Wix announced Automations, a new automation builder that enables businesses to create and manage custom actions, like sending emails based on customer activity. Users are able to create these automations with an easy-to-use visual interface and track their performance from a dashboard.
Wix Automations Is Powerful But Easy To Use
There are four key features:
Intuitive Automation Design Simplifies the process of creating advanced automations.
Advanced Customization Supports conditions and formulas for creating highly customizable automations.
Centralized Automation Management Users can track key metrics, adjust settings in real time, and manage all automations, no matter which apps they’re connected to.
Email Automation Insights Provides detailed reporting on email success rates and engagement which enables businesses to fine-tune their email messaging.
The new Automations feature integrates with Wix Services, so businesses can use customer data to set up personalized automations like custom discounts based on what customers buy.
A user-friendly interface makes it easy to click and build advanced automations based on site visitor actions. Wix Automations supports conditions and formulas for creating customizable automations. What makes Wix Automations powerful is that these features enables users to easily set up complex, multi-step actions.
For example, a customer purchase can be the trigger to check a condition, such as whether the total is over $50. If the condition is met, a formula calculates a 10% discount, and the automation sends the customer an email with a discount code for a future purchase.
According to the press release:
“The builder’s clear and intuitive design makes it easier than ever to build and manage automations, significantly improving efficiency by streamlining and automating tasks and, ultimately, enhancing overall user experience.
With the addition of conditions and formulas, the automations builder now allows users to create more accurate, highly tailored workflows that adapt to their business needs allowing businesses to operate more smoothly and effectively.”
Google has launched its Vision Match feature for all mobile users in the United States, following a successful test run in Google Labs.
This tool solves an everyday challenge for shoppers: turning a specific idea into products that can be purchased.
Google research indicates that more than half of shoppers have difficulty finding particular clothing items when they know what they want.
The Vision Match feature allows users to describe a clothing item in natural language. It then uses AI to generate an image and find similar products.
Screenshot from: blog.google/products/shopping/ai-vision-match-ar-beauty-virtual-try-on/, March 2025.
You can access this feature by searching for a garment and scrolling to the “Can’t find it? Create it” prompt.
Alternatively, navigate to the “Create & shop” option in the Shopping tab’s left panel.
New AR Tools Leverage Gemini AI Models
Google is enhancing its augmented reality beauty features with Gemini AI models.
US shoppers can now virtually try on complete makeup looks inspired by celebrities, influencers, and beauty trends rather than testing individual products.
This allows consumers to search for terms like “spring makeup” or specific celebrity looks and see how multiple makeup products appear on their faces.
According to Google’s research, more than half of Americans who use makeup actively seek online inspiration.
Users can access this feature by tapping “See the looks on you” when browsing relevant search results, followed by “Try it on” to initiate the virtual experience.
Virtual Try-On Expands
Google has expanded its virtual try-on feature to include pants and skirts from hundreds of brands. The enhancement allows shoppers to visualize how these garments look on diverse body types, from XXS to XXL.
Screenshot from: blog.google/products/shopping/ai-vision-match-ar-beauty-virtual-try-on/, March 2025.
Google updated its machine learning models to generate complete looks, when previously they were limited to generating tops only. Shoppers can access this feature by looking for items with a “try on” badge in Google Search or the Shopping tab on mobile and desktop platforms.
Looking Ahead
The announcements come as competition in the visual search and virtual try-on space intensifies.
According to Google’s internal data, over a billion shopping interactions occur on Google daily. These tools aim to help consumers make more confident purchasing decisions.
Featured Image: Screenshot from: blog.google/products/shopping/ai-vision-match-ar-beauty-virtual-try-on/, March 2025.
In this edition of Ask An SEO, we’re addressing a question about the impact of AI Overviews on search engine results pages, particularly for ecommerce store owners looking to stay competitive:
“Do you think that AI Overviews or AI will disrupt SERPs with Google PLAs? And, as someone with a small ecommerce store selling clothing, what can I do to keep ahead with the introduction of gen AI apps?”
That’s a great question! It’s an issue many ecommerce site owners have been grappling with since AI Overviews started rolling out last May.
The big concern is that Google’s generative AI summaries – which appear right at the top of the SERPs – will eat into your traffic.
If people can get answers to their questions without visiting your website, this could lead to a steep decline in customers.
However, while this new trend might at first seem worrying, I don’t think the level of disruption will be as big as it first appears, particularly for ecommerce stores. AI Overviews might also present opportunities to climb up the rankings, too.
Do note that the picture is a bit less clear with the likes of ChatGPT or Microsoft’s Copilot – these apps don’t yet provide links to sources in their answers, but they also aren’t used for search anywhere near as much as Google.
Will AI Disrupt SERPs With Google PLAs?
Generative AI is clearly one of the most disruptive technologies to emerge in years, and there are almost daily breakthroughs.
So, I’ve tried to answer the questions raised, but there’s obviously a big caveat: Things are changing fast, and we can’t make any predictions with certainty.
But to respond to the first part of the question about whether AI will disrupt SERPs, my instinct would be: “Not that much (probably!).”
First things first, research from BrightEdge (as reported in Search Engine Journal in November) found that AI Overviews are becoming more stable and aligning more closely with organic search results.
The citation links that appear alongside AI Overviews increasingly show links to websites that also appear in the top 10 results.
For example, if you were searching [how long to bake a loaf of bread], AI Overviews would typically synthesize answers from baking websites that already appear on page one.
As well as listing the websites in the SERP, AI Overviews will provide links to those pages in the “citation” area, too.
Screenshot from search for [how long to bake a loaf of bread], Google, February 2025
The appearance of AI Overviews at the top of the page has altered the look and feel of the search experience. But since Google still provides links to relevant pages in its answers, the underlying principles of ranking haven’t actually changed.
