 This is SEO for WooCommerce in 1993, sorry, 2023. Oh my goodness. I'm lost. I'm tired. My name is Steritza Goloshin and I work in Houston, Texas. I'm a software engineer and everything in between is about me a little bit. You can find me on WordPress.org or send me an email or find me on my LinkedIn account. Well, this presentation will be on my LinkedIn account, too, within a few days. Starting with basics. What is SEO? And when we talk about SEO, we are talking about natural, organic and earned results. So people like to say SEO is unpredictable all the time. Somebody on the other side of the bridge can cut your ropes. It might be Google before it was mad cuts. And you don't know what to expect with SEO. What you can expect with SEO. You have a website and this is the part of internet. Everything is connected. All websites are lights in the darkness. And your website is somewhere here in the darkness needs links to give lights. And SEO will give you that if you have good backlinks. If Google bots find you, you will start your website with a light. This is illustration. When we start the website, we have that first picture, nothing happened. We are somewhere in limbo. And after two weeks or four weeks, when you do your SEO, you can see some results that is something is moving. You are not beyond 38th page of Google. You might be on the 10th page or let's say 23rd page. It's funny, but it starts. SEO is important. So don't be dinosaur. Do that. Okay. We will talk about SEO activities. In the beginning it was on-page SEO, off-page SEO. Later they added local SEO. I will use on-page SEO and divide into two activities, technical SEO and content. You can find different definitions of SEO and say SEO has seven parts, eight parts, 11 parts. And they depend on people who write articles or who is talking about SEO. Okay. Technical SEO activity has factors. Factors are hosting, responsiveness, website speed and website structure. See that number two and number three. I changed names. You will see why I changed names later. Let's go with the hosting. We are talking about WooCommerce websites and if you are starting with your WooCommerce website, you can use shared costing. Don't pay too much, but don't be kind of people that don't want to spend a lot of money. What you have to check. You have to check if it is easy to upgrade your hosting and search for reviews. Because maybe something is written on a website and it's not exactly what they offer. Look what if this hosting is easy to upgrade. If you have bigger website or if you have your shop that is brick and mortar shop and you want to move your business to internet, it is good to have VPS and not a shared server and reliable hosting that is 99.99% up. Which is very good for shops. Well, good hosting speed if you can find WordPress optimized, WooCommerce optimized and also check hosting history and reviews. We have a lot of hosting people there. They have sponsors. You can check them. Okay, what is important also is SSL certificate. Why we have this? Because SSL is SEO ranking factor since 2014. And it is very important for WooCommerce websites because we have different types of SSL. If you are using SSL for ordinary website, you can take the main validated SSL and say, okay, that is good. I don't need something better. But if you are doing WooCommerce, you have to buy something like organization validation, OV, SSL certificate. Why it is important that that certificate guarantee that you have your company. Your company is not somebody... I found that... Well, it was a long time before. It was, I think, 2010 when Guy registered company on crossroads. I have company and put in a Google say, this is my company on a crossroads. So, this certificate valid that your company is valid. Also, if you are having some more expensive products or if you want to assure your clients that you are a good company, you can use EV extended validation certificate. Difference between OV or EV is about, I think, $100. $150 to $150 average. And the first one you can get free or you can get for $35 to $50. Okay. In the beginning it was responsive website. And we have to build the website. We have to build our websites to have a good view on desktop, computers, laptop computers, tablets, and then mobiles. Now we have mobile first factor. Why? Because traffic from smartphones are more than 50% total. So Google said, from now on we will watch only mobile phones and our bots will check your websites, how it looks on mobile phones. So go to mobile first. How it looks. It's different from desktop. It's vertical and you cannot incorporate all things like you did on ordinary desktop stuff. And so you have to think a little different. Difference between mobile view, desktop view. This is desktop section. When user starts first it's over the fold. And they can see that hero section. On mobile view you can see also hero section first. And usually on desktop views we have sliders. Anybody is using sliders? Yeah. No more. Okay. And on mobile view we are not using sliders. We are using only single pictures. Well, I don't like this kind of view because if I have a slider on a desktop I would like to have a slider on a mobile view. Also difference is between menus because menu is on a mobile phone different from the desktop. Also some different stuffs. How mobile views are different. You cannot hover like you can hover with mouse on a desktop. And so you must have something like buttons and it's looking much, much better on a mobile phone. You can have pop-up windows also on a mobile phone. I like that examples because we can see clearly how to make categories, how to design view for categories, for group of products, how you can design a page for a product. You can test your website with Chrome browser, which is the most common browser. You can have on iPhones, you can have on Android phones, on PCs and on Macs. So use first Chrome browser and later you can check this mobile with mobile phones. I like to check with both phones with Android and