The Ultimate SEO Checklist for WooCommerce Stores in 2025
Search engine optimization isn’t a box you check once and forget. It’s a habit, a rhythm, a continuous loop of improvement. And in 2025, WooCommerce store owners who treat SEO like a one-time setup are being outranked by competitors who treat it like a core part of their business.
If you’re running a WooCommerce store, or managing one for a client, this post is your practical, battle-tested SEO checklist for the year ahead. We’ve mixed in quick wins with deeper technical strategies that separate the pros from the hobbyists. If you're ready to get serious—or just tired of duct-taping plugin settings and hoping it works—read on.
We’ll also share how our team at MMDB Solutions helps eCommerce businesses implement and maintain SEO strategies that actually move the needle.
The Quick Wins: SEO Basics You Can’t Skip
Let’s start with the essentials. These aren’t flashy, but they still account for the bulk of SEO success.
1. Set Your Permalinks (and Don’t Change Them Later)
WooCommerce defaults to clean URLs, but we still see stores using query strings like ?product_id=123. Go to Settings → Permalinks and set the product URL structure to use /product/%product%.
Warning: changing permalinks later can break indexed pages and tank your traffic. If you must, use proper 301 redirects.
2. Write Unique Meta Titles and Descriptions
Your product’s meta title should match what someone would actually search. Skip fluff. Focus on clarity.
One of our clients tripled their click-through rate just by rewriting product meta titles from “Ultra Clean 3000” to “Commercial Floor Scrubber – Heavy Duty – 22” Pad – Ultra Clean 3000.”
3. Add Alt Text to Every Product Image
Alt text helps Google understand what the image is about. Keep it descriptive:
Bad: image1.jpg
Good: eco-friendly disposable paper towel roll – 6 pack
4. Fix Broken Links and 404s
Use a plugin like Redirection or Broken Link Checker. We ran this on a client’s site recently and found 47 broken links from discontinued SKUs. Cleaning that up gave them a measurable bump in crawl rate.
5. Submit a Google Search Console Sitemap
If your store isn’t in Google Search Console, you’re flying blind.
Use a plugin like Rank Math or Yoast to generate and submit your XML sitemap. Then, fix the warnings and errors that come back.
Intermediate Fixes: Where Most Stores Stop
These are still achievable without a developer, but they take more effort and attention.
6. Improve Site Speed and Core Web Vitals
Google cares about load time. Customers care even more.
On one WooCommerce site we inherited, homepage load time dropped from 7.4s to 2.3s after we removed four unnecessary sliders and lazy-loaded product images. The bounce rate dropped almost immediately.
Use PageSpeed Insights or GTmetrix to find your slow spots. Then:
Compress images (with Smush or Imagify)
Use a fast theme (we prefer GeneratePress or Blocksy)
Implement full-page caching (e.g. WP Rocket or LiteSpeed Cache)
7. Implement Schema Markup
WooCommerce adds some schema by default, but it’s incomplete. Products without proper structured data may not get star ratings or price info in search results.
Use a plugin like Schema & Structured Data for WP or ask a developer to customize schema output for bundled or variable products.
Advanced SEO: Custom Development, Plugins, and Strategy
Here’s where most stores struggle, and where our development team at MMDB Solutions steps in.
8. Dynamic Meta Titles for Product Variations
WooCommerce doesn’t handle meta data well for variations. If you have a shirt in 6 colors and 4 sizes, only the base product gets indexed. The rest? Invisible.
We’ve built custom logic that dynamically appends variation attributes into meta titles and descriptions, and exposes each variation to Google via unique canonical-tagged URLs. It’s not something off-the-shelf plugins can do cleanly.
9. Category Page Content That Scales
Google wants to see real, unique content on category pages. But if you’ve got 200 categories, manually writing long-form content isn’t realistic.
We use an internal tool to generate and review SEO content for categories based on live product data, search trends, and competitor analysis. In one client case, adding 250 words of original content to 12 top categories led to a 22% lift in organic traffic over 60 days.
10. Intelligent Canonical Tag Enforcement
Out of the box, WooCommerce doesn’t always apply canonical tags correctly to paginated, filtered, or search-result URLs. We’ve seen large sites accidentally cannibalize their own rankings because of this.
We typically enforce custom canonical logic through a plugin layer that inspects request context, strips irrelevant parameters, and ensures only key indexable pages are surfaced. This protects SEO equity and simplifies crawl paths.
11. Internal Linking Automation
WooCommerce doesn’t suggest related products in a way that improves SEO. We’ve helped clients build custom internal link modules that insert contextual links to related products and categories directly into product descriptions, boosting crawlability and authority flow.
When Plugins Aren’t Enough
Plugins can get you 80% of the way there. But if your site has hundreds or thousands of SKUs, complex variations, or highly customized layouts, you’ll hit a wall.
That’s when we recommend investing in custom development, plugin customization, or a complete SEO audit from a WooCommerce-focused team.
We’ve helped stores recover from traffic drops, clean up years of legacy SEO issues, and build systems that scale—from pricing schema for multi-distributor sites to automated long-form category pages.
If your store needs more than a plugin patch, reach out to us here. We’d love to learn about your goals and see where we can help.
Final Thought
SEO isn’t about chasing algorithms. It’s about building a site that’s worth finding.
In 2025, the best WooCommerce stores are focusing on speed, clarity, and smart architecture. Whether you’re just cleaning up the basics or need a full SEO rebuild, the right steps now will set you up for long-term growth.
If you’re not sure where to start, or if your current team is too slow to get you where you need to go, we’d be happy to take a look.