The effect of AI Overviews on Product Listing Ads (PLAs) was also asked. For the first few months after AI Overviews came out, this was a bit unclear. However, as of last October, we now have a better idea of how it’ll work.
Google announced it would begin injecting ads into AI Overviews (typically as a carousel below the text). At the time of writing, this doesn’t seem to have been fully rolled out.
But the example Google gave was of a searcher asking, [how do I get a grass stain out of jeans?]. Below the AI Overview, a carousel shows a number of related grass stain removal products.
Screenshot from blog.google, February 2025
Screenshot from blog.google, February 2025
If you pay for PLAs, then it’s likely that they will start to appear in these kinds of responses.
AI Overviews Aren’t ‘Competing’ With Ecommerce Stores
The inquirer also mentioned they run a small ecommerce store selling clothing. They may well be concerned about what AI Overviews mean for their existing ads and product pages.
Well, research from Ahrefs suggests the kind of content they likely have on their website probably isn’t competing with AI Overviews.
Ahrefs studied hundreds of thousands of searches that produced an AI Overview.
The vast majority of searches that returned an overview were informational searches (who, where, when, why, etc.) – less than 6% were commercial in nature, and less than 5% were transactional.
This suggests that a limited proportion of search intent that gets answered by AI Overviews is related to the kinds of things sold on the site.
Basically, AI Overviews answers longer tail questions like [how to style a bucket hat].
But if someone just searches [bucket hat], they’ll be shown PLAs and organic SERP results – not a generative AI response.
AI Overviews Could Help You Leapfrog Competitors
As I mentioned above, AI Overviews provide citation links to websites that also rank in the top 10 organic results.
However, an analysis from Surfer SEO suggests this only happens 52% of the time. For the other 48% of sources, websites further down the rankings (some of which may be quite obscure) can get a link right at the top of the SERPs if their content helps inform Google’s AI.
This means that, even if your website doesn’t currently rank on page one, you could still get page one levels of traffic if your content is referred to by Google.
What Can You Do To Stay Ahead As AI Becomes More Widespread?
With the same caveats mentioned above regarding the pace of change in this field, I think there are a handful of things you can do to keep getting traffic to an ecommerce store.
My first tip is simply to keep following the best practices. Sorry, I know it’s not very exciting! But the fact is, creating useful, original, accurate, and reliable content – in line with Google’s Helpful Content Update – is still the way to go.
Given that over half of the sources cited in AI Overviews also appear organically in the top 10 results of SERPs, this tells us that producing quality content remains the best way of ranking.
I’m guessing the inquirer has a fashion niche. If so, providing personalized styling ideas, seasonal fashion tips, guides to choosing the right hat/jacket/dress/jeans, etc., will all help increase the chances of winning traffic.
Another unexciting (but still reliable) tip is to follow good ecommerce “hygiene.”
Keep the product schema up to date and accurate, and provide detailed attribute tables that tell Google and other search engines what the site is about. I know, it’s hardly groundbreaking stuff. But it will help feed the algorithm and make the website more likely to appear in searches.
For product detail pages (PDPs), I’d also recommend focusing on unique product descriptions (like highlighting things about the design, the fabric, or how to style it). These are things that AI can’t figure out yet, and which the competitors may not have written about.
On that note, I’d also strongly recommend human curation when writing content.
As impressive as ChatGPT and others are, they can only regurgitate information that already exists.
To describe new products, features, or styles, you need a human to do it. Of course, generative AI can certainly help get the ball rolling if you’re staring at a blank page, but it needs your expert touch, too.
I hope this helped. Clearly, search is going through a period of massive change.
But ultimately, by following the best practices and focusing on quality, helpful content, you’ll continue to give yourself the best chances of attracting traffic and converting customers.
More Resources:
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
Hackers are actively exploiting a vulnerability to inject an obfuscated script into Magento-based eCommerce websites. The malware is loaded via Google Tag Manager, allowing them to steal credit card numbers when customers check out. A hidden PHP backdoor is used to keep the code on the site and steal user data.
The credit card skimmer was discovered by security researchers at Sucuri who advise that the malware was loaded from a database table, cms_block.content. The Google Tag Manager (GTM) script on a website looks normal because the malicious script is coded to evade detection.
Once the malware was active it would record credit card information from a Magento ecommerce checkout page and send it to an external server controlled by a hacker.
Sucuri security researchers also discovered a backdoor PHP file. PHP files are the ‘building blocks’ of many dynamic websites built on platforms like Magento, WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. Thus, a malware PHP file, once injected, can operate within the content management system.
This is the PHP file that researchers identified:
./media/index.php.
According to the advisory published on the Sucuri website:
“At the time of writing this article, we found that at least 6 websites were currently infected with this particular Google Tag Manager ID, indicating that this threat is actively affecting multiple sites.
eurowebmonitortool[.]com is used in this malicious campaign and is currently blocklisted by 15 security vendors at VirusTotal.”
VirusTotal.com is a crowdsourced security service that provides free file scanning and acts as an aggregator of information.
Sucuri advises the following steps for cleaning an infected website:
“Remove any suspicious GTM tags. Log into GTM, identify, and delete any suspicious tags.
Perform a full website scan to detect any other malware or backdoors.
Remove any malicious scripts or backdoor files.
Ensure Magento and all extensions are up-to-date with security patches.
Regularly monitor site traffic and GTM for any unusual activity.”
A new study analyzing 5,000 Google Shopping keywords sheds light on the factors that correlate with higher rankings.
The research, conducted by Jeff Oxford, Founder of 180 Marketing, reveals trends that could help ecommerce stores improve their visibility in Google’s free Shopping listings.
Amazon Dominates Google Shopping
Amazon ranks in the #1 position for 52% of Google Shopping searches, outpacing Walmart (6%) and Home Depot (3%).
