Get ready for a smoother ride with Yoast SEO 22.4! This update packs a punch, improving performance, fixing bugs and enhancing your overall user experience. Say goodbye to pesky ‘elementor’ slugs and enjoy seamless navigation. Plus, thanks to Yoast WooCommerce SEO 16.2, our webshop customers will better control how their product variants show to shoppers online.
Improvements for Yoast SEO 22.4
Across the plugin, customers can expect to see improved performance as a whole. We’ve removed unnecessary queries and fixed bugs, enhancing the user experience. In essence, we have been doing some spring cleaning.
One particularly noticeable fix is personalized for the vast Elementor community within our user base. You might have noticed that when saving a post with Elementor for the first time, the slug would stubbornly add on the word ‘elementor’ at the start. Well, no more! We’ve put an end to that annoyance. Say goodbye to those unnecessary redirects when you update to Yoast SEO 22.4!
Schema updates for product variants
In February 2024, Google updated its guidelines on structured data specifically for product variants, a complex issue for many ecommerce sites. They aim to match customer intent to results online more effectively. If you’ve ever searched for a t-shirt in a specific color and had a different colored t-shirt pop up in the search results, you can relate to the shopper’s experience.
We’ve updated our product schema in Yoast WooCommerce SEO 16.2 to align with best practices to communicate your product attributes to search engines more effectively. This will ensure your products match potential shoppers’ search criteria as closely as possible. So, now is a great time to ensure that all your site’s product variant data is correct on your website. Check our configuration guide for Yoast WooCommerce SEO for more guidance on how to do this.
Product schema settings in WooCommerce SEO
Yoast SEO workouts to guide you through optimizing your website
In the spirit of seasonal change, now is the perfect time to complete spring cleaning on your site by completing one or more SEO workouts. For Yoast SEO Premium customers, consider these workouts your personal trainers, guiding you through optimizations in just three simple steps each, ensuring your favorite content gets seen by your customers.
Update now to Yoast SEO 22.4
We’re here to empower your digital journey with bug fixes, enhancements, and tailored solutions like our exclusive SEO workouts. Happy optimizing with Yoast SEO 22.4!
Beth Parker
Beth is the Product Marketeer at Yoast. Before joining the company, she honed her digital marketing and project management skills in various in-house and agency environments.
Visibility on Google’s search results can make or break a business’s success. Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a valuable ally for ecommerce companies seeking to enhance their online presence. Discover how generative AI can help your WooCommerce products stand out on search engine results pages.
Table of contents
Generative AI: A business’s secret weapon
Picture yourself armed with a tool to help you outpace your competitors. Generative AI is a tool that helps online entrepreneurs succeed. It’s more than just automating processes — it’s about creating user experiences that feel personalized and products that deeply resonate.
Generative AI tools learn from existing data to produce new, unique content, including text, images and designs that often rival human-made creations. Utilizing this technology can result in distinctive product-related content that stands out.
Fresh, quality content is vital for SEO. Generative AI can mold your product information to engage your audience and satisfy Google’s search algorithms.
Product descriptions that connect and convert
Envision product descriptions that do more than convey facts — they weave a narrative that connects with consumers’ emotions. Generative AI tools can craft such descriptions, leveraging your product’s features to produce content that aligns with your customers’ search intentions. This AI-driven copy can improve conversions with the right balance of targeted keywords and emotional appeal.
Titles and meta descriptions are crucial — their appeal can be the difference in a fraction of a second. They serve as your online shop’s calling card, tempting potential buyers to dive deeper into your offerings. Yoast SEO Premium can generate awesome titles and meta descriptions for you with a single click.
Titles that draw buyers in
The first interaction between a potential buyer and your WooCommerce shop is often through your product title. Generative AI can be your virtual copywriter, generating SEO-friendly titles that captivate. It combines creativity and keyword insight to craft titles that compel shoppers to look closer.
Generative AI can rapidly produce a variety of title options, reducing the time you’d spend brainstorming manually. Let the AI analyze your product and suggest titles, and you choose the one that packs the most punch.
Meta descriptions that make promises
Your meta description sits below your title in search results, acting as a quick sales pitch. Generative AI is adept at developing meta descriptions that are keyword-rich and compelling, guiding searchers toward that all-important click.
For WooCommerce users, product pages benefit from great meta descriptions. These improve click-through rates, signaling the value of your content to Google.
Evaluating AI titles and meta descriptions
When crafting AI-generated titles and meta descriptions for your e-commerce site, prioritize clear, product-focused content. Succinctly convey what’s for sale and emphasize key features and benefits. Keep the titles and descriptions concise to fit search engine display limits. Ensure each is tailored to avoid duplication across product pages. Incorporate compelling calls to action and highlight promotions or special offers to entice clicks and conversions.
Blend in primary and relevant long-tail keywords naturally. Make sure to reflect what potential customers might search for, including product names and specific attributes. Where brand strength is an asset, ensure brand names are visible to build trust and capitalize on brand loyalty. Titles and descriptions should also connect with buyers. When appropriate, address their purchasing motives and include social proof elements like high ratings or best-seller statuses.
Accuracy in product representation is crucial to maintaining credibility and reducing bounce rates. Prepare content with mobile users in mind, ensuring readability and impact on smaller screens. Finally, consider how your content will interact with rich snippets. Constantly refine with a human touch for optimal alignment with your e-commerce goals. Lastly, regularly review your SEO performance to tweak and enhance your approach.
AI is now in Yoast WooCommerce SEO
The Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin uses generative AI to create engaging titles and meta descriptions for your products. It integrates smoothly with your workflow. The AI ensures your content is optimized for search engines and potential customers, enhancing efficiency and effectiveness.
This pairing of generative AI and Yoast WooCommerce SEO makes a great tool to improve your product pages. It’s an excellent example of how to use AI to make products stand out in Google’s search results. Your WooCommerce online store can then attract more clicks and encourage conversions, giving your products the showcase they deserve.
