More than 43% of ECommerce traffic comes from organic search results. That’s the second biggest source of potential customers for mostonline stores.

Unlike platforms like Shopify and Squarespace, implementingSEO on WooCommerce can be more intimidating for the non-tech savvy business owner.The sheer power of WordPress, WooCommerce, and the abundance of availableplugins means that much can go wrong.

Fortunately – that’s not the case for every SEOissue.

Much can be done relatively quicky and easily. There’sno need to hire an expertSEO agency to investigate every glitch.

In this beginner-friendly guide for WooCommerce stores,we cover four common SEO errors (and how to fix them).

Error #1: Broken Links

Ever clicked on a link that takes you to a 404 or ‘notfound’ page?

You probably have… hundreds of times.

Do you want customers to experience that samefrustration on your online store?

Obviously not.

Alongside customer annoyance, broken linksare bad for SEO. They diminish site quality, registercrawl errors, and waste internal link authority.

What causes a broken link? The link probably worked inthe past – but perhaps the target page was deleted when you stopped sellingthat product. Or, the page still exists but the URL was changed, i.e., thebroken link points to the old URL and wasn’t updated.

Related:

HowLong Should a URL Be for SEO?

The good news is that WooCommerce does a good job ofautomatically updating links in WooCommerce Blocks as you edit and deleteproduct URLs. What WooCommerce does NOT do is update deleted links elsewhere - suchas links in your menu, page content, blog posts, footer, about page, and anywhereelse where links were added manually.

To find broken links, enter your website on Broken LinkCheck.This tool will return a list of broken links and where to find them. You maydelete the broken link entirely, point it to a working page, or create a newpage. Broken links are sometimes caused by a typo in the URL, so double-checkspelling if you’re still unsure what’s wrong.

Error #2: Reviews Are Disabled

Customer reviews are enabled by default onWooCommerce. Some stores have them disabled because of spam or design (or badreviews!).

Froman on-site SEO perspective, customer reviews are an excellent wayto naturally increase product page word count, incorporate long-tail andconversational keywords, and keep the page freshly updated for Google.

The best part? It’s all done for free by yourcustomers.

Learn how to enablereviews on WooCommerce. And how to encouragereviews.

Related:

Howto Improve Product Page SEO by Increasing Word Count

Error #3: Slow-Loading Product Pages

Google algorithms can actively penalise a slowwebsite. In fact, page speed is one of the very few SEOranking factors confirmed by Google.

Start by gauging your current performance using GTmetrixand PageSpeedInsights. View problem areas and track whether your changesare increasing or decreasing speed.

Optimise product images as top priority. At the basiclevel, convert images to JPEG or WebP format, resize dimensions to fit theme recommendations,and compress using TinyPNG.Lazy loading is also essential. Followthis detailed WooCommerce image-optimization guide.

If you don’t have the expertise to edit code andserver options, install a WordPress speed plugin. Popular plugins like W3 Total Cacheand WP-Optimizeinclude lazy loading features along with dozens of other speed enhancements.

Likewise, ensure WordPress core, theme, all plugins,and PHP versions are updated regularly to benefit from any performance fixes.

Every WooCommerce theme impacts speed differently.Some themes are ‘heavy’ and require more work from you to speed up. Paid themesoften perform better than free ones. Nonetheless, even free themes differgreatly in speed. Research by checking reviews on how themes compare. Followbest practices to avoid breaking your website when changing/testing themes.

Finally, invest in quality web hosting.

Avoid very cheap providers and third-party resellers. Aslow hosting server will throttle performance gains, no matter what changes youmake to the website itself. Changing host is a big decision, so explorepotential speed issues thoroughly before migrating.

Error #4: Too Many Tags

WooCommerce store owners tend to go overboard whenassigning product tags.

Remember:

Each tag automatically creates a dedicated tag page,which can bloat your website with hundreds to thousands of tag pages over time.Unless you’re actively creating content for tag pages, they’re generally thinand low value.

Googlewastes time and resources on crawling thin content pages- as opposed to processing your more valuable and content-rich homepage, productpages, category pages, and blog posts for ranking in search.

To avoid bloating your website with tags:

·      Deleteunused tags.

·      Assignno more than 3-4 tags per product page, if at all.

·      Don’tduplicate categories and tags. Categories should be the primary identifier.

·      Tagsare case sensitive. “iphone” and “iPhone” and “IPHONE” are all different tags. Maintaincase consistency to avoid duplication.

·      Avoidtags that essentially describe the same thing. “best sellers” and “top sellers”don’t warrant separate tags.

Uncover More SEO Errors with a Free Audit

Fixing these errors is an easy step in establishing astrong technical foundation for SEO growth.

That said, don’t expect instant results. There’s a lotmore that goes into WooCommerce SEO, from content marketing to technical SEO tolink building, until there’s a discernible uptick in traffic and sales.

Get started with a free mini-SEO Audit for your ECommercestore in South Africa. We’ll manually scour your website and revert with actionableadvice.

Contactus today.

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