Beyond Amazon’s dominance, the study found a strong correlation between website authority and rankings, with higher-ranking sites often belonging to well-established brands.
Takeaway: Building your brand and earning trust is vital to ranking well on Google Shopping.
Backlinks, Reviews, & Pricing
The study identified several trends that separate higher-ranking pages from the rest:
Referring Domains: Product pages in the top two positions had more backlinks than lower-ranking pages. Interestingly, most product pages analyzed (98%) had no backlinks at all.
Customer Reviews: Product pages with customer reviews ranked higher, and stores with star ratings below 3.5 struggled to rank well.
Pricing: Lower-priced products tended to rank higher, with top-performing listings often featuring prices below the category average.
Takeaway: Building backlinks, collecting customer reviews, and offering competitive pricing can make a difference.
Meta Descriptions A Top Signal
Among on-page factors, meta descriptions had the strongest correlation with rankings.
Pages that included exact-match keywords in their meta descriptions consistently ranked higher.
While keyword usage in title tags and H1 headers showed some correlation, the impact was much smaller.
Takeaway: Optimize meta descriptions and product copy with target keywords to improve rankings.
Structured Data Findings
Structured data showed mixed results in the study.
Product structured data had little to no correlation with rankings, and Amazon, despite dominating the top spots, doesn’t use structured data on its product pages.
However, pages using review structured data performed better.
Takeaway: Focus on collecting customer reviews and using review structured data, which appears more impactful than product structured data.
Shipping & Returns Scores
Google Shopping evaluates stores on shipping, returns, and website quality metrics.
The study found that stores with “Exceptional” or “Great” scores for shipping and returns were more likely to rank higher, especially in the top 10 positions.
Takeaway: Prioritize fast shipping and clear return policies to boost your Google Shopping scores.
What Does This Mean?
According to these findings, success in Google Shopping correlates with strong customer reviews, competitive pricing, and fast service.
Optimizing for traditional SEO—like backlinks and well-written metadata—can benefit both organic search and Shopping rankings.
Retailers should prioritize the customer experience, as Google’s scoring for shipping, returns, and website quality affects visibility.
Lastly, remember that correlation doesn’t equal causation—test changes thoughtfully and focus on delivering value to your customers.
A new iStock 2025 Marketing Trends report finds declining consumer trust in social media and influencers, emphasizing the importance of relatability over perfection for marketers and businesses.
Trust For Marketing Success
The iStock report finds that 81% of consumers don’t trust content on social media. Nevertheless they still trust visual platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels for discovery and inspiration. In terms of influence, 64% of consumers trust businesses over celebrities and influencers, particularly brands that align with their values (58%).
Authenticity And Real-User Content (RUC)
iStock’s data shows that consumer perception of influencer “realness” has declined, with 67% of people trusting traditional advertising over sponsored influencer posts. iStock is recommending what it calls Real-User Content (RUC), images and videos that project realness. Video content was highlighted by iStock as a strong trend that consumers should consider as more consumers turn to video content for learning and inspiration.
iStock recommends that marketers focus on being “real, truthful, and original” as the key to building trust. While authenticity is important, iStock is emphasizing offering real stories and being relatable as opposed to content that reflects virtually unattainable perfection.
They write:
“This change is affecting how people interact with visual content, especially on social media. Despite people’s lack of trust, they still find these platforms valuable, 82% of users still go to places like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts for video content to learn something new or get inspiration. In other words, people want the benefits of social media, without the negative effects. This shift has also made video-driven social search more popular, where platforms focused on video are no longer just for scrolling —they’ve become places to search and discover. In 2025, to succeed, you need to speak directly to your audience, this approach will always be more effective than a flood of generic posts.”
The report recommends radical honesty by showing the company in ways that include imperfect moments. iStock’s 2025 Marketing Trends report shows an approach to connecting with consumers in a way that reflects qualities of realness that people are looking for in the content they consume.
Read iStock’s report:
Crack the Code on Trust: 2025 Marketing Insights for Small Businesses
In the world of ecommerce platforms, plugins, and shopping carts, there are a lot of technology options. WooCommerce for WordPress leads the way in terms of market share.
All of the various ecommerce platforms have their own pros and cons in terms of features, content management, and overall integration with your business.
Many of the benefits of WooCommerce come from the fact that it is a plugin for WordPress, which is also the most popular website platform technology in the world as well.
My website team utilizes WooCommerce with WordPress for the work we do for clients, and we continue to invest in our processes centered around that technology for digital marketing and driving sales for our clients’ businesses.
We’ve used it for over a decade, and while other popular platforms have emerged, we find that it has the flexibility and opportunities we need to implement the SEO tactics we need in alignment with our broader SEO strategies.
Why Does Any Of This Matter?
You may already be using WooCommerce or another ecommerce platform.
I’m all for whatever platform works best for you. There are definite SEO ceilings that you’ll hit in what you can do on different platforms.
WooCommerce will have ceilings, too, if you aren’t leveraging how you can set it up, how you handle your WordPress optimization as a whole, and how your overall SEO strategy is defined.
I hope that if you’re in WooCommerce or are 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 within WordPress. Much of what you’ll do to optimize a WooCommerce ecommerce site falls in line with what you’d do for a WordPress site overall.
Overall, SEO-friendly benefits of WooCommerce within WordPress out of the box or with light configuration include:
Analytics: WooCommerce has extensive analytics and connects easily to Google Analytics, so you can blend first and third-party visitor data.
That includes managing the technical, on-page, and off-page aspects of ecommerce SEO within an overall strategy and at a tactical level.
If you’re new to SEO or want to ensure you’re not missing anything, I recommend checking out SEJ’s SEO intro guide.
Getting Started
Before you optimize, you’ll want to ensure you’re ready.
