WooCommerce SEO, included.

SEO for online stores is different

A blog post competes for attention with other articles. A product page competes with every other shop selling the same thing, plus marketplaces, comparison sites and the shopping results search engines show above ordinary links. To compete there, a product page needs more than a good title. It needs to tell search engines exactly what the product is, what it costs, whether it’s in stock, how it ships and what other shoppers think of it, in a form they can read without guessing.

WooCommerce gives you a solid store. Rilea SEO adds the SEO layer on top: complete product structured data, the product identifiers search engines use to match listings, sensible handling of hidden products, and the same content analysis, titles and social tags you use for the rest of your site. All of it is free.

What’s in Rilea SEO’s Product schema

When Rilea SEO detects WooCommerce, every product page gets Product schema as part of the page’s schema graph. It’s built from the product data you already enter in WooCommerce, plus a few extra fields Rilea SEO adds:

• Name, description and images, taken from the product
• SKU, from WooCommerce’s inventory settings
• Brand, from Rilea SEO’s brand field
• GTIN and MPN, from Rilea SEO’s identifier fields
• Offers, with price, currency and availability, including one offer per variation for variable products
• Reviews and ratings, from your WooCommerce product reviews
• Shipping details, from the shipping country and rate in Rilea SEO’s WooCommerce settings
• Return policy, from the return window in the same settings

Because everything comes from your existing product data, keeping your products up to date keeps the schema up to date. There’s nothing to maintain separately.

Product identifiers explained

Identifiers let search engines recognise that the product on your page is the same item sold elsewhere, which helps them show it for the right searches and in the right shopping results. Rilea SEO adds three fields to every product.

GTIN. The Global Trade Item Number is the number behind a product’s barcode. Depending on the product and region, it’s also known as a UPC, EAN, JAN or ISBN, and it’s 8, 12, 13 or 14 digits long. If your product has a barcode from the manufacturer, this is the number to use.

MPN. The Manufacturer Part Number is the manufacturer’s own code for the product. It’s useful for products without a GTIN, such as some spare parts and components.

Brand. The brand or manufacturer name. For your own products, it’s your brand.

If you make your own products and they don’t have barcodes, leave the GTIN empty rather than inventing one. A brand and a clear product name are enough for many handmade and custom products.

Variable products

A variable product, such as a T-shirt in several sizes and colours, has one product page but many variations, each potentially with its own price, stock level and identifier. Rilea SEO outputs an offer for each variation, so search engines can see the full range of prices and which options are in stock.

Shipping and returns

Search engines increasingly show shipping costs and return policies in shopping results, and they read them from structured data. In Rilea SEO, go to Settings, then WooCommerce, and add your shipping country and flat shipping rate, which add shipping details to every product’s offers, and your return window in days, which adds a return policy. If your shipping is more complex than a flat rate, use the closest representative rate and keep your shipping page accurate.

Hidden products

WooCommerce lets you hide products from your shop and search, for example for private products or items you sell only through a direct link. Rilea SEO sets hidden products to noindex automatically, so they don’t appear in search results by accident.

Titles, descriptions and content

Product pages use the same tools as the rest of your site:

• Title templates for the product post type, so every product gets a consistent title even if nobody writes one by hand. A pattern such as product name, a separator and your store name works well for most stores.
• Content analysis with a focus keyphrase, related keyphrases and synonyms. Use the phrase shoppers actually type, such as “linen duvet cover king size”.
• Readability analysis, which helps keep product descriptions clear and scannable.
• Social tags, so products look right when shared, with Open Graph product tags included.

Product categories and tags get their own SEO titles, descriptions and robots settings too. Category pages often rank for broader searches than individual products, so it’s worth writing a short, useful introduction for each main category.

Product images

Product images matter for shoppers and for image search. Rilea SEO’s image SEO settings can set alt text and titles from file names when you upload, and fill in missing alt attributes on output from templates. Templates are a safety net, though. For your most important products, write alt text that describes what the image shows, including the product name and any variant, such as colour.

