WooCommerce sites need a layered approach because you're dealing with hundreds or thousands of product and category pages that Google can easily mishandle. Start with technical foundations: install Yoast or Rank Math, enable proper permalink structures (domain.com/product-name, not ?p=123), and set up product schema markup so Google shows price, availability, and reviews in search results. These plugins handle most schema automatically, but verify implementation in Google Search Console. Product page optimization separates winners from losers. Write unique descriptions for every product, even variants. Stealing manufacturer descriptions guarantees you'll rank behind Amazon and the brand's own site. Target long-tail keywords like "men's waterproof hiking boots size 12" rather than just "hiking boots." Use high-quality images with descriptive alt text and compress them to under 200KB each. WooCommerce sites often bloat to 4-5 second load times, killing conversions and rankings. Category pages are your money pages for competitive terms. Treat them like landing pages with 200-300 words of unique content above the product grid explaining what the category offers and why someone should buy from you. Internal linking matters enormously: link related products, build "you might also like" sections, and connect categories hierarchically. Common technical traps to fix: WooCommerce creates duplicate content through filtering and sorting URLs. Use canonical tags or noindex these variations. Paginated category pages need rel=prev/next handling or view-all canonicals. Disable unnecessary archive pages that create thin content. Out-of-stock products should return 200 status codes with "out of stock" schema, not 404s, so you retain ranking history. Ottawa SEO runs multiple WooCommerce sites in our portfolio. We've found that sites with 50+ products need a staging environment to test speed optimizations, because adding caching and CDN layers can break checkout flows. Budget 8-12 hours monthly for ongoing optimization as inventory changes. The stores that win invest in content clusters around their products, not just transactional pages.