I highly recommend working on developing your action plan and goals before you start.
Knowing your current performance and researching what keywords and topics you want to target are big parts of both.
WooCommerce Analytics
I recommend using Google Analytics (GA4) as your primary analytics data source and platform for WordPress.
Going deeper and specifically into ecommerce analytics that you can integrate into GA4 from WooCommerce, the GTM4WP plugin is a great way to get that data.
Don’t skip out on measuring the data you want and need from your site for your SEO and broader marketing goal tracking.
I recommend prioritizing data before you get deep into optimizing so you can capture baseline data to measure against if you don’t already have it in a good place.
Transactional Emails
Another foundational thing you’ll want to do is set up transactional emails. Several email platforms integrate with WordPress and WooCommerce.
A favorite of my team’s for ease of use and doing the job well is Mailchimp’s transactional email functionality.
It was formerly called Mandrill and can handle post-purchase email communications like order and shipping confirmations.
Mailchimp can also be used to create automated email campaigns based on customer journey or shopping behavior, such as cart abandonment emails, win back, etc.
Functionality like this is essential to get the most out of our SEO investment, and for traffic, you work hard to drive to the site and into the shopping cart.
Keyword Research
Knowing what words, phrases, topics, and terms are related to the subject matter you want to rank for is critical. Beyond that, validate that people searching for those topics are your potential desired audience.
They are paid tools with varying subscription levels but are leaders. They have their respective strengths in helping you research topics that align with your content, products, and categories and dive deep into the right targets for your SEO plan.
Build your lists, map them out to your content, and use them as context as you work through the optimization best practices to follow.
Technical SEO
Like with any site, and to follow broader UX best practices, you want your site to load quickly, be indexable, and not have anything holding it back.
Several specific technical factors you need to consider, configure, and monitor can hold back or unlock your opportunity for rankings compared to peer sites.
Indexing
It is essential to have your content found.
That starts by ensuring you have a clean XML sitemap and robots.txt file. Plus, go into Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and third-party validation tools to ensure everything is as intended.
Use the Yoast plugin (or similar) to adjust settings for your XML sitemap and robots.txt files.
Yoast is great at giving you options to include or remove from those files, so you don’t have to touch the code or manually adjust those files at all. You can get the settings to your liking and then submit them for validation through the Console/Webmaster Tools.
Image from author, November 2024
Page Experience
There are a lot of data points and best practices on page load times, site speed, and other factors that Google looks at for “page experience.”
Overall, you want to pay attention to core web vitals and page load times to ensure that you have fast-loading pages that don’t harm image quality and content richness for users.
Imagify and WP Rocket are recommended plugins for image optimization and caching to improve page load times and overall site performance.
Screenshot from Imagify, November 2024
Accessibility
Making your content accessible to all, including those with visual impairments, is important.
That includes coding 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 helpful information you need to adjust page elements to meet the standard that your legal counsel advises (I’m not a lawyer).
Structured Data
Using extra context cues and opportunities to categorize, catalog, and mark up your subject matter is important. Leverage it where possible to get specific information for your industry, especially using specific product attributes.
Again, you can tap into the power of the Yoast plugin to add basic schema markup to pages on your site.
I recommend reading more about Schema and how it works before diving into the implementation if it is a new concept.
Screenshot from WordPress, November 2024
Canonical URLs And Permalinks
Web stores inherently can have complexities and struggles with duplicate content.
Whether you have a product that appears in multiple categories or are just dealing with the “out of the box” way that WordPress and WooCommerce generate many separate URLs for a single page, you need to include a single “canonical” version for the search engines to index, show in the search results, and aggregate all link value to.
I recommend Yoast here again for handling canonicals.
I also recommend the Redirection plugin if you have pages that move, discontinued products, or need to permanently 301 redirect a specific page to another.
Be mindful 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 multiple plugins that can send the wrong signal to the search engines or provide a bad experience for your users (sending to 404s, redirect loops, etc.).
Screenshot from WordPress, November 2024
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs are links on interior pages that show a user (as well as a search engine) where they are on a site in terms of the navigational path or depth.
They allow users to see how far they are drilled down into a specific product category, blog category, or other interior section and a way to click to go back upstream.
They are typically coded into your WordPress site theme as a default element. The Yoast plugin is great for adding schema markup to them for WordPress/WooCommerce.
Screenshot from WordPress, November 2024
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 technical aspects of implementing canonical tags and trying to manage duplicate content to get the search engines to index and rank a single version of your pages – including categories and products – you don’t want to miss the opportunity to include important contextual keywords in your URLs.
Use WordPress’ native page naming conventions and tools to put meaningful keywords (without going overboard or stuffing) into the URL string.
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.
Much like copy and URLs, though, also look at how the defaults are set up to pull in dynamic elements and set any that you can use.
That way, you can build formulas for how the tags will be created that don’t require you to write custom tags for each page to reach your unique tags per page goals.
Screenshot from WordPress, November 2024
Copy
A unique, optimized copy can be a challenge for ecommerce sites.
Much like tags, you might have trouble doing it at scale. Or, you may have a lot of similar products.
Find ways to invest in the manual time to write to best practices, avoid duplicate content, and scale it programmatically where possible while maintaining high quality.
Images
Image file attributes are an area where you can include relevant, contextual keywords describing the image’s subject matter.
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, to the search engines – to understand the context of an image.
Manage these in the media center in WordPress at upload or later by editing images through the media tab or going into the page and clicking on the image to review and edit properties.
Screenshot from WordPress, November 2024
Product Reviews
User-generated, unique content can help add contextual copy, supplementing the copy on a product page.
Added context and another type of potential schema element can be added to product reviews.
My team leverages and recommends the stamped.io plugin for easy management and implementation of reviews.
