6 SEO Tips for WooCommerce

With approximately 35% of all eCommerce websites powered by WooCommerce, this eCommerce plugin is one of the most robust and dynamic eCommerce platforms in the market!

WooCommerce is an open-source eCommerce plugin built for WordPress that allows you to develop an aesthetically-pleasing and versatile online shop on WordPress. Moreover, WooCommerce lets you use the robust SEO features that WordPress offers to optimize your WooCommerce online store.

To improve your WooCommerce’s search ranking, here are six SEO tips you can use:

1.  Use Browser Caching

Browser caching refers to browsers locally storing the cacheable resources available on a website. These resources include images, JavaScript, and CSS. When a user visits a website, the browser will load cacheable resources as opposed to retrieving information from the server, which speeds up the website loading time.

An increased website loading time improves a website’s search ranking because Google takes pagespeed into account as a vital SEO ranking factor.

2.  Include Relevant Keywords in a Product Slug

A product slug is a product page’s permalink. A product slug or permalink should include relevant keywords so the product page can match customers’ search queries. For example, a men’s winter jacket product slug should include keywords such as “mens-winter-jacket”, or a specific brand name or product attributes such as “MEC-mens-winter-jacket-black”. Including relevant keywords increases a product page’s search ranking for pertinent keywords.

3.  Use Product Categories and Tags

Product categories and tags further help Google understand a product and rank a product page according to online shoppers’ search queries. For example, choosing the product category “men’s dress shoes” for different dress shoes on your online store helps Google understand that all these products are related to “men’s dress shoes”. This categorization helps these product pages rank for queries related to “men’s dress shoes”.

4.  Enable Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are effective for internal linking because they link to all product pages in an online store. This internal linking helps Google crawl and index all product pages and rank all the product pages accordingly, based on the product titles and product descriptions.

5.  Use Image Lazy Load

Lazy loading images refers to loading images on websites asynchronously — that is, loading after the above-the-fold content is fully loaded, or even conditionally, only loading when they appear in the browser’s viewport.

This image loading approach means that if a user does not scroll past an image or if an image doesn’t appear 50% or more in the viewport, the image does not load. This image lazy-loading approach significantly reduces the amount of loading a browser needs to do when displaying a webpage, and in turn improves a website’s pagespeed. As mentioned above, an increased website pagespeed improves a website’s search ranking.

6.  Compress Image Sizes

Product images’ file size should be under 100KB, generally speaking. A smaller image file size reduces the amount of loading a browser has to deal with when rendering a webpage, and increases a website’s pagespeed. You now know how increased website pagespeed optimizes a site’s search ranking.

WooCommerce’s versatility and functionality has made it one of the most popular eCommerce plugins for online store platforms available in the market. Specifically, WooCommerce has a wide range of SEO features that lets online store owners and marketers continuously improve their website’s search rankings.

By using the SEO approaches above – including improving your site’s internal linking, product content and pagespeed – you will optimize your website’s search ranking.

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Written by Ray Wang