with iPhone because I found a lot of times I have issues with iPhone or I have issue with Android phone. Also you can go to search console, use that URL and check with Google how Google see your page. Google will tell you is it good, not good, what you have to change. Website speed factor. People like to afraid users of websites. They say if your page is loading more than three seconds you will lose your customers. So you are trying to do something with your website and how much you will invest in your speed. Will you try to do something like that? How do you invest more in your speed? Or you will ask another question. How many users you can afford to lose? Well you will lose users, you will lose customers but you can go with that question. I can afford to lose 10%, 20% customers and I will not try to speed up my website. Well you will speed up your website. In the beginning it was GT metrics with speed analysis and we have marks from A, B, C, D, E, F. I think they went to F. And Google has different ideas, Google will do that and this is real result. I found it, zero. That was very funny. And Google has ideas how to measure the speed of the website but later Google changed it and said okay let's do something called web vitals because we have to show some things on the website, some speeds, websites that ordinary user can understand. And Google made a special group from these web vitals, core web vitals and these core web vitals are introduced in 2020 and are now ranking factors since summer 2021. Those are three factors and we will see what each factor means. First factor is first input delay. Well they say when user first interacts with a page and to the time when the browser is actually able to respond to that interaction. What that means? If your website is slow that first input delay is more than 300 milliseconds, blame hosting. Marco, do you agree? No, no, don't blame hosting. First try to find your errors. There's something hidden here that is when they click on a link, tap the button, or use a custom JavaScript powered control. JavaScript can slow down your website and your first input delay might be one second. Let's say it might be five seconds because of some custom JavaScript. So don't blame hostings. And also you have how Google measured that core web vitals thing. Okay, second factor is largest contentful paint. Okay, what we have here? This is image or text block on your page, but not the whole page. It's within the viewport. This is up the fold. It's not below the fold, that part. And what is not good relative when the page is starting loading, relative to when the page first started loading. So what we have? First input delay plus largest contentful paint. And that is largest contentful paint. If you have slow hosting, then you will fail this section. It is tricky to say what is largest contentful paint, but you can go to Google Chrome. And I think there's a fifth option there when you click on inspect. And it's like a speed. I saw something like a speed. I cannot remember right now what it is. And if your largest contentful paint is loaded after four seconds, that is poor. That is not good. If it is under 2.5 seconds, that is good. Trick might be that your largest contentful paint will be loaded last. Everything is loaded and then largest contentful paint. And you will fail this part of test. If you put largest contentful paint on the front, you can be successful. This is a very good trick. And we have cumulative layout shift. It's from Google picture. When you load on your mobile phone something and try to scroll, then you have this click button and you try to scroll and click on your button and go to the other page. This is not good. Also it's not good when you change font names and font is going up and down. Pictures also. Well, it is relatively easy to do that, but you have to do with the whole page. You have to check how whole page is doing. Also when you put images, you have to check if these images are the size, right size. If they are not the right size, they can change the size and then shift your text up or down. So also a tricky thing. Well, if you want to accelerate your web pages, you can use AMP. Google has that framework. Build that framework. You can do if you're a good developer, you can use that. Or you can use WordPress plugin. This is official WordPress plugin. It works in a standard mode. So only AMP is served. Transitional mode. We have two page versions. If we are on desktop, it's non-AMP version. If we are on a mobile phone, it's AMP version. Also there's a reader mode. That's the thing for developers. You can have two teams. AMP and non-AMP teams. We had that in the beginning of mobile phones. Two different teams. Why do you want to use AMP? AMP is because pages are faster and latency is about 10 times less. And of course, Google say it's better page experience and higher user engagement also. But what is not good if you use AMP? Your components must... You have to use compatible components for your web pages. And also you have to use compatible plugins and teams. If you use standard WordPress teams, they are AMP-compatibles. I think the last one, 22, 23, is compatible. Additional work is involved. So if you have a good developer, it will be good to try to use that framework. And Bill Gates said, if you cannot achieve all these requirements from Google, at least make it looks good. So don't forget user experience factor. I like that picture because it shows how to use things on WooCommerce, how to make categories, how to do that on mobile phones. Website structure. When you're making website structure, you have rules. So rules are keep it simple and accessible within three to four clicks. Remember that. I will explain what are those three to four clicks. And you can use ceiling, siloing, sorry, redeem, and do not index all your pages, which is very important. Simple page structure, products, categories, subcategories, products. But your website don't look like this often. It might look like this. And it's very