New in Yoast WooCommerce SEO and Yoast SEO for Shopify: The product identifier check

Do you have trouble getting your product to show up on Google? Are your competitors getting rich results, but the search results for your product are boring? It might be that Google doesn’t know every detail of your product. For instance, you might miss the product identifiers that Google uses to understand your products thoroughly. In Yoast WooCommerce SEO 15.2 and Yoast SEO for Shopify, you’ll find a reminder to add precisely that! Today, we’re also releasing Yoast SEO 19.7 and Premium 19.3.

Yesterday, we were notified of a bug in Yoast SEO. We’ve fixed this issue quickly, and the current version, Yoast SEO 19.7.1, is safe to install. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused by this!

Table of contents

• WooCommerce SEO 15.2 / Yoast SEO for Shopify release
• Yoast SEO 19.7 / Premium 19.3 release

First: We’re fully updated for Google’s latest product schema changes

Before we introduce our latest feature in WooCommerce SEO and Yoast SEO for Shopify, we want to mention that, with today’s update, we’re fully aligned with Google’s new product structured data changes. Last week, Google announced its expanded eligibility for enhanced product experiences in the search results using Product structured data. For this to work, slight modifications to the product structured data are necessary. In addition, new properties are available as well, like pattern, material and brand.

In the latest releases of our ecommerce SEO plugins and apps, we’ve ensured that your product structured data is in line with Google’s updated requirements. Your ecommerce site can now be eligible for additional rich results for your products in the search results.

For WooCommerce SEO, we’ve added a new feature to support brand and pattern. You can activate this by going to WooCommerce > Products > Attributes and adding a new attribute for patterns. Populate it with some terms and go to Yoast SEO > WooCommerce SEO. In the new Pattern dropdown, select the attribute you want and save. Then, edit a product, and under Attributes, add the attribute you just created. Populate it with some of the terms you made above and publish the product. Run a structured data test and see that your product validates nicely!

Product identifiers are an important detail

Do you want your products to appear nicely in the search results? Then it would be best if you didn’t forget to add SKUs and product identifiers to your products in WooCommerce, as this is an essential piece of product details. But it’s not just for Google. Many customers use SKUs and product identifiers to find your products in search, so it’s wise to add these to your product pages. Plus, adding these details makes it easier for customers to trust that you are offering the product they are looking for.

WooCommerce SEO and Yoast SEO for Shopify now come with a check that reminds you to add this all-important product detail! In addition, it’ll add those product details to the Product Schema that Google uses to check the facts about your products. This will increase the chance of your product getting that highlighted rich result!

Remember that the check won’t appear when there is no SKU field in WooCommerce. This might be due to a specific WooCommerce plugin you are running. Also, the check does not work for grouped products.

In Yoast SEO for Shopify, we don’t show this for product variants but have a field called Barcode, mentioning that you do or do not have something filled in.

WooCommerce SEO and our Shopify app help you do ecommerce SEO

With WooCommerce SEO, you get many more options for your WooCommerce store to shine in the search results. This includes easy tools to build a better ecommerce experience. You’ll also get the all-important option to add product identifiers to product variants that WooCommerce does not offer by itself. Plus, every detail your add will be added to the structured data graph of your site, store, and products. Last but not least, it comes with a product-specific version of our famous SEO and readability analysis to help you write awesome product descriptions!

Our Yoast SEO for Shopify app might not come with the map functionality, but it does come with everything else you love about Yoast SEO. It also comes with the new product identifier check (called Barcode) and product-focused SEO and readability analyses. And it’s good to know that the Barcode and SKU checks will only be visible when there is a product with no variants. Try it out!

Essential product details in Schema

Product schema is critical if you want your product to appear on Google correctly. One of the properties that Google recommends adding to your product details is the SKU, but also global identifiers like UPC and EAN are welcome additions. The Google Rich Results Test will show a warning if you don’t add these. Here’s what Google says about product identifiers in its documentation on product structured data:

Include all applicable global identifiers; these are described at schema.org/Product. While you can use the generic gtin property for all GTINs, we recommend that you use the most specific GTIN that applies to your product, as this is the most accurate representation of the product. Make sure the GTIN value is numerical; we don’t support the URL form for GTINs.

WooCommerce SEO comes with a fully-featured Schema implementation that integrates with Yoast SEO seamlessly. Together, they ensure that Google gets all the necessary details about your product — increasing the chance that it highlights them in the SERPs.

Get WooCommerce SEO 15.2 now!

The new WooCommerce SEO check works for individual products and a product with variants and, therefore, different product codes. Yoast SEO for Shopify only works for regular products. Thanks to the reminder, you’ll never forget those product codes again — Google and your customers will thank you!

Don’t have WooCommerce SEO yet? Now might be a good time as ever! Check out our Yoast SEO Premium & WooCommerce SEO bundle if you want to get the most bang for your buck.

Yoast SEO 19.7 and Premium 19.3

Today, we’re also releasing small updates for Yoast SEO and Yoast SEO Premium. In Yoast SEO 19.7, you’ll find several security fixes and hardened the overall security of the plugins. We’ve also improved the handling of fatal errors on the front end by preventing Yoast SEO from running on the login page, allowing users to access their dashboard.

We also now exclude empty custom post-type sitemaps from sitemap_index.xml, and we’ve added a new filter wpseo_sitemap_post_type_first_links that can be used to add links at the start of the first sitemap page for post types.

For Yoast SEO Premium 19.3, we’ve fixed several bugs, and we’ve added two options to the crawl settings: one to prevent the crawling of site search pages and one to prevent the crawling of /wp-json/.

Happy updating!

>> Yoast SEO 19.8 is available now, with new Schema improvements and enhancements!