However, many great review management plugins are available, and they vary in cost, implementation ease, and complexity.
As a bonus, Stamped will also send out post-purchase requests for reviews.
Screenshot from WordPress, November 2024
Screenshot from WordPress, November 2024
Off-Page SEO
Ecommerce SEO, like most SEO, requires off-page factors to build upon your technical and on-page/content-focused tactics.
These factors are more general and least tied specifically to WooCommerce, but shouldn’t be left out of your SEO plan:
Links
Seek high-quality, industry/context-relevant inbound links to your products, categories, and content.
That includes natural associations like manufacturers, partners, affiliates, PR-related mentions, and other quality natural sources.
Regardless, link to your site from social media content to build context and connections and seek out areas of opportunity across the social media landscape to gain links and mentions.
Engagement
Seek out other opportunities for engagement and mentions online.
Whether part of a PR plan, influencer strategy, or other ways your brand gets mentioned, leverage them.
Seek them out, 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’s a recap of the plugins I noted that are related to individual items you’ll want to optimize.
My team’s recommended WordPress plugins to use with WooCommerce (and in many cases in general for WordPress) SEO include:
Yoast: SEO plugin that will create an editable sitemap and robots.txt files, help you change product metadata from product pages, add basic schema, handle canonicalization, breadcrumbs, etc.
Imagify: For image optimization for page load time and site speed optimization.
WP Rocket: For caching to improve site performance.
Redirection: For creating any 301 redirects you need as part of an SEO strategy.
Stamped.io (Or similar service): For managing customer product reviews.
GTM4WP: Allowing you to implement enhanced ecommerce tracking for Google Analytics.
The great thing, for the most part, about these plugins is that if you have some WordPress experience, you may not need a developer to set them up.
Like any plugin, your WordPress infrastructure might impact your access level and any custom aspects required to implement depending on how they interact with other plugins or functionality.
Wrapping Up
At this point, it is probably pretty clear that a lot of the great things about SEO that we can manage in WordPress also translate over to WooCommerce.
And more broadly, you can implement ecommerce SEO best practices in WooCommerce as a whole.
I made it clear that my team uses WordPress and WooCommerce pretty exclusively right now.
We have had plenty of experiences with Magento, Shopify, and other platforms that left us frustrated as there were things locked down that we couldn’t control or optimize.
Or, as an admin or user, we weren’t able to edit content and manage the site as efficiently as we could with the more user-friendly controls within WordPress.
I’m not saying the other platforms aren’t right for you and your business. I would put each of them through an honest test before you create a new store or consider re-platforming.
There are definitely pros and cons to any platform, and my goal is for you to find the right one. If it is WooCommerce, great – and happy optimizing with the information I shared in this guide!
Since its launch in 2021, Performance Max (PMax) has transformed how ecommerce businesses approach Google Ads.
Google’s machine learning and AI, when applied across its entire advertising ecosystem, promises to maximize conversions and value and simplify campaign management.
However, with automation playing such a crucial role, the question arises: Can advertisers find the right balance between letting the algorithm work and exercising their strategic control?
Understanding Performance Max For Ecommerce
Your ads might get placed anywhere in Google’s network, including Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Maps.
For ecommerce businesses, this broad reach represents both an opportunity and a challenge.
While the system promises to optimize your campaigns in real-time, this automation comes with significant transparency challenges.
Mike Rhodes explains a fundamental issue facing advertisers:
“Performance Max campaigns have introduced a significant challenge for advertisers: a lack of transparency in budget allocation. This opacity makes it difficult for managers to understand where their budgets are truly going, hindering their ability to optimize campaigns effectively and maximize ROI.
Without clear insights into which placements, audiences, or assets drive performance, advertisers are essentially flying blind.
My Performance Max scripts solve this critical issue by pulling data from various sources to provide the clearest possible picture of budget allocation.”
This lack of transparency means advertisers must be more strategic in their campaign management and measurement approach.
Understanding the key components and how they work together becomes crucial for success.
Key Features For Ecommerce Success
Feed-Based Optimization
Your product feed – a digital catalogue containing all your product information – serves as the foundation of your Performance Max campaigns.
This is your store’s digital inventory that Google uses to create and display your ads across its networks.
The quality and optimization of your feed data directly impact your campaign’s performance. A well-optimized product feed should include:
Descriptive product titles that include key search terms.
Accurate pricing and availability information.
High-quality images that meet Google’s specifications.
Detailed product descriptions and specifications.
Proper categorization and product types.
Additional attributes like color, size, and brand.
For maximum effectiveness, regularly update your feed with:
Competitive pricing information.
Current inventory levels.
Seasonal product information.
New product launches.
Updated promotional messaging.
Asset-Based Approach
Your creative assets are fundamental to Performance Max’s success, serving as the foundation for ads across all of Google’s networks.
Unlike traditional campaigns where you create specific ads for each platform, Performance Max uses your provided assets – images, videos, text, and logos – to automatically generate optimized ad combinations for each placement and audience.
Sarah Steman provides valuable insight into asset optimization:
“A powerful PMax strategy is to leverage themed asset groups, especially during holidays or promotions.
By conducting a dedicated photoshoot and comparing its performance against evergreen assets, I can gain valuable insights for campaign optimization.”
Successful asset management requires:
Regular performance analysis.
Seasonal content updates.
A/B testing of different creative approaches.
Audience-specific variations.
Consistent brand messaging.
Smart Bidding Integration
Performance Max uses automated bidding strategies powered by machine learning to optimize for your chosen goals.
The system continuously learns from performance data to adjust bids in real-time across all channels.
Strategic Campaign Structure
Effective campaign segmentation is crucial for success. Susan Yen emphasizes the importance of audience targeting:
“Segmenting campaigns with custom audience signals ensures your ads target users with genuine intent, leading to stronger performance and higher-quality leads.”