Get your products ready for primetime with AI in Yoast WooCommerce SEO
Bringing a personal touch to AI in eCommerce
Generative AI tools can make a big difference in how your products appear in Google searches. But it’s the personal element that makes your WooCommerce store stand out.
Keeping it real with human insight
While AI gives you the starting points for content, human expertise turns it into something special. Whether through expert advice or personal stories about your products, this human insight can make your store’s content feel more genuine and trustworthy.
Balancing AI and authenticity
It’s important that your AI-generated content still sounds like it comes from a real person — your brand’s unique voice. Editors play a big role here, tweaking the AI’s work to ensure it hits the right note with your customers.
Mix AI with a human touch
The best way to get noticed on Google isn’t just about using AI. It’s about combining AI’s smarts with the relatable and genuine feel that comes from real people. It makes your WooCommerce site not just another online shop but a place where customers feel understood and valued. This creates a mix that appeals to both Google and human customers.
You need a solid integration of AI and human creativity to get that searcher from the SERP listing to a completed purchase. So, while AI is beneficial, you still need to work to make products stand out in search results.
Generative AI is great, but…
Incorporating generative AI into SEO efforts comes with hurdles businesses should consider. Quality control can be uneven, necessitating a careful review of AI-generated content to maintain brand standards. The material produced may not always be relevant or accurate, sometimes requiring human correction to align with market trends. Relying on AI can dilute a brand’s unique voice. Also, changes in Google’s helpful content guidelines could mean AI might struggle to keep up without human guidance.
There are ethical concerns surrounding AI content creation, such as transparency and the potential for misleading information. A heavy dependence on AI can curb human creativity, and additional resources are often needed for AI training and incorporation into existing workflows. Additionally, AI’s unpredictable nature can yield off-brand or inappropriate content. Lastly, AI’s originality might not match the depth a human writer provides.
Despite these potential issues, with tactful application and human oversight, generative AI can improve your ecommerce SEO and keep your business competitive online.
Use AI to make your products stand out in search
Using generative AI to stand out in Google’s search results is no futuristic concept. WooCommerce store owners who want to improve their online visibility can use it today. Combine AI’s inventive capabilities with your strategic human insight for better product visibility and allure.
To thrive online, offer more than products — deliver stories that speak to the desires and searches of your customers. Integrate generative AI into your SEO strategy and help it build an audience for your ecommerce business.
Are you ready to take your WooCommerce store to the next level with generative AI? Showcase your products on Google’s search results and drive growth. Check out the Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin and transform your ecommerce SEO.
Yoast SEO 21.6 helps you rethink how you approach search engine optimization. With the power of generative AI integrated into our SEO tools, crafting compelling titles and meta descriptions was never faster or more effective. We added generative AI to Yoast SEO a while back, but now you can also improve your products in WooCommerce SEO.
Here’s how Yoast SEO helps you
Whether you’re a blogger, a digital marketer, an online store manager, or a business owner striving to climb the search engine ranks, we designed Yoast SEO 21.6 to enhance your workflow like never before:
Generative AI capabilities: Leveraging cutting-edge AI technology, the tool assists you in generating unique, relevant, and attractive titles and meta descriptions that help increase your click-through rates — for posts and WooCommerce products.
Efficiency at scale: Say goodbye to the days of laboring over the perfect wording. Our generative AI tools let you produce multiple options in seconds, allowing you to choose the best fit for your content.
Optimized for SEO: Our AI doesn’t just produce creative copy; we’ve trained it to align with SEO best practices. This ensures that the output resonates with your audience and aligns with what search engines love to see.
Online store owners: WooCommerce SEO just got smarter
Expanding the power of AI to ecommerce, the Yoast WooCommerce SEO add-on now comes with the same generative AI capabilities. You need Yoast SEO Premium to run this add-on. Then, online store owners can enjoy an array of benefits:
Product titles and meta description magic: Generate AI-driven product titles and SEO-friendly meta descriptions. It helps you stand out in the search results. It enables you to convert and sell more.
Save time and resources: Investing time in producing great product titles and meta descriptions can be exhausting. With our AI assistance, create compelling copy within seconds and focus your efforts on other aspects of your business.
Customized for WooCommerce: This feature is seamlessly integrated with WooCommerce, meaning you can boost your store’s SEO directly from your product editor.
An example of generative AI in WooCommerce SEO
Easy to use, hard to beat
Getting started with the AI feature in Yoast SEO is easy. First, upgrade to Yoast SEO Premium to unlock this invaluable tool. Once set, navigate to the ‘Use AI’ button in the search appearance section in the post editor. A simple click reveals a user agreement; review and accept the terms to proceed.
Instantly, the AI works, crafting multiple titles and meta descriptions tailored to your content. Take a moment to review the generated options. If they’re not quite what you were looking for, no worries! With the push of a button, prompt the AI to generate additional choices until you find the perfect match for your SEO needs.
Yoast SEO supercharged
We’re committed to providing you with the most advanced tools to help you reach SEO success. This update empowers you with smarter, faster, and more effective SEO solutions.
Join us on this exciting journey and take your SEO to the next level. Try our generative AI features in Yoast SEO Premium and WooCommerce SEO today and witness the impact on your site’s performance.
Do you have trouble getting your product to show up on Google? Are your competitors getting rich results, but the search results for your product are boring? It might be that Google doesn’t know every detail of your product. For instance, you might miss the product identifiers that Google uses to understand your products thoroughly. In Yoast WooCommerce SEO 15.2 and Yoast SEO for Shopify, you’ll find a reminder to add precisely that! Today, we’re also releasing Yoast SEO 19.7 and Premium 19.3.
Yesterday, we were notified of a bug in Yoast SEO. We’ve fixed this issue quickly, and the current version, Yoast SEO 19.7.1, is safe to install. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused by this!
Table of contents
First: We’re fully updated for Google’s latest product schema changes
Before we introduce our latest feature in WooCommerce SEO and Yoast SEO for Shopify, we want to mention that, with today’s update, we’re fully aligned with Google’s new product structured data changes. Last week, Google announced its expanded eligibility for enhanced product experiences in the search results using Product structured data. For this to work, slight modifications to the product structured data are necessary. In addition, new properties are available as well, like pattern, material and brand.
