Shopify is clearly the one to beat in the list of ready-to-use, SEO-optimized e-commerce platforms.
Does Shopify have better SEO?
For most parts, yes. Shopify has nailed all the basic SEO features. It contains many built-in features and applications that effectively index and rank your page in search engines. Plus, it’s probably the most SEO-friendly e-commerce platform ever.
Is Shopify better at SEO than WooCommerce?
If you’re a startup, Shopify is an ideal choice because it’s simple and easy to use. Meanwhile, WooCommerce gives you more SEO specific options as the plugin is built on top of WordPress which is helpful for optimizing content. If you want to launch a large-scale store and take advantage of SEO, WooCommerce is a better option.
Is a WordPress site better for SEO?
Our clients often ask us if WordPress is good for SEO. The answer is yes! Once known primarily as a blogging platform, WordPress has built a reputation for providing a solid SEO foundation as a CMS – and for good reason. It’s no coincidence that WordPress sites tend to rank well on Google.
Do WordPress sites rank better?
Using WordPress does NOT mean you will receive higher search rankings. “There is a lot of misinformation about WordPress websites consistently ranking higher than websites built with website builders. This is simply not the case in our experiences.
Is HTML or WordPress better for SEO?
WordPress websites are better for SEO for two reasons. The first is that they are easier to update. The other reason is that WordPress has a lot of plugins that make it easy to optimize your site for SEO. WordPress websites are better than static sites because they are easier to update and have more plugins to help with SEO.
Is WordPress necessary for SEO?
WordPress makes it easy to structure, manage, and publish your content in an SEO-friendly way. This is why it is considered the best CMS for search engine optimization.
Does Yoast SEO slow down WordPress?
Yes. Yoast slows down WordPress.
What’s better than Yoast SEO? Rank Math’s top tier prices are lower than Yoast SEO’s (although this may change). Rank Math’s premium plan supports an unlimited number of websites, while Yoast SEO does not offer an unlimited license. Rank Math only has one premium plan with all the features, while Yoast SEO has several premium extensions.
Do plugins make WordPress slow?
However, adding too many plugins to your WordPress website can become problematic. In most cases, too many plugins slow down your website and hinder loading times. If you’re using a free iOS and Android app builder like AppMySite, a loss in website speed can also slow down your app.
Do plugins slow down a website?
Since many site owners are unfamiliar with coding, plugins are a quick fix. However, adding too many plugins to your WordPress website can become problematic. In most cases, too many plugins slow down your website and hinder loading times.
Why is my WordPress site suddenly slow?
There can be several issues why your WordPress site is loading so slowly. It could be a slow server host, having too many or outdated plugins, unoptimized images, lack of caching facilities, etc. The problem could be purely technical in nature or simply because your site is not keeping up with the latest updated versions.
Do plugins affect site speed?
The more plugins you have, the slower your site will load. To keep control of plugins, delete those that are of no use to you. Also, if you find that a WordPress plugin is affecting your site speed, look for a plugin with similar functionality but higher quality.
Is Yoast SEO good for WordPress?
Every WordPress site needs an SEO plugin if they want their pages to show up in search engine rankings. And when it comes to SEO plugins, Yoast SEO is by far one of the most popular options.
Is Yoast SEO enough for WordPress SEO?
Yoast SEO offers a wide range of features, all essential for proper website optimization. As a complete SEO package, we believe Yoast SEO outperforms every other WordPress SEO plugin on the market. And is also one of the top SEO tools chosen by our experts to increase your website traffic.
Is Yoast SEO the best?
Yoast SEO is a great tool for beginners. This will help you write better articles and optimize your content for the targeted keywords. However, you will need to upgrade to access advanced settings.
Which WordPress plugins are slowing down my site?
Most slow WordPress plugins are related to page builders, any plugin that needs to collect/process data (i.e. Broken Link Checker, Query Monitor, even Wordfence), social sharing, slider, portfolio, calendar, live chat or plugins running heavy tasks in the background. .
Do plugins affect site speed?
The more plugins you have, the slower your site will load. To keep control of plugins, delete those that are of no use to you. Also, if you find that a WordPress plugin is affecting your site speed, look for a plugin with similar functionality but higher quality.
How do you find out which plugins are slowing down your WordPress site?
WP Hive is a free Chrome extension that tells you which plugins from the WordPress repository are slow. Just install the extension, go to the WordPress plugins page and search for any plugin. WP Hive tells you if the plugin is impacting memory usage or PageSpeed Insights.
Why is my WordPress site suddenly slow?
There can be several issues why your WordPress site is loading so slowly. It could be a slow server host, having too many or outdated plugins, unoptimized images, lack of caching facilities, etc. The problem could be purely technical in nature or simply because your site is not keeping up with the latest updated versions.