What’s the most important aspect of running an e-commerce site? If you ask us, it’s probably traffic generation. Converting website visitors into paying customers is also important, of course – but before you can have customers, you’ve got to have visitors. Establishing a blog is one of the best ways to bring bulk traffic to your site. It’s important to do it the right way, though, or you could end up publishing one blog post after another without ever really having anything to show for it.
Blogging effectively for an e-commerce site isn’t easy to do if you’re never done it before. In this article, we’re going to provide a step-by-step roadmap that will help you get started.
It all begins with understanding what the purpose of your blog should be at the current stage in your website’s development.
Understand What Your Blog’s Current Goals Should Be
Before you even begin to think about writing content for your site’s blog, you need to set realistic goals that align with what’s realistically achievable at the current stage in your website’s development. If your website is well established and already receives consistent daily traffic, a blog can directly generate sales through content such as product reviews and comparisons. If your site is still new, though, it isn’t realistic to expect blog posts with a commercial angle to generate consistent traffic because your better-established competitors are already publishing plenty of that type of content, and it’ll almost certainly outrank yours.
When your website is new, the main goal for your blog shouldn’t be to generate sales – it should be to publish informative content that helps to cultivate authority and awareness of your brand. Most importantly, publishing great blog content can help your site attract organic links. Over time, attracting links will help your site’s commercial content rank better on Google. In addition, even non-commercial content has a chance to generate sales. If people find your content helpful and informative, some of them will click over to your store to see what you’re offering.
In summary, depending on how established your website is, the primary goal of your blog should be to inform readers and expand your brand’s reach or to aid in product discovery and generate sales. Everything that you publish should be aligned toward that goal.
Generate a Keyword-Focused Article Topic
When you start writing blog posts for your e-commerce site, the absolute worst thing to do is to simply sit down and write about whatever comes to your mind. When your website is new, people don’t know yet that it exists. You don’t have people coming to your site each day to read your latest articles, so before people can read your blog content, they have to find it on Google. That can’t happen unless your posts are structured around keywords that people actually search for.
If you want to do the best possible job of generating topics for your site’s blog, it’s very valuable to use a keyword research tool. Keyword tools usually aren’t free, but the expense can be worth it in the long run. You can plug in a keyword, and the tool will show you the keyword’s search volume along with the relative difficulty of ranking on Google for that keyword. It’ll also show other related keywords that might be useful to include in your article.
The longer and more specific a keyword is, the less competition that keyword will have on Google. Your goal should be to select suitably narrow topics that don’t have too much competition but still receive enough search volume that trying to rank for those keywords will be worthwhile for you.
If you’re not sure what types of topics you should write about, focus on your personal expertise and discuss the things you’ve learned during your time as a professional in your field. Focus on how to fix problems and have a better experience with the types of products that you sell, whether they’re vape kits like V2 Cigs, clothing, pet supplies or something else.
Cover the Topic Completely
Once you’ve settled on your topic and made a list of the keywords that you want the article to include, it’s time to write the content. Start by looking at the article’s primary keyword phrase and identifying the likely reason why someone would search for that phrase on Google. Your goal is to write an article that completely satisfies the hypothetical reader’s intent.
You might be writing about a topic you know so intimately that you can write the entire article off the top of your head. It’s still wise, though, to conduct some research and see what others have written about that topic. Look for additional information and alternative points of view that you may have missed. Anything that you can possibly add will make your article more well-rounded and comprehensive.
When you write the article, focus on the quality signals that Google wants to see.
- Covering a topic completely usually requires an article of some length. For that reason, longer articles often tend to earn higher search engine rankings.
- Structuring your article for good readability shows that you care about the user experience. A good article typically has elements such as pictures, subheadings, bullet lists and short paragraphs for easy scanning and to maintain the reader’s interest. Make sure that the spelling and grammar in your article are as close to perfect as possible.
- Pay close attention to your word usage. Using the same keywords and keyword phrases over and over won’t produce the result you want because it’ll show Google that you care more about search engine rankings than you do about the user experience. Avoid excessive keyword repetition and focus on using synonyms and closely related terms as much as possible. You don’t need to repeat the same phrases over and over in order for Google to understand what your article is about.
Conduct a Final Audit Before Publishing the Article
Before you publish your article, you should conduct a final audit to confirm that the article is truly as good as it can be. Search for the article’s primary keyword on Google and read the articles that currently appear on the first page for that keyword. Can you honestly say that your article is a better resource than anything currently on the first page, or are there some additional ideas that you could incorporate to make your article even better?
Google’s ultimate goal is to attract and retain users by providing the best results for searches. To that end, Google is constantly refining and improving its ranking algorithms and its understanding of natural language. Your goal is to produce the best possible content. If you do that – and if your keyword goals are realistic for the current stage in your website’s development – Google will find the content and rank it accordingly.
Read more: Digital Marketing Tips Every Business Owner Needs to Know