good structure. But if you add blog and then other things that explain your products, what are you doing with products, you have to do that. That you have different website structure and you have to restructure that. Let's talk a little bit about URLs. You know that. Don't use that URLs. That is not human readable. You can use something like weight loss, bikini fit, and cheap hotels in Houston. Of course, something, some dynamic URLs. Where you can do that. You can do on a settings and put post name. It's easy. Also, when you're doing with rule commerce, you can do in your products extended. Extended part of these settings is you can use only product slug or you can add category slug. If you like, you can use something like a custom. Every product will have custom URL, which is okay. If you have 20 products, that is good. If you have 100 products, you will make a mistake. So you have a lot of options in rule commerce to do that. Why do you want to shorten this URL? And why do you want to make this URL good for users? Theoretically, you can put 2000. Recommended is 82. 100 characters, but Google shows only 78 to 74 characters. You will see later something much more difficult. Do you want to use URL shorteners for your products? Any idea? Do you use that? URL shorteners are not good from SEO aspect because this is JavaScript. I have my product. My product is T-shirts. T-shirt shop slash white T-shirt. Okay. And this URL is showing me something else. If I want to link, have a link from somebody else, it will show me that link or it will show that URL shortener, which is not good. Landing pages. Do you know you have software for building landing pages? I had that issue in my... Well, I'm calling that issue. In my previous company, they used software. That is like a website builder, and then they made horrific landing pages. Also, these landing pages don't have URL from your website. And when you want to link to them, where is just to the website? So you don't have it. So I don't like that. And I don't recommend that because of SEO aspects. How to organize your products? Of course, use categories. If you have brands, sort them with brands, then if you have your products that are not on your stock anymore, try to do something with that page. You can put permanent redirection, or if it is temporary, let's say COVID start again, and then we will break this supply chain, and we cannot obtain products from, let's say, China, and we will put temporary. Okay, it will come maybe later. So when you want to organize your products and say, I'm selling t-shirts, and I have t-shirts of different colors, yellow, green, blue, orange, whatever, and you have to describe these products. What will you say? This is t-shirt sizes from S to XXL color debt, and every different page will have this description. It will be duplicate content on your website. Google won't like this. So you can use one page and say, this is canonical and other no index, or you don't need to say don't index, you can index but put that is canonical, this page is canonical, main, and those pages, the other pages are showing canonical to that page, to that first page. Oh, I like that. When Google read your page, Google bought, and then find tabs. Tabs, first tab is shown. The other tabs are not displayed with Google. So if you write something tab 1, 2, 3, 4, your first tab will be shown and all these later content will be hidden for Google. So what will you use instead of tabs? Columns. Oh, silo. First part, how to make groups. This is three jars, put different colors of these balls in different jars, and then you have groups. But silo can be shown as these groups put in one jar. So you can interconnect everything inside the jar. If you have different jars, you cannot do that. You cannot interconnect this ball with this ball. You have to go outside, go inside, and then connect, which is very, very difficult. These connections are much better. How to build silo structure. So it's easy. Four steps. Determine product structure, choose, plan, and implement. Simple, isn't it? This is a picture. I didn't know that I would go to Alabama. So it's very interesting. When you make silo for hotels, it might be simple and say, okay, we have similar number of hotels everywhere, and then we can put these hotels. And it's like the first picture, like groups, subgroups, and siloing is much, much better defined if you are looking at the books. Or if you're going to bookstore. And for example, you are trying to find books similar to, let's say, Stephen King missed book. There's something like a horror. You're starting with that. I read Stephen King's book. I like that genre. So I'm going to horror. And usually libraries and bookshops has the best siloing techniques to do that, like references. Okay. Let's see that blueprint. We have index page, and it's the main page. It's like index.html or PHP. And then we have, it's like our store. Like the doors. You are entering the store. Going to hallway pages. And you have on each hallway different type of clothes. Then you have doorways in that halls. And this is about seasons and occasions. You can group like that. Then you can have groups pages when you enter this door. And then you have shelves. And you can see all these products on the shelves. And the last is your money page. This is your product page when you have different products. What we said with the links when somebody arrived to your website, only three to four steps. People usually say, okay, you have five levels. How? Because your index page, your home page is not your main page. You have to think what will be your page where users will come. Your first page where users will come. They can do, they can go to these groups or doorways. And you are within two or three pages in the depth. Okay. Content factors. I will explain using Yoast plugin. Because Yoast is the most popular. How Yoast is showing if your content is good. Yoast has semaphores. If something is good, it's green. If something is not that good, it's amber or yellow. Or red if you have to work more on that content. Okay. First thing what you have to check is your meta description. This is meta description on Google. See, it might, this might not be good meta description. This website might not have that meta description. And what Google recommend? 