adminThe eCommerce sector witnessed steady growth in the past few years. However, the pandemic brought the biggest transformation in the world of online marketing. As more and more people are turning to search engines for local searches, SEO has become the most prominent feature in every marketing campaign. Whether it’s a small local store or a multi-national business, you can’t outperform your competitors without a solid SEO marketing strategy. For people switching to the eCommerce industry, the biggest dilemma is “choosing between Shopify SEO and WooCommerce SEO”. Both platforms come with their share of pros and cons.
Well, there is no cut-and-dry answer to this. It depends! Each one offers you a robust platform to handle the sale of products and services flawlessly. Shopify has an extensive range of features that can boost your store’s SEO performance. WooCommerce, on the other hand, comes packed with advanced blogging features that improve your website visibility.
In this post, we have listed the features of Shopify and WooCommerce. If you are having difficulty deciding which platform to choose for your eCommerce store, this post is for you. Let’s see which among WooCommerce and Shopify is good for your website SEO.
Shopify Vs. Woocommerce — Loading Speed and Uptime
Web developers and owners know the importance of a speedy website in today’s competitive business world. You can’t rank a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. A slow-loading website doesn’t only result in a poor user experience, but it can affect your website’s ranking in the search engines negatively. Google prioritizes user experience over everything. In general, Google doesn’t reveal the factors part of its ranking algorithm. But, it has explicitly mentioned the website speed as a crucial element in SERP ranking.
If you want to keep your website ranking stable in the search engine, you need to focus on your site’s loading speed. Websites that load faster are marked as credible by Google bots. A few crucial factors that affect your site’s speed are the images, videos, multimedia content, and your hosting company. The loading speed can also fluctuate regularly. Shopify clearly has the advantage here. eCommerce stores on Shopify load faster than any other content management system. The results are even better for users with an upper grade of Shopify edition.
Shopify has a set of special apps that enable you to improve the performance of your eCommerce store. For example, ShopStatus allows you to check and improve your store performance on your own. If you have a dedicated hosting plan on Shopify, you can ensure better uptime and a fast loading speed.
eCommerce stores on WooCommerce need external support from third-party hosting service providers to improve uptime. Since it runs on a self-hosted server, stores on WooCommerce do not load as fast as the same on Shopify. Things get even more challenging for those who own a large site that collects hundreds of orders every day. Fortunately, you can improve your uptime and speed by switching to a better hosting plan. A customized theme for WooCommerce can also help with speed.
Shopify Vs. WooCommerce — Security and Encryption
SSL certificate has become a necessity for all types and sizes of eCommerce stores. It acts as proof of your transparency and authentication. An SSL certificate supports an encrypted connection, allowing safe data transfer. Users’ security is important for search engine ranking and for your customers’ safety. Nobody would like to share confidential details with you if your eCommerce store is not secure.
Fortunately, both Shopify and WooCommerce offer authentication features and SSL encryption. But, they do it differently. Shopify offers an SSL certificate to its store owners once they have successfully added their custom domain. In addition, Shopify offers the best encryption features. The certificate is activated for your store automatically, and users who visit your website’s original URL are redirected to the encrypted version so that they can enjoy seamless and transparent transactions.
Setting up SSL encryption on a WooCommerce is a little tricky. If you are using a self-hosted plan, you may have to pay an SSL certificate provider to encrypt your eCommerce store with an SSL certificate. If you don’t have a budget for getting SSL from a reputable encryption service provider, you can explore the free or affordable options offered by WooCommerce. The only downside is that the free SSL certificate doesn’t offer as many benefits as a reputable SSL company. While it may complete website authentication, these certificates do a little in making your eCommerce appear as a trusted platform. Another problem with WooCommerce is that you need to update your URL once you are done with the installation of an SSL certificate. This means a lot of work for the WooCommerce store owner.
Read Also:- Shopify SEO 2022: The Guide to Optimizing your Shopify Store
Shopify Vs. WooCommerce — 301 Redirects
301 redirects are used for redirecting your website visitors from one page to another. If you deleted a page and made another similar one, you could redirect your visitors to a new page using a 301 redirect. Landing on an invalid or a deleted page results in a poor user experience, which is why eCommerce store owners implement a 301 redirect after changing the product URL. Shopify allows its users to implement a redirect in simple steps. Note that the redirect works only when you implement it on a broken URL page and not the web pages that still load without any error.
WooCommerce attempts to redirect pages with a changed URL automatically. That doesn’t work for the complex pages, though. So, you must install the right WordPress plugin to implement 301 redirects for all pages with a changed URL. You can find a couple of plugins that allow you to implement redirects effortlessly. WooCommerce has a better and smoother process for implementing redirecting. All you need to do is find a redirect plugin from the WordPress plugin library and activate it. You can also use the .htaccess file for implementing a redirect.
Shopify Vs. WooCommerce — Blogging
Google likes websites that publish high-quality and informative content that offers value to readers. Blogging doesn’t only allow you to share informative and engaging blog posts with your website visitors, but it helps you generate backlinks. Shopify has a built-in blogging platform, which is part of its theme. You can create and publish blogs regularly on your Shopify store to attract organic traffic and backlinks from high-authority websites. You could also customize your blog by changing its Liquid Code. Shopify App Store has quite a few apps designed to improve your blog theme’s functionality and appearance.
WordPress facilitates the best blogging options for WooCommerce store owners. You get an option to add a post from the WordPress dashboard. Nothing beats WordPress when it comes to blogging. The CMS has a great variety of features that make blogging easier for beginners. Plus, it has plugins that allow you to optimize your blog for search engine ranking. These functions come in handy when you need to boost your WooCommerce store ranking. In addition, WordPress offers various themes for bloggers. You can use the free themes or buy paid ones.
Shopify Vs. WooCommerce — Apps and Plugins
Both WooCommerce and Shopify offer a set of apps and plugins that can boost your site’s ranking and improve your SEO performance.
These apps of Shopify can make a great impact on your site’s SEO and overall performance.
- Plugin SEO
- SEO doctor
- SEO image optimizer
WordPress, on the other hand, has dozens of plugins that can be used to improve your website’s functionality. These aren’t specifically designed for WooCommerce but are compatible with all websites powered by WordPress. Activating these plugins for your WooCommerce store can bring a major transformation in your website ranking and performance.
For instance, Yoast SEO can help you improve your on-site SEO. It comes with a range of features that show whether your blog or a product page is optimized for SERP ranking. From keyword placement to title and Meta tags, Yoast SEO is an all-in-one plugin for search engine optimization. WP Smushit is another great plugin for image optimization. It increases your site’s loading speed by optimizing the images.
Shopify Vs. WooCommerce — Ease of Use
Not everyone is tech-savvy. If you don’t know the basic coding or how eCommerce stores operate, you need a platform that’s easy to use and has the best customization options. Shopify has several built-in tools and apps that make SEO easier for store owners. The apps offer nearly all the SEO functions that an eCommerce store needs to thrive in the tough competition. Shopify has launched SEO apps that can be installed from Shopify App Store.
WooCommerce wins the battle when it comes to ease of use and SEO features. You must have seen the on-page SEO optimization tools that a WordPress website has to offer. They allow you to edit Meta tags, add alt text to images, and optimize product pages for SEO ranking.
WooCommerce and Shopify offer different advantages to store owners. Understand your requirements and set up your store on a platform that fits your preference and budget.
Add comment