In the latest releases of our ecommerce SEO plugins and apps, we’ve ensured that your product structured data is in line with Google’s updated requirements. Your ecommerce site can now be eligible for additional rich results for your products in the search results.
For WooCommerce SEO, we’ve added a new feature to support brand and pattern. You can activate this by going to WooCommerce > Products > Attributes and adding a new attribute for patterns. Populate it with some terms and go to Yoast SEO > WooCommerce SEO. In the new Pattern dropdown, select the attribute you want and save. Then, edit a product, and under Attributes, add the attribute you just created. Populate it with some of the terms you made above and publish the product. Run a structured data test and see that your product validates nicely!
Product identifiers are an important detail
Do you want your products to appear nicely in the search results? Then it would be best if you didn’t forget to add SKUs and product identifiers to your products in WooCommerce, as this is an essential piece of product details. But it’s not just for Google. Many customers use SKUs and product identifiers to find your products in search, so it’s wise to add these to your product pages. Plus, adding these details makes it easier for customers to trust that you are offering the product they are looking for.
WooCommerce SEO and Yoast SEO for Shopify now come with a check that reminds you to add this all-important product detail! In addition, it’ll add those product details to the Product Schema that Google uses to check the facts about your products. This will increase the chance of your product getting that highlighted rich result!
Remember that the check won’t appear when there is no SKU field in WooCommerce. This might be due to a specific WooCommerce plugin you are running. Also, the check does not work for grouped products.
In Yoast SEO for Shopify, we don’t show this for product variants but have a field called Barcode, mentioning that you do or do not have something filled in.
Properly adding structured data to your products can lead to rich results like these
WooCommerce SEO and our Shopify app help you do ecommerce SEO
With WooCommerce SEO, you get many more options for your WooCommerce store to shine in the search results. This includes easy tools to build a better ecommerce experience. You’ll also get the all-important option to add product identifiers to product variants that WooCommerce does not offer by itself. Plus, every detail your add will be added to the structured data graph of your site, store, and products. Last but not least, it comes with a product-specific version of our famous SEO and readability analysis to help you write awesome product descriptions!
Our Yoast SEO for Shopify app might not come with the map functionality, but it does come with everything else you love about Yoast SEO. It also comes with the new product identifier check (called Barcode) and product-focused SEO and readability analyses. And it’s good to know that the Barcode and SKU checks will only be visible when there is a product with no variants. Try it out!
WooCommerce SEO reminds you to add SKUs and product identifiers
The Barcode and SKU checks will only be visible when there is a product with no variants
Essential product details in Schema
Product schema is critical if you want your product to appear on Google correctly. One of the properties that Google recommends adding to your product details is the SKU, but also global identifiers like UPC and EAN are welcome additions. The Google Rich Results Test will show a warning if you don’t add these. Here’s what Google says about product identifiers in its documentation on product structured data:
Include all applicable global identifiers; these are described at schema.org/Product. While you can use the generic gtin property for all GTINs, we recommend that you use the most specific GTIN that applies to your product, as this is the most accurate representation of the product. Make sure the GTIN value is numerical; we don’t support the URL form for GTINs.
WooCommerce SEO comes with a fully-featured Schema implementation that integrates with Yoast SEO seamlessly. Together, they ensure that Google gets all the necessary details about your product — increasing the chance that it highlights them in the SERPs.
Get WooCommerce SEO 15.2 now!
The new WooCommerce SEO check works for individual products and a product with variants and, therefore, different product codes. Yoast SEO for Shopify only works for regular products. Thanks to the reminder, you’ll never forget those product codes again — Google and your customers will thank you!
Don’t have WooCommerce SEO yet? Now might be a good time as ever! Check out our Yoast SEO Premium & WooCommerce SEO bundle if you want to get the most bang for your buck.
Help your online store stand out!
Get this and much more in the Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin!
Yoast SEO 19.7 and Premium 19.3
Today, we’re also releasing small updates for Yoast SEO and Yoast SEO Premium. In Yoast SEO 19.7, you’ll find several security fixes and hardened the overall security of the plugins. We’ve also improved the handling of fatal errors on the front end by preventing Yoast SEO from running on the login page, allowing users to access their dashboard.
We also now exclude empty custom post-type sitemaps from sitemap_index.xml, and we’ve added a new filter wpseo_sitemap_post_type_first_links that can be used to add links at the start of the first sitemap page for post types.
For Yoast SEO Premium 19.3, we’ve fixed several bugs, and we’ve added two options to the crawl settings: one to prevent the crawling of site search pages and one to prevent the crawling of /wp-json/.
The summer has just ended, but we’re already telling you to prepare for the biggest sales of the year: Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And let’s not forget about the rest of the holiday shopping season that’s coming up. Now is the time to start planning for the most beautiful time of the year. So, if you have an online shop, let’s start working on your holiday season SEO immediately!
Ranking in Google isn’t something you do overnight. That is why it’s never too early to start. Remember, the end of the year is rapidly approaching. Don’t forget, Black Friday (25 November) and Cyber Monday (28 November) are kicking off this year’s holiday shopping season. You can set up a lot of content for all occasions. In this post, we’ll review some things you can do to prepare!
While the pandemic is somewhat under control in many places, people are quite used to shopping online now. It’s easier and more convenient since you don’t have to leave your house to fight people over the last PlayStation 5. In fact, last year, online sales hit a record of 204 billion dollars! And people will continue to do that. That’s why we think it’s safe to assume that people will buy many of their holiday gifts online this year.
Last year, Microsoft shared some insights on what it expects customers to focus on during Black Friday. These tips are still relevant, which is why we’re sharing them with you:
Shoppers will start early.
Alternative payments and delivery methods will be in demand.
Sustainability will be a trend.
Advertising competition will be high.
The volume of shoppers purchasing online this year will be high. There are plenty of opportunities for businesses to gain new customers and audiences during this vital time. By ensuring that you’re highlighting the right messages at the right time in the right places, you’ll be ahead of the pack when shoppers are ready to buy.
