Yoast SEO titles for WooCommerce product pages
The SEO title is the clickable headline that appears in Google search results. For WooCommerce product pages, it’s different from the product name displayed on your site — the SEO title is what Google shows, and you control it via Yoast.
How Yoast title templates work for WooCommerce
In Yoast SEO → Search Appearance → WooCommerce, you set a default title template for:
- Products (single product pages)
- Product categories
- Product tags
- Shop page
The default template is typically: %%title%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%
This outputs something like: “Blue Widget Page 2 | My Store”
Better title templates for WooCommerce
For product pages, a stronger template:
%%title%% — %%product_cat%% | %%sitename%%
This outputs: “Blue Widget — Widgets | My Store”
For product category pages:
%%term_title%% | %%sitename%%
This outputs: “Widgets | My Store”
Character limit
Yoast turns the title field green when it’s between 40-60 characters. Google typically shows 50-60 characters before truncating.
WooCommerce trade-off: product names are often long. “Premium Heavy Duty Stainless Steel XL Widget With Adjustable Settings” is 65 characters before you add a separator and site name. Yoast will flag this — and it’s worth shortening the SEO title even if the product name stays long.
Per-product title overrides
In the Yoast meta box on any product edit page → “Google preview” → edit the SEO title directly. This overrides the template for that product only.
Use per-product overrides for high-value or high-competition products where the template isn’t tight enough.
Titles in Asteris for WooCommerce
Asteris for WooCommerce’s SEO module has the same title template system. Migration from Yoast preserves per-product title overrides.