New Plugin Fixes ‘hasMerchantReturnPolicy’ Warning for WooCommerce Products

2023/06/07 Update: The WPSSO Merchant Return Policy add-on has been approved on wordpress.org – you can find it here.

A new WPSSO Merchant Return Policy Manager (WPSSO MRP) add-on has been released for WPSSO Core.

This new add-on allows you to manage one or more Merchant Return Policies, assign one as the default for your products, and customize individual products for different return policies.

There is currently a 40+ day backlog for new plugins submitted to wordpress.org, so as of now the WPSSO MRP add-on is only available for download directly from WPSSO.com.

WPSSO Core Premium customers can also find the new WPSSO MRP add-on under the SSO > Plugin Add-ons settings page.

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Better Schema Markup for WooCommerce

WPSSO + WooCommerce logos.

WooCommerce is a popular e-commerce plugin, with a solid and well designed code base, but WooCommerce is not an SEO plugin – its Schema markup for search engines is minimal and it does not provide any social meta tags for Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, etc. This guide provides a quick and easy solution to fix your WooCommerce product Schema markup and meta tags.

Warnings for WooCommerce Markup

The Google Rich Results Test Tool, Schema Markup Validator, or the Google Search Console may report one or more of the following errors for the Schema markup provided by the WooCommerce plugin:

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New WPSSO Google Merchant Feed Add-on

Just released, the new WPSSO Google Merchant Feed add-on retrieves product information from WPSSO Core Premium and provides maintenance free XML feeds for each WordPress language (aka locale).

There are no add-on settings to configure — the WPSSO Google Merchant Feed add-on automatically retrieves all product information in the language (aka locale) requested.

A supported e-commerce plugin, like WooCommerce or Easy Digital Downloads, is suggested but not required — the WPSSO Google Merchant Feed add-on can also retrieve custom product information entered in the WordPress editor Document SSO metabox. WooCommerce variations and additional WooCommerce product attributes are fully supported.

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Shipping Delivery Time for Google Rich Results

WPSSO + WooCommerce logos.

In September 2020, Google announced support for shipping details in Schema Product Offers and how shipping details would be presented in search results. Adding the new shippingDetails property to your Schema Product markup is especially important if you offer free or low-cost shipping, as this will make your products more appealing in search results.

In October, Surnia Ulula announced support for shipping details in the WPSSO Core Premium plugin, to provide both the Google recommended Schema OfferShippingDetails shippingDestination and shippingRate properties for WooCommerce products. Although these two properties are enough to satisfy Google’s recommended shipping details markup, the Google validator now warns that an additional deliveryTime property is recommended.

The deliveryTime property should be a Schema ShippingDeliveryTime type that includes businessDays, cutoffTime, handlingTime, and transitTime properties. The data for these four properties can be managed with a new WPSSO Shipping Delivery Time for WooCommerce add-on.

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A Better ‘pre_get_posts’ Search for WooCommerce

WPSSO + WooCommerce logos.

I recently wrote a plugin to provide missing GTIN, GTIN-8, GTIN-12 (UPC), GTIN-13 (EAN), GTIN-14, ISBN, MPN, Depth, and Volume values for WooCommerce Products and Variations. As part of that plugin, I extended the WordPress search feature to search metadata from WooCommerce products (and their variations). The standard way to extend the WordPress search feature is to hook the “pre_get_posts” action and modify the WP_Query to include additional posts / products in search results. There are some serious drawbacks to doing this – with or without WooCommerce – but especially with WooCommerce.

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