Stephanie Worley – Global Brand Marketer at Microsoft Advertising
Online is where it’s at
Of course, in-store or curbside pick-up will still prove popular. But nowadays, most people do their research and purchases online – sometimes even weeks in advance! So don’t be surprised when the holiday shopping season starts well before Black Friday and continues for weeks.
That’s why it can be a good idea to extend your online deals for a few days or weeks. Especially if you want to prevent huge crowds from gathering at your store on a specific day. That won’t be a good shopping experience for anyone involved, so spreading these deals over an extended time would be good.
You’ll get tips and tricks to get your SEO ready. After all, the better you plan, the better your website will perform, and the more money you’ll make!
Start preparing in time
Dive into the data you amassed during previous Black Friday events, and see if you can come up with improvements. Bear in mind that it takes a while for content to rank. So, if you want to keep up with the competition, try to get your content in gear at least 45 days ahead. That’s what is often recommended. Of course, you can always start preparing earlier if that works better for you. Your schedule could look something like this:
45 Days in advance: Post your promotion to your website calendar and post a save-the-date post on social media and in your email newsletter).
7 Days in advance: Post upcoming events/promotions post on social media and via email. Try to encourage other (small) businesses to share it with their followers.
1 Day in advance: Post an event reminder post on social media.
Keeping these steps and time frames in mind is a good rule. However, we think you can do much more in setting up new pages and renewing old ones. Let’s look at a few practical tips.
1. Set up holiday season gift pages
First, we must consider what category or particular landing pages make sense for the upcoming holidays. You can always set up pages like ‘Best gifts for parents/millennials/teens’, ‘Newest deals for your 6/10/12-year-old’, and ‘Best friend/grandparents/coworker discounts’. You could also think along the lines of ‘Top 10 gifts for outdoor/skiing/parasailing enthusiasts’ and ‘Top 3 deals for stay-at-home parents’, etcetera.
To increase the chances of your gift pages ranking, boost their internal linking structure. You can also link the previous all-year holiday season pages, such as specific Christmas landing pages (‘Top 7/10/25 gifts for under the Christmas tree’) to boost these when the time has come. That could be around the 45-day mark, but we wouldn’t mind stretching that to 60 days. You have to give Google and other search engines enough time to follow your links and find your specific holiday season landing pages in time.
Social media like Twitter and Pinterest — though this is technically a visual search engine — can play a massive role in the success of your (online) holiday sale. Take Pinterest, for instance. Raise your hand if you or your spouse has a Pinterest wish list? Many people do. If you manage to get your products on people’s wish lists, that can positively impact your sales.
While you’re at it, don’t forget to share your holiday season gifts pages on Facebook and Instagram as well. In the previous section, we’ve mentioned the top 10 lists. We all know these still work pretty well on social media. Yoast SEO can actually help you optimize your social media posts before you share them.
Similarly, we’d recommend setting up holiday gift guides and sharing these. Create an excellent overview of all kinds of gifts that lots of people will enjoy. ELLE and Target have pages like that, and so do more companies.
And last but not least, don’t forget your email marketing! For many companies, newsletters provide a steady stream of income. Be sure to plan a good campaign for your newsletters.
3. Introduce new products
The holiday season is an excellent time to pitch new products. If you know of potential bestsellers for the upcoming holiday season, start writing content about these products now. You can compare it to tech sites writing about concept iPhones, features that Apple might add, and things like that.
The more you write about new products upfront, the more likely the sales pages for these products will rank when it matters. You should link all pages you made in advance to that one main page you’ll set up when the product is released and available to buy. Treat that page like cornerstone content.
4. Add structured data to your product pages
When adding or changing your product pages to fit the season, don’t forget to optimize them. Check, for instance, whether you’ve added structured data to your product pages. Because rich results that show ratings and prices can give you an edge over your competitor. Our WooCommerce SEO plugin, Local SEO plugin, or Yoast SEO for Shopify app can help you do this!
Example of how a product can appear in the search results if you use structured data.
There’s no shame in serving old wine in a new bottle. If you have a Black Friday guide for 2021, feel free to reuse it in 2022. Update the year, and update details like popular brands and popular products for that year. If the slug of your URL is /black-friday-guide-2021/, change it to /black-friday-guide-2022/ around August next year, and redirect the old URL to the new one. No need to create a new page. It would be a waste of nice inbound links not to reuse that old URL. Of course, this is even easier if you don’t include the year in the URL, so /black-friday-guide/ is an excellent slug as well.
In the months before the holiday season, you could even simply repost popular posts from last year (a bit adjusted or updated if needed) on social media. Valentine’s Day might even become Secret Santa. Cyber Monday might match your child’s favorite gifts for Ramadan. These are probably small adjustments; perhaps just adding ‘this Ramadan’ to a meta description or title will do.
It’s a good idea to check and optimize your website for speed and mobile. Trust us, you’ll get these recommendations from an SEO blog or consultant every day, all day. And with good reason! Mobile, site speed, and user experience in general are becoming more important every year (or day, for that matter). When preparing your website for the holiday season, this is as good a time as any to check your mobile website and site speed, and update or improve them if possible.
All set? Don’t forget to make a measurement plan so you can analyze your success. Write down all your plans, then think about how to track all your actions. This is key if you want to know what to focus on next year. For detailed instructions on how to analyze your Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Cinco de Mayo shopping, read our post with 5 tips to measure your holiday sales success.
And when the holiday season is over?
How do you handle the product pages of holiday gift sets after the holidays are over? Even if the gift set or product was a great success, and you want to offer it again next year, it’ll take a while for the page to be relevant again. So, what’s the best way to deal with these pages in the meantime?
Watch Joost’s answer to that in this video!
Conclusion on holiday season SEO
In short, now’s the time to buckle down and start writing holiday gift pages and content on new products. And don’t forget to plan your social media promotion and analytics. After all, you can never start too early when your online business depends on the holiday season. Be prepared, begin now!
