Print on Demand: Improving SEO for WordPress

WordPress is one of the most popular platforms for creating websites. The open-source platform offers a host of powerful features that are perfect for creating print on demand websites, which can then be integrated seamlessly with the Pivotal Prints drop shipping fulfillment service via our free WooCommerce plugin.

In this edition of the Pivotal prints blog, we'll be sharing some top tips on how to enhance the search engine optimisation (SEO) process for your WordPress print on demand store to improve your visibility and search-engine ranking.

  • Visibility Settings. When building your WordPress site, you don't want it to be visible to search engines as anyone visiting shouldn't be seeing your work in progress. Go to the 'Reading' tab in WordPress dashboard settings and make sure that your site is visible. 
  • Permalinks. Permalinks are permanent URLs that link to specific pages on your website. These should clearly state where the link will take a visitor, for example www.­mywebsite.­co.­uk/­custom-printed-phone-cases. This not only enhances user experience but also page ranking as search engine algorithms read these links. You can change permalinks under the 'Permalinks' section of the settings menu in WordPress. Don't forget to save your changes! 
  • Categories & Tags. With these, you can group pages both specifically and in a broader context, improving SEO by allowing search engine algorithms to understand the content and structure of your site. Categories may be broad things like 'clothing' or 'gifts' while tags are more specific like 't-shirts' or 'wall art'. Visit the 'Writing' and 'Tags' menus in settings to change categories and tags respectively.
  • SEO Plugins. There are many thousands of plugins available for WordPress that can help to improve its functionality for SEO and other elements of your store. Plugins that help with SEO include SmartCrawl Pro, Yoast SEO and the popular All In One SEO Pack. Browse the plugin library on WordPress for more.
  • Build Internal Links. The number of instances where you internally link to other pages on your site improves its authority with search engine algorithms. Simply highlight text that you want to create a link from, click 'Link' in the toolbar and enter the link's URL.  
  • Optimise Images. Using a process called Image-Alt-Text allows you to describe images to a search engine, the algorithms of which then determine if the image contains the information that a user has searched for. An SEO plugin like SEO Optimised Images makes the process easy. When entering the image's description into the 'Alt Text' section, separate words using a dash.

For more details about integrating WordPress print on demand stores with Pivotal Prints, along with a video tutorial, click HERE. If you need any other information, advice or support, please do not hesitate to contact our expert technical team.

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