Common store SEO problems

Copied manufacturer descriptions

Many stores use the description supplied by the manufacturer, which means hundreds of other shops have the same text. Search engines have little reason to rank yet another copy. Rewrite the descriptions for your most important products first, adding details that only you can offer, such as how the product fits, what customers ask about it, or how it compares with similar items.

Thin category pages

A category page with nothing but a grid of products gives search engines little to work with. A short introduction explaining what’s in the category and how to choose helps both shoppers and search.

Filtered and sorted URLs

Filters and sorting options can create many URLs showing the same products in different orders. Canonical tags tell search engines which version is the main one. Rilea SEO outputs canonical tags on every page, and you can set a custom canonical when you need to.

Out-of-stock products

When a product is temporarily out of stock, keep the page live. The schema shows it as out of stock, and the page keeps any rankings and links it has earned. When a product is discontinued for good, redirect it to the closest replacement or its category, or let it return a 410 if there’s nothing comparable.

Structured data and Google Merchant Center

Structured data on your product pages and a product feed in Google Merchant Center are two different things. Merchant Center feeds power Shopping ads and free product listings, while structured data helps search engines understand your pages directly. They work best together, and the details in both, such as price, availability and GTIN, should always match. Rilea SEO’s schema comes from the same WooCommerce data your feed usually uses, which helps keep them consistent.

Testing your product pages

After setting up, check a few products:

1. Run a simple product and a variable product through Google’s Rich Results Test, and check that the Product result has a price, availability and, where you’ve set them, a brand and GTIN.
2. Make sure there’s only one Product entry. If your theme also outputs product schema, turn one of them off.
3. In Google Search Console, check the Product snippets and Merchant listings reports once Google has crawled your store.

Compared with other plugins

Yoast sells WooCommerce SEO as a separate plan at $178.80 a year per site, which includes Yoast SEO Premium. Rank Math’s free version includes WooCommerce SEO features, and its PRO plan adds GTIN in product schema and more. In Rilea SEO, full product schema with GTIN, MPN, variations, reviews, shipping and returns is free.

Store SEO on Shopify

If you also run a Shopify store, Rilea SEO for Shopify adds similar product schema there, priced in the shopper’s currency, with GTIN taken from variant barcodes, review ratings from Shopify’s standard review fields, and shipping and return details from the app’s settings. It’s an early release and self-hosted, so it needs a developer to set up.

Setting up WooCommerce SEO, step by step

1. Install and activate Rilea SEO. It detects WooCommerce automatically.
2. Set product title templates. In Rilea SEO, then Settings, then Titles & Meta, set the title and description templates for products and product categories.
3. Set the default schema type for products. In the Schema tab, make sure products use the Product type.
4. Add shipping and returns. In the WooCommerce tab, add your shipping country, flat rate and return window.
5. Fill in identifiers. Open your best-selling products and add the brand, GTIN and MPN in the Rilea SEO panel. Work through the rest of the catalog over time, or use the bulk editor for titles and descriptions.
6. Check images. Turn on alt text from file names for new uploads, and write proper alt text for your key product images.
7. Test and submit. Test a few products in the Rich Results Test, then make sure your product sitemap is included in the sitemap you submit to Search Console.

A product page checklist

For each important product, check that:

• The SEO title includes the product name and the main way shoppers describe it.
• The meta description gives a reason to click, such as a key feature, the price range or free delivery.
• The description is your own, not a copy of the manufacturer’s text.
• There are several good images, each with descriptive alt text.
• The brand, GTIN or MPN are filled in where they exist.
• The price and stock status on the page match your Merchant Center feed.
• Reviews shown on the page are genuine reviews of this product.
• The product links to its category, and related guides or products link to it.
• There’s only one Product entry in the page’s structured data.

Seasonal and limited products

Stores that sell seasonal ranges or limited runs face a recurring choice when a product sells out for the season. If the product will come back next year, keep its page live, marked as out of stock, so it holds its rankings and is ready when stock returns. If it’s gone for good, redirect it to the closest current product or to its category. For seasonal collections that return every year, keep the same category URL each season rather than creating a new one, so the page builds up links and rankings over time instead of starting again.