The summer has just ended, but we’re already telling you to prepare for the biggest sales of the year: Black Friday and Cyber Monday. And let’s not forget about the rest of the holiday shopping season that’s coming up. Now is the time to start planning for the most beautiful time of the year. So, if you have an online shop, let’s start working on your holiday season SEO immediately!
Ranking in Google isn’t something you do overnight. That is why it’s never too early to start. Remember, the end of the year is rapidly approaching. Don’t forget, Black Friday (25 November) and Cyber Monday (28 November) are kicking off this year’s holiday shopping season. You can set up a lot of content for all occasions. In this post, we’ll review some things you can do to prepare!
While the pandemic is somewhat under control in many places, people are quite used to shopping online now. It’s easier and more convenient since you don’t have to leave your house to fight people over the last PlayStation 5. In fact, last year, online sales hit a record of 204 billion dollars! And people will continue to do that. That’s why we think it’s safe to assume that people will buy many of their holiday gifts online this year.
Last year, Microsoft shared some insights on what it expects customers to focus on during Black Friday. These tips are still relevant, which is why we’re sharing them with you:
Shoppers will start early.
Alternative payments and delivery methods will be in demand.
Sustainability will be a trend.
Advertising competition will be high.
The volume of shoppers purchasing online this year will be high. There are plenty of opportunities for businesses to gain new customers and audiences during this vital time. By ensuring that you’re highlighting the right messages at the right time in the right places, you’ll be ahead of the pack when shoppers are ready to buy.
Stephanie Worley – Global Brand Marketer at Microsoft Advertising
Online is where it’s at
Of course, in-store or curbside pick-up will still prove popular. But nowadays, most people do their research and purchases online – sometimes even weeks in advance! So don’t be surprised when the holiday shopping season starts well before Black Friday and continues for weeks.
That’s why it can be a good idea to extend your online deals for a few days or weeks. Especially if you want to prevent huge crowds from gathering at your store on a specific day. That won’t be a good shopping experience for anyone involved, so spreading these deals over an extended time would be good.
You’ll get tips and tricks to get your SEO ready. After all, the better you plan, the better your website will perform, and the more money you’ll make!
Start preparing in time
Dive into the data you amassed during previous Black Friday events, and see if you can come up with improvements. Bear in mind that it takes a while for content to rank. So, if you want to keep up with the competition, try to get your content in gear at least 45 days ahead. That’s what is often recommended. Of course, you can always start preparing earlier if that works better for you. Your schedule could look something like this:
45 Days in advance: Post your promotion to your website calendar and post a save-the-date post on social media and in your email newsletter).
7 Days in advance: Post upcoming events/promotions post on social media and via email. Try to encourage other (small) businesses to share it with their followers.
1 Day in advance: Post an event reminder post on social media.
Keeping these steps and time frames in mind is a good rule. However, we think you can do much more in setting up new pages and renewing old ones. Let’s look at a few practical tips.
1. Set up holiday season gift pages
First, we must consider what category or particular landing pages make sense for the upcoming holidays. You can always set up pages like ‘Best gifts for parents/millennials/teens’, ‘Newest deals for your 6/10/12-year-old’, and ‘Best friend/grandparents/coworker discounts’. You could also think along the lines of ‘Top 10 gifts for outdoor/skiing/parasailing enthusiasts’ and ‘Top 3 deals for stay-at-home parents’, etcetera.
To increase the chances of your gift pages ranking, boost their internal linking structure. You can also link the previous all-year holiday season pages, such as specific Christmas landing pages (‘Top 7/10/25 gifts for under the Christmas tree’) to boost these when the time has come. That could be around the 45-day mark, but we wouldn’t mind stretching that to 60 days. You have to give Google and other search engines enough time to follow your links and find your specific holiday season landing pages in time.
Social media like Twitter and Pinterest — though this is technically a visual search engine — can play a massive role in the success of your (online) holiday sale. Take Pinterest, for instance. Raise your hand if you or your spouse has a Pinterest wish list? Many people do. If you manage to get your products on people’s wish lists, that can positively impact your sales.
While you’re at it, don’t forget to share your holiday season gifts pages on Facebook and Instagram as well. In the previous section, we’ve mentioned the top 10 lists. We all know these still work pretty well on social media. Yoast SEO can actually help you optimize your social media posts before you share them.
Similarly, we’d recommend setting up holiday gift guides and sharing these. Create an excellent overview of all kinds of gifts that lots of people will enjoy. ELLE and Target have pages like that, and so do more companies.
And last but not least, don’t forget your email marketing! For many companies, newsletters provide a steady stream of income. Be sure to plan a good campaign for your newsletters.
3. Introduce new products
The holiday season is an excellent time to pitch new products. If you know of potential bestsellers for the upcoming holiday season, start writing content about these products now. You can compare it to tech sites writing about concept iPhones, features that Apple might add, and things like that.
The more you write about new products upfront, the more likely the sales pages for these products will rank when it matters. You should link all pages you made in advance to that one main page you’ll set up when the product is released and available to buy. Treat that page like cornerstone content.
4. Add structured data to your product pages
When adding or changing your product pages to fit the season, don’t forget to optimize them. Check, for instance, whether you’ve added structured data to your product pages. Because rich results that show ratings and prices can give you an edge over your competitor. Our WooCommerce SEO plugin, Local SEO plugin, or Yoast SEO for Shopify app can help you do this!
Example of how a product can appear in the search results if you use structured data.
There’s no shame in serving old wine in a new bottle. If you have a Black Friday guide for 2021, feel free to reuse it in 2022. Update the year, and update details like popular brands and popular products for that year. If the slug of your URL is /black-friday-guide-2021/, change it to /black-friday-guide-2022/ around August next year, and redirect the old URL to the new one. No need to create a new page. It would be a waste of nice inbound links not to reuse that old URL. Of course, this is even easier if you don’t include the year in the URL, so /black-friday-guide/ is an excellent slug as well.