155 characters. Semrush said 160 and mobile 120 characters. And add something like pixels with any pixels. And it said 920 pixels. You have to be careful if you use letters M a lot. Yoast will be wider. And then it's very, it might be very, very difficult to determine that meta description. But Yoast have that semaphore for that. You will see green is good. And then red is not good when you have more than 155 characters. Yoast will tell you don't go over. What you must have on your page is call to action. Well, sorry, on that meta description, you must have call to action. Just do something, click on this, or this is the product you can buy here. Also, you have to include your focus keyword. This is my product, my t-shirt, buy that t-shirt. And we have to be careful and make unique meta descriptions. No, not to duplicate. Also, Yoast will show you that. What is a good practice? A good practice is to check keyword density. We have this before, if we have main keyword, how percent, how much percent is main keyword? It was five percent. And also this focus keyword must be on the first paragraph, on subheadings, URL, H1 tag, and also in meta tags. But what you have to check also, text length, I found on a WooCommerce website, people don't write enough on these product pages. And those product pages are landing pages, or groups are landing pages. So if you want pages to be on a good position, you must be careful with your text length. Writing long sentences. I remember in school, they told us if somebody is a good writer, he's writing long sentences. And you have to be careful. When you start reading that sentence and when you go to the end, you forgot what writer said at the beginning. So be careful. It's not easy to write short sentences. I learned that because I'm not native English speaker, and I like to do that because of sequence of tenses. It's good. So 25% maximum long sentences. And don't write too long. Avoid passive voice. That is very good because passive voice cannot explain you something. This product can be bought in our web shop. Good. But customer can buy this product in our web shop. I think it's much better. Sound much better. English speaker, is it good? You don't like it? Okay. Transition words. 30% minimum. Transition words are like glue for your sentences. When somebody is trying to read and you are using these transition words, you can lure your customer to read the next sentence. Please read the next sentence. These transition words are saying please read the next sentence. And it's good to use this as minimum in 30%. I tried to make this text easy to read. And not to bore your user. When we talk about reading, how reading is easy, the United States Army has that flash reading score a long time ago. And you have to use that. You can find it in Wikipedia definition, how it's using, but your flash reading score should be between 60 and 80. This is 7th grade, 7th or 8th grade. Which is good for a first store? When you finish everything, you have all greens. Is it good? Yeah, Photoshop. It's the master. Who's the king? Okay, no. Who said content? Content is king. So the most important thing on your website, also on your WooCommerce website is content. Okay, we finished that first part. This is on page SEO. We talk about technical SEO, we talk about content. And we are on the first step. I like that picture. Still have Google Plus. But this is the first level. You have to do all these things to build a successful website. If you want to see this, this is on page SEO. The part that is visible. Everything else is off page SEO. Links, other things. What is social media? Okay, I put Bill Gates, so I have to put Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs said that you cannot see when you start something. You cannot see the end and connect the dots. When you return back and say, okay, I did SEO and these dots will be connected. Very good, very seamlessly. Thank you. That's it. Do you want explanation? I had on my first presentation, I had this picture and they asked me, oh, what that means? You know that game, Age of Empires? And this is robot, rover, Mars rover. Sometimes when you're doing SEO, you think you're sending data to Mars rover. It's a lot of time to get this data to the rover. And Martians are playing with you like they're on Mars. And you cannot see. You can see when rover is, well, half destroyed. That is SEO. That is SEO. That is dots connected. When you know, when you do something, these dots will be connected like this. If you are a good professional, questions and I will give answers. We have time for one question because we're going to be closing the box here. I'm going to ask a question about the Google PageSpeed. Yes. Google PageSpeed for three metrics that you said you mentioned. What is the impact of lazy load, lazy loading on those scoring? Have you experimented? Lazy loading, when you lazy load your pictures, it's below the fold. Everything is below the fold. It's for a largest content will paint. It's not, well, it has no influence. Unless you are putting this largest content will paint somewhere on the, well, lazy loading your hero picture. That will be very, very bad to do. For cumulative layout shift, it might have problem. When you are, when you are doing that, you have to reserve space for the picture. Say my picture is 1,000 by 600. That's it. This is reserved space. And, and it will show everything blank space and then it will show pictures and you, you don't have shifts. So overall, would you recommend lazy load or not? I'm sorry? Would you recommend using lazy load at all? Yes. Yeah. Yes. But, but reserve reserve that part for the picture. Let's say picture will be that size. Simple. Thank you so much.