Implementation considerations include:
Product categories and types.
Profit margins and pricing strategies.
Seasonal variations.
Geographic targeting.
Customer segments.
Performance goals.
Advanced Optimization Strategies
Performance Max works best as part of a holistic marketing strategy. Chris Chambers shares an innovative approach to device targeting:
“You can’t set device bid adjustments for PMax, but PMax does follow value rules that you set. So you can still set up a value rule multiplier for device types or geos, which gives you some control over how the PMax serves.”
“Some days it kills it, and others it is terrible. This is because if you have a lot of other top-of-funnel (TOF) traffic, like YouTube or Meta or Influencers, whenever those other channels push, PMax goes in and scoops up the conversions.”
Performance Monitoring and Optimization
Key optimization areas include:
1. Channel Management: Monitor how your budget is being distributed across channels:
Track performance metrics by placement.
Analyze channel interaction patterns.
Assess the impact on existing campaigns.
Identify and address channel cannibalization.
Review placement performance data.
2. Asset Optimization: Regular testing and refinement of creative elements:
Monitor asset performance ratings.
A/B test different creative approaches.
Update seasonal content proactively.
Create audience-specific variations.
Remove underperforming assets.
3. Bidding Strategy: Fine-tune your automated bidding:
Review and adjust ROAS targets based on performance.
Monitor conversion patterns.
Analyze competitor activity.
Adjust targets for seasonal changes.
Consider device and location performance.
Measuring Success And ROI
Primary Metrics:
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Conversion Value.
Conversion Rate.
Average Order Value.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).
New vs. Returning Customer Ratio.
Secondary Metrics:
Impression Share.
Click-Through Rate (CTR).
Asset Performance.
Channel Distribution.
Geographic Performance.
Device Performance.
Implementation of best practices:
Set up proper conversion tracking.
Use value-based bidding when possible.
Monitor cross-channel attribution.
Regular performance audits.
Analyze customer lifetime value.
Overcoming Common Challenges
1. Performance Volatility
Implement consistent monitoring schedules.
Maintain a balanced channel mix.
Use complementary campaign types.
Set realistic performance expectations.
Regular strategy adjustments.
2. Creative Performance
Regular creative refreshes.
Performance-based asset management.
Seasonal content planning.
Brand consistency across channels.
Regular creative testing.
3. Budget Management
Strategic budget allocation.
Performance-based adjustments.
Seasonal planning.
Competitive analysis.
ROI optimization.
Future Developments And Preparation
As Google continues investing in AI capabilities, prepare for:
1. Enhanced Transparency
Improved reporting features.
Better performance insights.
More detailed placement data.
Enhanced budget allocation visibility.
2. AI Integration
Advanced asset creation.
Dynamic optimization.
Sophisticated audience targeting.
Improved testing capabilities.
3. Data Integration
Enhanced first-party data usage.
Better cross-channel attribution.
Improved audience insights.
Advanced bidding algorithms.
Conclusion
Returning to our initial question about balancing automation with control, success with Performance Max requires a strategic approach that combines:
Well-structured campaigns.
High-quality product feeds.
Strategic asset groups.
Proper tracking implementation.
Regular monitoring and optimization.
The future of Performance Max in ecommerce lies in finding the right balance between automation and strategic oversight.
Those who master this balance while maintaining adaptability to new features will be best positioned to succeed in the evolving landscape of ecommerce advertising.
Each component of your Performance Max strategy should work together to create a cohesive approach that leverages automation while maintaining strategic control.
This balance, combined with regular optimization and adaptation to new features, will help ensure long-term success in your ecommerce advertising efforts.
More resources:
Featured Image: PeopleImages.com – Yuri A/Shutterstock
Peak shopping periods like Black Friday, Halloween, Christmas, and other holidays attract millions of shoppers online.
They also present prime opportunities for ecommerce and retail brands to drive incremental revenue and traffic for the holiday season.
According to the NRF, the 2024 holiday forecast is consistent with its forecast that annual sales for 2024 will be between 2.5% and 3.5% over 2023. Some noteworthy mentions:
One differentiating characteristic from last year’s holiday shopping season is that the shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas will be six days shorter, totaling 26 days. Additional contributing factors this year could include the economic impact of Hurricanes Helene and Milton; even though the 2024 U.S. presidential election will take place during the winter holiday season, it is impossible to measure its impact on current or future spending.
Screenshot from NRF.com, October 2024
According to Statista, in the U.S., a lot of holiday consumers intend to buy products for 2024 for the holiday celebration, with 97% for Halloween, 92% for Thanksgiving, and 96% for Christmas.
Screenshot from Statista, October 2024
Since sales are expected to be up year over year, what are the best ways to optimize your site for the holidays? When should you start, and what should you do? Let’s explore.
SEO Tips For Optimizing Your Ecommerce Website
Plan Ahead
One of the most important aspects of optimizing your site for the holidays is planning.
If you build landing pages now for Christmas and expect them to rank for competitive terms, it won’t happen.
Always build out your content calendar in advance (i.e., two to three months or more ahead of time).
Make sure you do your keyword research and start planning which content you need to create, get approvals for, deploy, etc.
Use Evergreen URLs
Create reusable URLs for promotions that you can use year after year. You can mention the date or year in the page title or copy and then change it each year, but don’t use it in the URL.
I can’t tell you that, in my 20 years of doing SEO, I saw a lot of big brands make the mistake of either taking down their landing pages or adding the year to their landing page URL for seasonal products.
The good news is that most big box retailers are doing this correctly now.
For example, Target has a dedicated landing page for its Thanksgiving TV deal at https://www.target.com/s/samsung+tv+deals+thanksgiving.
Now, if it were to put in a year, it would have to redirect the page every year, but it is following a good SEO strategy. This allows the pages to age, secure links, build authority, and be used for internal links.