In the months before the holiday season, you could even simply repost popular posts from last year (a bit adjusted or updated if needed) on social media. Valentine’s Day might even become Secret Santa. Cyber Monday might match your child’s favorite gifts for Ramadan. These are probably small adjustments; perhaps just adding ‘this Ramadan’ to a meta description or title will do.
It’s a good idea to check and optimize your website for speed and mobile. Trust us, you’ll get these recommendations from an SEO blog or consultant every day, all day. And with good reason! Mobile, site speed, and user experience in general are becoming more important every year (or day, for that matter). When preparing your website for the holiday season, this is as good a time as any to check your mobile website and site speed, and update or improve them if possible.
All set? Don’t forget to make a measurement plan so you can analyze your success. Write down all your plans, then think about how to track all your actions. This is key if you want to know what to focus on next year. For detailed instructions on how to analyze your Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or Cinco de Mayo shopping, read our post with 5 tips to measure your holiday sales success.
And when the holiday season is over?
How do you handle the product pages of holiday gift sets after the holidays are over? Even if the gift set or product was a great success, and you want to offer it again next year, it’ll take a while for the page to be relevant again. So, what’s the best way to deal with these pages in the meantime?
Watch Joost’s answer to that in this video!
Conclusion on holiday season SEO
In short, now’s the time to buckle down and start writing holiday gift pages and content on new products. And don’t forget to plan your social media promotion and analytics. After all, you can never start too early when your online business depends on the holiday season. Be prepared, begin now!
Having great product pages is so important for your sales. These are the pages where people decide to click that buy button. Besides optimizing your product pages for user experience, you want to make sure these pages are as good as possible for SEO as well. You might think this is obvious. That’s why, in this post, we’ll show you a few less obvious — at least for most website owners — elements of product page SEO, and tell you why it’s so important to take these things into account.
You’ll get tips and tricks to get your SEO ready. After all, the better you plan, the better your website will perform, and the more money you’ll make!
1. The basics of product page SEO
First things first: A product page on an online store is a page as well. This means that all the SEO things that matter for your content pages, matter for your product pages as well. There’s a lot more to product page SEO, but for now, this will be your basic optimization. Tip: If you offer not-so-exciting products on your site, you may also want to read our post on SEO for boring products. But first:
Add a great title, focusing on the product name — including a manufacturer name, if applicable. If your product is, for instance, a small part of a larger machine (screw, tube), include the SKU as well. People might search for that specifically.
Add a proper, unique description of the product. Most of the time, this isn’t the description the product’s manufacturer used. That description might be found on hundreds of websites, which means it’ll be duplicate content and a sign of low quality for your website (to Google). You want to prevent duplicate content at all times. Because if all your content (content pages, category pages, blog) is unique, but the content used on thousands of product pages isn’t, the majority of your website’s content won’t be up to par. Think about that and don’t take it lightly as Google’s collection of black and white animals is waiting for you. So make time to create unique content. The Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin comes with a product-specific content and SEO analysis that helps you produce great product descriptions.
Add an inviting meta description. Usually, a product page contains a lot of general information as well, varying from dimensions to terms of service. To avoid Google using that unrelated text in a meta description, you want to add a meta description to your product pages, even more than to content pages. We often see that meta descriptions are added in some kind of templated way, where just the product name is changed per product. That’s okay to start with, but ideally, all your meta descriptions should be unique.
Pick a great, easy-to-remember URL for your product pages. We recommend using the product name in the URL, but make sure that the URL is still readable for site visitors. Keep it short and simple.
Add high-quality, well-optimized images with proper ALT text. Include the product name in at least the main product image. This will help you do better in visual search. Also, don’t forget video — if applicable.
2. Add structured data for your products and get rich results
Structured data is an essential part of a modern SEO strategy. You can’t do without structured data for your product pages anymore. There is a specific Product schema that helps you get highlighted search results, so-called rich results. In addition, you’d better mark up customers’ reviews with Review structured data. All of this will make your product page stand out and increase the chance that a potential customer clicks on your link in the search results.
The importance of this for your product page SEO is that the major search engines came up with this markup, not the W3C consortium. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex agreed upon this markup, so they could identify product pages and all the product elements and characteristics more easily. Why? So they could a) understand these pages a lot better and b) show you rich snippets like this:
That’s a lot of info in the search results, right?
The Product schema tells the search engine more about the product. It could include characteristics like product description, manufacturer, brand, name, dimensions, and color, but also the SKU we mentioned earlier. The Offer schema includes more information on price and availability, like currency and stock. It can even include something called priceValidUntil to let search engines know that the price offer is for a limited time only.
Many options to add structured data for product page SEO
Schema.org has a lot of options, but only a limited set of properties are supported by search engines. For instance, look at Google’s page on product page structured data to see what search engines expect in your code and what they can do with it.
This is why you want to add Schema.org data for product page SEO: It’s easier to recognize for Google, and it makes sure to include important extras in Google already. If you have a WooCommerce shop, our WooCommerce SEO plugin takes care of a lot of this stuff behind the scenes.
Another reason to add it is to manage expectations from customers. Your visitors will know your price up front and that the product is still in stock. Your potential clients can even see how well-regarded your product or service is by looking at those beautiful stars in the search results. How’s that for user experience! Which brings us to number three.
A preview of how your product might look in Google thanks to structured data
3. Add real reviews
According to Pew Research, 93% of US consumers check reviews before buying anything online. Although not everyone trusts online reviews, a lot of people do, so they can be very helpful.
88% of American consumers find online reviews at least somewhat helpful
If you are a local company, online reviews are even more important. Most reviews tend to be extremely positive, but it might just be the negative reviews that give a better sense of what is going on with a company or product. In addition, getting awesome testimonials is another way of showing your business means business.
Leading Dutch online store Coolblue gives consumers a lot of options to make relevant and useful reviews of the products they buy
Try to get your customers to leave reviews, and show the reviews on your product page. Do you get a negative review? Contact the writer, find out what’s wrong and try to mitigate the situation. Maybe they can turn their negative review into a positive one. Plus: You’ve gained new insights into your work.
