- WooCommerce is one of the best e-commerce plugins
for WordPress sites.
But like your website, your storefront
needs to be accessible to search engines.
And that means taking the time to optimize
each page and product.
WordPress and by extension WooCommerce
try to make implementing modern SEO practices easy.
And WooCommerce is a plugin that operates
within the WordPress system, uses the same tools
to help optimize images, product descriptions, and more.
The tools native to WordPress make optimizing
the store fast and simple.
- So let's get started optimizing your store
to get noticed by search engines and customers alike,
starting with always conduct keyword research first.
The right keywords can make it easier for customers
to find your site and increase the likelihood
that search engines will in fact direct them
to the best products in your store.
And as you start looking for keywords,
you'll see what people are actually searching for
and which businesses are ranking for specific terms
and then be, you know, better informed to make decisions
about your SEO strategy based on the results.
And there are free tools like Google Trends,
Google Search Console, Google Search Suggestions,
and Amazon Search Suggestions.
And of course, as with anything and everything,
there's also paid tools like Moz, SEMRush, and Ahrefs.
So start your search with broad terms
like your company's niche or product categories
and then look at what your competitors are using
to rank online and then use those results
to guide your selection and see what keywords
make the most sense with what products
you're selling on your website.
- And then you'll wanna optimize your product categories,
titles, descriptions, and image alt text.
While the search engine is on its crawl, it finds options
with product categories, titles, descriptions, and images
that fit the search parameters.
You could optimize all of these aspects
of your WooCommerce store to make your pages and products
more visible to search engines using the keywords you found
during your keyword research Emma just talked about.
That said, only use keywords where they fit naturally.
The last thing you wanna do is force a keyword
or use too many too often.
Search engines will penalize you for keyword stuffing.
We all like stuffing but not the keyword type.
Use more keywords than absolutely necessary
essentially is what that means in any piece
of content on your website.
If you've ever looked at a site and there's just a bunch
of like just keywords all over that doesn't make sense
and you can't really read it, that's essentially
what the keyword stuffing is.
Don't do it. You just get penalized for it.
- That's right, and one of the most important
WooCommerce SEO best practices
that you'll wanna implement immediately
is avoiding duplicative content.
And while it seems harmless, especially if you're just
repurposing descriptions you've already written,
it can actually dramatically hurt your site's SEO.
And Google and other search engines
like to see unique content.
If they track duplicated text across your site,
it won't count as unique content and any keywords
included in them won't impact your site's performance.
Unfortunately, duplicate content issues can happen
even when you're careful to avoid it.
But WordPress and WooCommerce know this and have created
a few simple workarounds like redirects, no index,
and canonical tags to help you deal with duplicate content
without having to remove it from the site entirely.
- And in today's day and age, this should go without saying
but make sure you're using security certificates
for all your webpages but especially the WooCommerce store
and keep plugins, especially WooCommerce plugins,
updated at all times.
This will keep customers safer
as they enter payment information.
It's also a good idea to upgrade the username and passwords
for your main and administrative login.
So don't use admin.
So use a unique and complex password that hackers
won't be able to guess easily so you can keep
the business's information safer longer.
- And ensure mobile friendliness because believe it or not,
many customers are not shopping from their computer.
They are using their smartphone.
They're using their tablets.
In fact, mobile purchases account for over 67%
of all online sales.
What does that mean?
Well, that means you need to make sure that your site
is optimized for both desktop and mobile devices
if you wanna get the most impact
from your WooCommerce SEO strategy.
And even the best website can drive customers away
if it's not easy to use on a mobile device.
And most WordPress sites make optimizing everything
for mobile devices simple.
I love that word, simple.
And just preview each page in different formats
to make sure they display the way you want them to.
And you can always make changes in the front-end editor
to improve the user experience.
- Using WooCommerce is a great way to incorporate
a user-friendly storefront into any WordPress site.
As long as you use this WooCommerce SEO guide,
you'll be able to set the storefront up for success
and improve your search engine rankings over time.
But that is a wrap.
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Thanks for watching. This is The Journey.