Screenshot from Target.com, October 2024
Prepare For AI Overviews
We live in a world where AI has changed user behavior, and people ask questions about your brand and our product.
Screenshot from search for [plasma TV], Google, October 2024
Support and expand on the information in AI Overviews.
Target long-tail information queries.
Make sure the content is relevant and answers questions.
Format the content structure.
Keep content fresh and updated.
Blend SEO And PPC Strategy
Unfortunately, SEO keeps getting pushed down further and further down the page.
You must work with your paid search team to build a blended strategy for ranking competitive keywords and owning the entire SERP.
For example, a search for [what is the best TV to buy for thanksgiving] has transactional intent. The SERPs show sponsored listings first, followed by videos and People Also Ask (PAA).
Having both a paid ad and ranking organically is key to capturing more clicks and potential sales.
Paid search can also create holiday-themed ad campaigns targeting your trophy keywords and drive more sales.
Build out content that uses the PAA strategy. This feature in the Google SERPs provides end users with additional questions related to their search query and quick answers.
Don’t Forget About Reddit
Reddit has been showing up in the SERPS for questions regarding holiday queries.
Identify relevant subreddits related to your products (e.g., r/Gift ideas).
Avoid self-promotion and engage with the community.
Share relevant content, optimize, and monitor performance.
Post, network, build relationships, and participate in discussions.
Screenshot from search for [holiday gift ideas], Google, October 2024
Optimize Speed And Performance
Make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices, loads as quickly as possible – preferably under 3 seconds – and passes Core Web Vitals.
It’s important from a user experience perspective, especially because most shopping will be done using a mobile device. Avoid big holiday hero images, interstitials, etc.
Offer Holiday Gift Guides And Promotions
Display promotions on your homepage to drive incremental clicks and sales.
If you had holiday pages from last year, you might want to refresh the content so that you can update it in time for the holiday season with new and popular products, seasonal messaging, and images.
Use Holiday-Specific Keywords In Product Descriptions
Product descriptions are especially important and can improve your ecommerce site’s visibility during the holiday shopping season.
Using relevant holiday keywords can help your products appear in holiday-related research and make them more appealing to shoppers looking for relevant products.
After you conduct your keyword research for your holiday terms using your favorite tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, etc., produce a list of terms including:
General terms: “holiday,” “festive,” “seasonal,” “gift.”
Specific holidays: “Christmas,” “Hanukkah,” “New Year’s,” “Kwanzaa.”
Highlight holiday use cases. Describe how the product can be used during the holidays or why it makes a great gift, and add videos.
Use seasonal modifiers; add holiday-specific adjectives to your product titles and descriptions. Example for clothing:
Original: “Red Knit Sweater.”
Holiday version: Festive Red Knit Sweater, Perfect for Holiday Parties.
Leverage Email Marketing For Holiday Campaigns
While email marketing doesn’t directly impact SEO, it can indirectly help your SEO efforts during the holiday season.
Having targeted email campaigns can bring previous customers back to your store, as long as they’re personalized based on previous purchases, browsing interest, and limited offers.
Plan For Out-Of-Stock Items
With the recent events in the world, i.e., U.S. port strikes by 45,000 dock workers, wars, hurricanes, an uncertain presidential election, and the fact that COVID is still around, there are still some issues with the supply chain.
You always need to have a plan if your products aren’t available if something happens.
In this case, it is recommended to stock up on products that have sold out in previous years and make sure your inventory management system is integrated with your website in real time.
Other alternatives include:
Emailing customers when products are back in stock.
Creating useful and shareable content, holiday giveaways, and social media deals can drive engagement metrics and promote your holiday SEO content to attract links and social endorsements. In addition, shoppable posts facilitate discovery and purchases on social platforms.
Add An On-Site Search Functionality
Adding in a site search, if you don’t have one, can significantly improve user experience, increase conversions, and indirectly benefit your SEO efforts.
Users like to search using on-site functionality.
Run A Tech And Internal Security Audit
With the number of cyber security threats, data breaches, and incremental web traffic during the holidays, always run a technical audit on the site and make sure:
Your site has a valid, working SSL certificate installed, so all your data is encrypted and safe.
Your product pages return to 200 response codes and load quickly and properly.
Run a vulnerability scan on your website to make sure there are no issues.
Use Product Schema
Use structured data (i.e., Product schema) so Google can understand your products and show product discounts and sales prices, which could have a positive impact on rankings and clicks.
Have A Simple Checkout Process
While not exactly pertaining to SEO, having a checkout process that is hard for users to navigate can have a detrimental impact on your online sales.
You need your checkout process to be quick and easy to complete a purchase, which will help:
Reduce cart abandonment.
Improve customer experience.
Increase conversion rates.
Complete purchase faster.
Strengthen positive brand perception.
Being Festive With Design
There is nothing better than visiting a website that puts you in the holiday mood.
For example, with Halloween approaching, Target does an excellent job updating its imagery to match the Halloween theme.
It’s also an innovative idea to build out gift guides, holiday FAQs, and holiday categories and optimize them to improve your customer experience, drive customers deeper into your website, and increase product purchases.
Screenshot from Target.com, October 2024
Product Reviews
Don’t forget about your product reviews. It is highly recommended to have detailed reviews of your most popular holiday products, showcasing why they are needed, useful, and relevant and make great holiday gifts.
Review KPIs
To make sure the holiday season is a success, start by reviewing your KPIs such as:
Revenue, traffic, and sales year-over-year.
Rank, impressions, and clicks.
Click-through rates.
Conversions.
Wrapping Up
The holiday season presents an excellent opportunity for ecommerce businesses to drive more sales and build customer loyalty.
To capitalize on the holiday season, it’s crucial to plan ahead and create an exceptional customer experience.