If you’re not sure how to get those ratings and reviews, check out our blog post: how to get ratings and reviews for your business. And don’t forget to mark up your reviews and ratings with Review and Rating schema so search engines can pick them up and show rich results on the search results pages.
4. Make your product page lightning fast
People don’t like to wait. Especially in today’s mobile-focused world, every second counts. Even more so if you spend a lot of time and energy trying to get that potential customer to your product page in the first place. People expect a fast page, and Google does too. Of course, there’s a lot you can do to improve your site speed. To get you started, here’s a post about how to improve your Core Web Vital scores.
5. User test your product page
Looking at numbers in Google Analytics, Search Console or other analytical tools can give you a lot of insight into how people find and interact with your page. These insights can help you improve the performance of the page even more. But there’s another way of ensuring the page is as awesome as it can be: user testing.
There are loads of issues testers can find for you: From terrible use of images (including non-functioning galleries) to bad handling of out-of-stock products. It also seems that many sites fail to provide accurate shipping information and return information, which leads to trust issues.
Now, you might be thinking: Surely, my website doesn’t have those issues! But you’d be surprised. In their 2021 Product Page UX research project, the Baymard Institute found that “the average site has 24 structural UX issues on its product pages, and only 18% of the 60 top-grossing US and European e-commerce sites have a “good” or “acceptable” product page UX performance. The vast majority of benchmarked sites — 82% — have a “poor” or “mediocre” performance. And no sites have a “state of the art” product page UX performance.” You can read this fascinating study on their Product Page UX site.
The Baymard report has loads of insights into the most common errors seen on product pages
While you compare your product pages to external user research, don’t forget to do your own user testing! Doing proper research will give you eye-opening results that you probably wouldn’t have found yourself.
Bonus: Build trust and show people you are for real
Getting a stranger to buy something on your site involves a lot of trust. Someone needs to know you are for real before handing you their hard-earned money, right? Google puts a lot of emphasis on the element of trust — It’s all over their famous Search Quality Raters Guidelines. The search engine tries to evaluate trust and expertise by looking at online reviews, the accolade a site or its authors receive, and much more.
This is why it’s so important that your About us and Customer service pages are in order. Make sure people can easily find your contact information, information about returns and shipping, payment, privacy, et cetera. This will build that trust for your customers. So, don’t forget!
Conclusion: Be serious about your product page SEO
If you’re serious about optimizing your product page, you shouldn’t focus on regular SEO and user experience alone. You’ll have to dig a little deeper into other aspects of the product page in your online store. For instance, you could add the Product and Offer Schema, so Google can easily index all the details about your product and show these as rich results in the search results. In addition, you should make your product pages super fast, add user reviews and try to enhance your website’s trustworthiness. And don’t forget to test everything you do!
Need a helping hand? Be sure to check out our ecommerce SEO training course. Learn what ecommerce SEO entails, how to optimize your site and boost your online presence. Want to get your products ranking in the shopping search results? We’ll tell you how. Start your free trial lesson today! Full access to Yoast SEO academy is included in Yoast SEO Premium.
Webinar: Get prepared for Black Friday!
Especially during the holiday season, you want people to land on your website and easily buy your products! Did you know that you can start preparing as early as 45 days in advance? That’s right! The better you plan, the better your website will perform, and the more money you’ll make.
We want to help everyone who owns an online shop and share important things you can do to prepare for the year’s biggest sale events. That’s why we are organizing a webinar on October 4th: “Is your SEO ready for Black Friday?”. Register now!
Check out our overview of product page must-haves
To help you stay on top of your product pages, we created a PDF that you can use to optimize your product pages whenever you have time. Most of what’s discussed in this blog post can be found in the PDF, plus more tips! Just click on the image to go to the PDF and download it.
Having great product pages is so important for your sales. These are the pages where people decide to click that buy button. Besides optimizing your product pages for user experience, you want to make sure these pages are as good as possible for SEO as well. You might think this is obvious. That’s why, in this post, we’ll show you a few less obvious — at least for most website owners — elements of product page SEO, and tell you why it’s so important to take these things into account.
You’ll get tips and tricks to get your SEO ready. After all, the better you plan, the better your website will perform, and the more money you’ll make!
1. The basics of product page SEO
First things first: A product page on an online store is a page as well. This means that all the SEO things that matter for your content pages, matter for your product pages as well. There’s a lot more to product page SEO, but for now, this will be your basic optimization. Tip: If you offer not-so-exciting products on your site, you may also want to read our post on SEO for boring products. But first:
Add a great title, focusing on the product name — including a manufacturer name, if applicable. If your product is, for instance, a small part of a larger machine (screw, tube), include the SKU as well. People might search for that specifically.
Add a proper, unique description of the product. Most of the time, this isn’t the description the product’s manufacturer used. That description might be found on hundreds of websites, which means it’ll be duplicate content and a sign of low quality for your website (to Google). You want to prevent duplicate content at all times. Because if all your content (content pages, category pages, blog) is unique, but the content used on thousands of product pages isn’t, the majority of your website’s content won’t be up to par. Think about that and don’t take it lightly as Google’s collection of black and white animals is waiting for you. So make time to create unique content. The Yoast WooCommerce SEO plugin comes with a product-specific content and SEO analysis that helps you produce great product descriptions.
Add an inviting meta description. Usually, a product page contains a lot of general information as well, varying from dimensions to terms of service. To avoid Google using that unrelated text in a meta description, you want to add a meta description to your product pages, even more than to content pages. We often see that meta descriptions are added in some kind of templated way, where just the product name is changed per product. That’s okay to start with, but ideally, all your meta descriptions should be unique.
Pick a great, easy-to-remember URL for your product pages. We recommend using the product name in the URL, but make sure that the URL is still readable for site visitors. Keep it short and simple.
Add high-quality, well-optimized images with proper ALT text. Include the product name in at least the main product image. This will help you do better in visual search. Also, don’t forget video — if applicable.
