Ecommerce on website impact local seo

[Pam Weber]

One of our local service provider clients said that "someone else" told them that having woocommerce on their website was negatively impacting their local seo. We have not run into that before. Will moving it to a separate domain really help?

 

[djbaxter]

I highly doubt that but I'll watch this thread for the Local Experts' answers.

Is it a totally online business with an SAB? or is it also a local business with a listed address?

 

[Pam Weber]

It's a local service roof and gutter cleaner with several locations that also sells some products online. The products are really not a part of his core business. He does that as a convenience for gutter related products.

 

[djbaxter]

Let's wait for the experts but I can't see the claim about woocommerce as being accurate.

 

[Yan Gilbert]

There are at least two ways Woocommerce (WC) may be impacting SEO.

First is that it may be rewriting page titles automatically for the product pages so I would check to see what it is outputting for those.

Second is that the WC scripts may be slowing down the site speed which can have a negative impact on rankings. I am not familiar with how WC works code wise, and it may be different depending on the template used, but if it is adding code to every page of the site then maybe some of it can be cleaned up and still have everything function normally. There are ways to disable the WC code (or any plugin code) from loading on certain pages that don't need it which will speed up those pages.

 

[Justin Mosebach]

There are ways to disable the WC code (or any plugin code) from loading on certain pages that don't need it which will speed up those pages.

Any tips on how to do this for us non-developers?

 

[Yan Gilbert]

I use this plugin: Asset CleanUp: Page Speed Booster
but there are a couple of similar ones.

Basically at the bottom of the page while in the editor it will show you all the scripts/css being loaded for the page. You are able to turn them off one at time. You still have to have an idea of what you are doing, and test to make sure things are still working properly on the front end.

After a while you get familiar with certain plugin thoughs. For example, Contact Form 7 loads its stuff for every page on a site once installed even if there is no contact form embedded on a page. You can turn that off per page. Maybe Woocommerce does the same thing. I've seen templates with integrated WC however and so I would be more careful when preventing scripts from loading.

 

[Justin Mosebach]

Whoa, that's awesome! Thanks for sharing @Yan Gilbert !

 

[CraigJMount]

@Yan Gilbert I'd add I've seen scenarios where a local business w/ eCommerce had faceted navigation which caused an unbounded amount of duplicate content.

In regards to a solution, I'd say that no matter the scenario mentioned (or one we might have missed), there is likely not a need to move the eCommerce section of the website. Rather, fixing the problems on the current domain is likely more practical/cost-effective.

 

[CameronMcGrath]

Thanks for the information.

 

[JSammon512]

One of our local service provider clients said that "someone else" told them that having woocommerce on their website was negatively impacting their local seo. We have not run into that before. Will moving it to a separate domain really help?

Hi Pam! In my experience, the answer would be yes for a few reasons (some already mentioned by excellent previous replies). Here’s what I’ve seen with a few sites that run WC and how that’s impacted website health:

1. WC will slow down your overall site load time. Plug-ins may help speed this up but pivoting to a subdomain and even another platform like Shopify are better moves.

2. There are a ton of plugins that come with WC that will increase the amount of future troubleshooting updating them and increase risk of malware issues (simply by having more plugins)

I’d only consider keeping it if you have a large chunk of sales from e-commerce coming from outside the region.

I hope that helps!