Work with your paid and social teams to develop a blended marketing strategy, run technical and security audits, and ensure a smooth checkout process.
Also, leverage email marketing and other tactics to drive incremental revenue and traffic while building lasting relationships with your customers for years to come.
This post was sponsored by Wix Studio. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
Black Friday 2024 is rapidly approaching and with ecommerce websites vying for the attention of a global audience, you’ll need to stand out. Now is the time to put the finishing touches on your SEO implementation, verify your tests and ensure you’ve taken steps to prepare for multi funnel campaigns and traffic.
Your final audit and updates can make the difference between a campaign that goes up and to the right, or falls flat. On Tuesday, October 29, Loren Baker, Crystal Carter and Mordy Oberstein will carry out live ecommerce website audits and share top tips on how to improve your online store.
Want to get a head start?
Here are 7 essential areas to audit now to ensure your site stands out during Black Friday and Cyber Monday (BFCM) 2024.
1. M-Commerce Readiness
It will come as no surprise that your customers will be accessing your site via mobile during Black Friday but in 2024 they should be high priority users in terms of traffic and conversion.
Optimizing for capturing and converting traffic from mobile users can include a few tried and tested methods.
Prioritize your site for mobile users by emphasizing above the fold CTAs and trackable events for multi-funnel campaigns.
Optimize your site for rich results with targeted structured data which can help you capture mobile users more consistently from the mobile SERP.
Test responsive designs to ensure they are working seamlessly.
Review mobile navigation from top BFCM landing pages to ensure a smooth customer journey.
2. Server Preparedness
If you are running high traffic campaigns via email, social and paid traffic, it is important to ensure that your website infrastructure is ready for traffic surges. Without proper server preparation, even the most impressive campaign can fail if your site crashes, leaving engaged users unable to convert. Cloud hosting can offer incredible benefits for infrastructure reliability. For instance, Wix Studio users are able to serve their content across a network with 99.98% uptime with servers that include the AWS, Google Cloud, Fastly and Wix Studio servers on over 200 nodes across the globe.
If you are planning for a huge surge in traffic compared to your typical numbers, review your server configuration to ensure that you can manage the swell.
3. Tested Results
BFCM season is not the time to work on assumptions. Use data and test your content and campaigns. Whether you are split testing landing pages, A/B Testing meta tags, or testing site wide SEO updates, small changes can make a big difference to your year on year growth. Conduct SEO tests with tools like Microsoft Clarity now and review any key findings from previous campaigns to make sure you’re putting the best site forward for peak season.
4. Global Accessibility
Expanding your serviceable market is one of the most effective ways to grow your website and overall business.
Review landing pages, payment offerings, and the on-page positioning of your distribution to connect with a more global audience.
Cross-border ecommerce has grown substantially in the last decade with estimates putting the value of B2C cross border online sales in at $785 billion worldwide in 2021. This means that more users than ever before have the potential to make purchases from countries outside of your core market. Knowing that you offer “worldwide shipping” can help users to convert.
To prepare for traffic from global users:
Review international SEO implementation.
Confirm that your payment portals and currencies can support your target markets.
Localize translated campaign landing pages and copy for maximum impact and value.
Update T&Cs to reflect additional payment portals and other logistical partners – this can form part of your website’s EEAT profile for ecommerce.
Update on-page SEO and CTAs to reflect global shipping and delivery options.
5. AI QA for On-Page Seasonal Updates
AI provides powerful capabilities for generating content at scale and will play a crucial role in BFCM 2024 – it’s already everywhere.
Platforms like Wix Studio have built in AI product descriptions, Google Merchant Center have introduced AI product image enhancers, and Amazon Sellers can use AI to help enhance their listing. In daily use, AI offers significant efficiencies, and adapting product descriptions for seasonality is one ideal application. However, it’s crucial to maintain content quality throughout the process.
Audit your AI generated product copy to ensure that your copy is distinct and helpful to users. Product pages should have unique copy and product descriptions should accurately reflect the product being sold. When generating at scale, the auditing process becomes particularly crucial.
6. Google Merchant Feed Status
Google is prioritizing Shopping results in the SERPs, and with over 30 updates to Google Merchant Center, an optimized product feed is key for visibility. Improving the quality of your feed, the product attributes, and identifiers can make a significant difference to the impact of your results for paid and organic search. Changes to product rich results, product categories, and Google Merchant Center can impact what should be featured and highlighted within the product feed. It is worth taking a moment to review your key product listings to ensure they present the most effective information ahead of the big Q4 push.
Review your feed to:
Remove out-of-season, out-of-stock or low margin products.
Align with the latest guidelines for required product attributes for your inventory.
Update structured data to support and/or supplement product feed data.
Address any invalid products listings.
7. Marketplace Listings Optimizations
As major retailers increasingly adopt the marketplace model to feature third-party products, consumers have come to expect brands to offer a diverse range of items from external sellers.
While the marketplaces have been adopted by high profile online retailers like Walmart, ASOS, and other major players, this option is not limited only to enterprise level teams. Integration and apps make it easier than ever to sell your products on new markets and list others on your site to fill product gaps.
If you are listing content from third-party sellers on your website, you should audit this content for accuracy and ensure that the product description is optimized to a similar standard of your own product listings. This is important for building trust with your users and for showcasing the product in the best light. For sellers listing on marketplaces, consistency of imagery can help users discover more about your product via visual search. This means that the quality of your product imagery should play a role in part of your listings audits. As well as ensuring compatibility with marketplace requirements, review copy for key products to include keywords, USPs and relevant attributes.
Want to learn more about how you can improve your site for ecommerce? Join the webinar on Tuesday, October 29.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by Shutterstock. Used with permission.
In-Post Images: Images by Wix Studio. Used with permission.
