If you run a live webshop then you probably know how important SEO is. Without SEO you are missing out on tons of traffic and sales from the search engines. You might be able to get a piece of it through Google Ads, Google My Business or Google Shopping. But the truth is - there are still a lot of people out there who prefer to click on one of the organic (natural) results on the search engines. And if your site isn't listed there for your main keywords - then it's sales you are missing out on.
Today we are taking a closer look at how you can improve your WordPress/WooCommerce webshop to get better rankings on the seach engines and boost your traffic.
Even though these tips are written mainly for the WooCommerce CMS system - a lot of the techniques also apply to other webshop systems like Magento, Shopify, Shopware, Bigcommerce ect.
Start with making a keyword analysis
Before you should even think about doing any type of SEO optimization you need to know which keywords you are going to focus on. And in order to do that you will need a keyword analysis report. But how to you create a keyword analysis? Well start out by making a list of all the keywords or phrases you can imagine people will use when looking for the products or services you provide. Look at your competitors and see what keyword they are going for. You can normally spot these in the title bar or in the headings on their bigger pages. Add those you find relevant to your list.
Now it's time to go through the list and and how many actually search for these keywords every month. You can use some of the premium paid SEO tools for this, or ask someone with a Google Ads MCC account to do it for you. Or you can get an estimate by using free tools like Ubersuggest.
Remove all keywords with to few seaches to be worth it. Then it's time to see which competitors rank on the various keywords. If the first 5 sports are taken by larger or known companies and their onpage SEO looks solid. Put the keyword on a NOT NOW list. It will take to much work to rank now unless you got a big budget for SEO.
For the rest of the words, choose those that are most important to you based on how likely this search is to become a sale compared to how many searches for it each month. For instance a word like Fitness got tons of traffic, but if you are running a fitness shop, then a word like fitness equipment may be way more important for you, even if it has a lot fewer searches.
Next step is to install a good SEO tool on your webshop. I can recommend Math Rank or SEOpress. A lot of people are fond of Yoast SEO, but I find that it slows down your website to much. Next step - configure the plugin.
Do all the technical SEO stuff, such as improve webspeed and Web Core Vitals. Make us of canonical urls (if needed), be sure that you don't have duplicated content etc.
Install schema for an additional SEO boost.
There is a lot more of technical SEO stuff you can do, that the stuff above should cover the basics and help improve the quality of your website so that Google likes it better.
If you have read a bit about SEO, then you must have come across the phrase - Content is King.
This basically means that without the right content on your website or webshop, you might just forget all about ranking it.
Now it's time to look at your keyword analysis and see which of your existing pages you can optimize for 1-2 keywords. For those keywords that doesn't fit into an existing page (front page, category page or product page) - you will need to build specific landing pages aimed at those keywords. If you don't have the time to do it youself - hire a part time student or find a copywriter online to do it for you. I would say go for minimum 500 words - or 1000 if possible. Don't just write for the search engines, but write something the visitors will find interresting or useful too. You really can't have enough content pages. And if you want them even better, be sure to add images or videos to them too.
Now you should a big step closer to your goal of ranking the webshop on Google. But you most likely arn't quite where you want to be yet.
If all of the above are done correctly, you should now be in the top 50 for many of your important keywords. Keep in mind that it can take several weeks for the search engines to crawl and rank your webpages.
In order to improve your rankings even more you will need to send some signals to Google, telling it that others do like your website too and are willing to make a backlink to it.
Let's take a closer look at that part too.
Backlinks are one of the hardest parts of search engine optimization, but also one of the most important parts. So how do you get these precious backlinks to your website?
Well you can create various online blogs about the same topic as your website or webshop and start blogging about the stuff you love. Then use these blogs to create links to your page.
It will likely help some. Posting on social media can also importing things a bit.
If you know others in your industry reach out and ask "hey, are you willing to like to my page? I got this great article that many of your visitors might also be interested in".
Or you could do as many others and simply hire an SEO agency or marketing firm to help you out with this part. often it's much more effective as they have more resources and know where to find some good backlinks for you. But do keep in mind that you need to do it within the Google guidelines or you risk hurting your sites rankings. Which again is a good reason to leave this stuff to the professionels. Just remember - not all SEO agencies are equally good and some seems to be outsourcing this stuff to others or using automated software to rank your pages. This may give you a quick boost but could likely hurt your website in the long run.
That was a big about SEO for WooCommerce Webshop solutions, there is a lot more to SEO than what I have written in this article - but at least it should be ebough to give you an idea about the basics. And if you follow these tips - you should be able to improve your webshops ranking on Google. Thanks for taking the time to read this and best of luck with your next WooCommerce SEO project.
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