2. Add structured data for your products and get rich results
Structured data is an essential part of a modern SEO strategy. You can’t do without structured data for your product pages anymore. There is a specific Product schema that helps you get highlighted search results, so-called rich results. In addition, you’d better mark up customers’ reviews with Review structured data. All of this will make your product page stand out and increase the chance that a potential customer clicks on your link in the search results.
The importance of this for your product page SEO is that the major search engines came up with this markup, not the W3C consortium. Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex agreed upon this markup, so they could identify product pages and all the product elements and characteristics more easily. Why? So they could a) understand these pages a lot better and b) show you rich snippets like this:
That’s a lot of info in the search results, right?
The Product schema tells the search engine more about the product. It could include characteristics like product description, manufacturer, brand, name, dimensions, and color, but also the SKU we mentioned earlier. The Offer schema includes more information on price and availability, like currency and stock. It can even include something called priceValidUntil to let search engines know that the price offer is for a limited time only.
Many options to add structured data for product page SEO
Schema.org has a lot of options, but only a limited set of properties are supported by search engines. For instance, look at Google’s page on product page structured data to see what search engines expect in your code and what they can do with it.
This is why you want to add Schema.org data for product page SEO: It’s easier to recognize for Google, and it makes sure to include important extras in Google already. If you have a WooCommerce shop, our WooCommerce SEO plugin takes care of a lot of this stuff behind the scenes.
Another reason to add it is to manage expectations from customers. Your visitors will know your price up front and that the product is still in stock. Your potential clients can even see how well-regarded your product or service is by looking at those beautiful stars in the search results. How’s that for user experience! Which brings us to number three.
A preview of how your product might look in Google thanks to structured data
3. Add real reviews
According to Pew Research, 93% of US consumers check reviews before buying anything online. Although not everyone trusts online reviews, a lot of people do, so they can be very helpful.
88% of American consumers find online reviews at least somewhat helpful
If you are a local company, online reviews are even more important. Most reviews tend to be extremely positive, but it might just be the negative reviews that give a better sense of what is going on with a company or product. In addition, getting awesome testimonials is another way of showing your business means business.
Leading Dutch online store Coolblue gives consumers a lot of options to make relevant and useful reviews of the products they buy
Try to get your customers to leave reviews, and show the reviews on your product page. Do you get a negative review? Contact the writer, find out what’s wrong and try to mitigate the situation. Maybe they can turn their negative review into a positive one. Plus: You’ve gained new insights into your work.
If you’re not sure how to get those ratings and reviews, check out our blog post: how to get ratings and reviews for your business. And don’t forget to mark up your reviews and ratings with Review and Rating schema so search engines can pick them up and show rich results on the search results pages.
4. Make your product page lightning fast
People don’t like to wait. Especially in today’s mobile-focused world, every second counts. Even more so if you spend a lot of time and energy trying to get that potential customer to your product page in the first place. People expect a fast page, and Google does too. Of course, there’s a lot you can do to improve your site speed. To get you started, here’s a post about how to improve your Core Web Vital scores.
5. User test your product page
Looking at numbers in Google Analytics, Search Console or other analytical tools can give you a lot of insight into how people find and interact with your page. These insights can help you improve the performance of the page even more. But there’s another way of ensuring the page is as awesome as it can be: user testing.
There are loads of issues testers can find for you: From terrible use of images (including non-functioning galleries) to bad handling of out-of-stock products. It also seems that many sites fail to provide accurate shipping information and return information, which leads to trust issues.
Now, you might be thinking: Surely, my website doesn’t have those issues! But you’d be surprised. In their 2021 Product Page UX research project, the Baymard Institute found that “the average site has 24 structural UX issues on its product pages, and only 18% of the 60 top-grossing US and European e-commerce sites have a “good” or “acceptable” product page UX performance. The vast majority of benchmarked sites — 82% — have a “poor” or “mediocre” performance. And no sites have a “state of the art” product page UX performance.” You can read this fascinating study on their Product Page UX site.
The Baymard report has loads of insights into the most common errors seen on product pages
While you compare your product pages to external user research, don’t forget to do your own user testing! Doing proper research will give you eye-opening results that you probably wouldn’t have found yourself.
Bonus: Build trust and show people you are for real
Getting a stranger to buy something on your site involves a lot of trust. Someone needs to know you are for real before handing you their hard-earned money, right? Google puts a lot of emphasis on the element of trust — It’s all over their famous Search Quality Raters Guidelines. The search engine tries to evaluate trust and expertise by looking at online reviews, the accolade a site or its authors receive, and much more.
This is why it’s so important that your About us and Customer service pages are in order. Make sure people can easily find your contact information, information about returns and shipping, payment, privacy, et cetera. This will build that trust for your customers. So, don’t forget!
Conclusion: Be serious about your product page SEO
If you’re serious about optimizing your product page, you shouldn’t focus on regular SEO and user experience alone. You’ll have to dig a little deeper into other aspects of the product page in your online store. For instance, you could add the Product and Offer Schema, so Google can easily index all the details about your product and show these as rich results in the search results. In addition, you should make your product pages super fast, add user reviews and try to enhance your website’s trustworthiness. And don’t forget to test everything you do!
Need a helping hand? Be sure to check out our ecommerce SEO training course. Learn what ecommerce SEO entails, how to optimize your site and boost your online presence. Want to get your products ranking in the shopping search results? We’ll tell you how. Start your free trial lesson today! Full access to Yoast SEO academy is included in Yoast SEO Premium.
Webinar: Get prepared for Black Friday!
Especially during the holiday season, you want people to land on your website and easily buy your products! Did you know that you can start preparing as early as 45 days in advance? That’s right! The better you plan, the better your website will perform, and the more money you’ll make.
We want to help everyone who owns an online shop and share important things you can do to prepare for the year’s biggest sale events. That’s why we are organizing a webinar on October 4th: “Is your SEO ready for Black Friday?”. Register now!
Check out our overview of product page must-haves
To help you stay on top of your product pages, we created a PDF that you can use to optimize your product pages whenever you have time. Most of what’s discussed in this blog post can be found in the PDF, plus more tips! Just click on the image to go to the PDF and download it.
