If you are running an eCommerce site or a brick-mortar store with a website, you should consider to have a blog in your eCommerce site. Though your primary goal should be to drive as much traffic as possible to your online store, in an effort to convert that traffic into potential customers. There are two strategies you can use to achieve your goal.
The first is to rely entirely on paid advertising and second is to start blogging and combine your blogging efforts with your paid advertising strategies to double down, and drive even more organic traffic to your online store.
Most of the time, blogging is an affordable content marketing tool for most businesses. It help to shine a light on core brand values, voice, and personality while becoming an integral factor in SEO success. And this is the very reason that blogging has become one of the leading means of mass communication for businesses and an important part of eCommerce website development.
In this article, we are going to discuss the major reasons why you should have a blog for your eCommerce website.
Top Reasons to have a Blog in your eCommerce sites
Reason 1: It helps to improve your SEO ranking
To start with the basic understanding of SEO and why it is so important, search engine optimization ultimately have two functions – crawling content & building an index. This allows them to provide answers to Internet users by determining relevancy and providing results. It is the goal of an eCommerce site to rank highly on search engines so that when Internet users are searching for a product, your site is one of the first options in front of the eyes of shoppers. Top placement in the search results is rewarded with the maximum chances of customer visits and ultimately complete transaction. SEO is one of the most crucial marketing strategy for any web based company.
Blogging isn’t about publishing as much as you can. It’s about publishing as smart as you can”- Jon Morrow
Why Blogging helps you to improve SEO ranking? Because:
Blogging means more content with pages for your site. More content with pages means more internal links at your homepage.
Internal links are great for your site optimization, but links from other sites are much better. When your article shared on social media and gets linked to other sites, then your page rankings really improve. It’s easier to generate links from interesting content rather than from your own product pages. And the more links you can generate back to your site with your content, the higher you’ll climb in the search engines.
Keeping a regular blog and update content is also a good sign for your site. Search engine track the changes and google rewards that by ranking your site more highly.
Blogging also gives you the opportunity to rank for more key phrases because it gives you the source to create content around the keywords you’re targeting. Any web page you link to in your blog post will also benefit if someone links to your post. It isn’t just the fact that someone searching for what you are writing rather a better chance of coming to your site.
Blogging improves SEO because you can include more keywords into a blog than you can do on a product page. Your product page SEO attracts only customers who are looking for the specific product/service, but blogs focuses on potential customers, who might be looking for anything related to what you have written in your blog post.
Reason 2: It helps to inform your readers
If you are convinced that to explore your business it is a good idea to have a blog, then the next step is to put your readers at the center of your purpose.
In order to increase the followers of your blog, you have to make sure that you are producing content that is not only enjoyable to read, but also offers information that will keep your readers returning for more. And when these informative blogs are written by aligning them with your industry or the products you are selling, it contributes to your business as well. Besides this, people like to know from whom they are buying products/services. It familiarizes and informs them about you and your brand, hence making them more confident of shopping from your online store.
Reason 3: It helps to address reader’s issues
Blogs can also be employed for customer service by addressing their issues on specific platform. Address the common issue’s of your customers and weave your piece of article around it. Share possible experiences and solutions regarding that particular issue. People are increasingly depending on the web for finding solutions to their problems. Even if there is no specific solution to the problem, but they find it satisfying when someone else can also face that problem. Sharing experiences also counts here.
Product pages are oftentimes to the point because they have to be and that’s why you can implement this to create blogs where issues related to your products are shared.
The space and freedom a blog offer is certainly not a match for product content. Fine articles act as an entry point for your target audience in their research stage of purchase journey.
Reason 4: It provides an easy way to promote your products
Small entrepreneurs often think that blogs aren’t worthy for the small market they have. But that’s not true. A blog allows an eCommerce business to promote new, featured, and top selling products, or even products that need a “boost” due to a dip in sales. Blogs help you build potential audiences who aren’t just active readers but also returning customers. While social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are preferred for reaching out to customers, they provide a very little space to tell the stories which your customers are interested to know.
When you share stories through blog that people like, they will return for more. You can use that platform to feature your products/services and push sales for those products/services. It need not be something like ads but informative articles about the products or stories like how they were invented, discovered, made, and more. Thus, Blog helps you marketing your products and services without directly advertising them.
Reason 5: It creates brand recognition as an industry experts
Brand recognition as an industry experts is one of the primary goals of any company and blogging has been recognized as an efficient tool. Your blog posts can contain tips and tricks that your target audience is looking for, tutorials, and the latest breaking industry news. While you can publish blog posts that contain sales information, for branding purposes—focus more on adding value to your customers.
Reason 6: It enhances customer engagement
With blog you can engage your customers on an ongoing basis. Customers comment in the blog and replying them with the appropriate answers generates a trust factor in the users and in turn it fetches loyalty to the brand. Addressing all the negative comments sensitively is a vital and appreciable move for any brand.
You can achieve customer engagement in various ways. We are sharing some of the ideas here:
eCommerce blog example, if you sell hair loss products you could share client success stories.
Tell A Story—The story you tell could be anything from inspirational stories related to your industry, inspiring stories your clients have shared, or the story of how your business came to be.
Post Photos And Videos—While your eCommerce site certainly contains images and videos of the products you are selling, your blog is an additional place in which you can utilize visuals to engage your clients. This could be a quick video of how to assemble a product, different methods of using a product, or photos and videos of that are non-product related but still relevant to your target audience.
For example, if you sell doll supplies you can share funny animated videos and images.
Reason 7: It Brings positive conversion rates
Increase conversion rates is one of the desirable results for any entrepreneur. Your eCommerce blog will not only bring more traffic to your website but it will also increase your conversions. A regular update in blogs and online store with high quality content and topics will reward you with higher conversion rates and brand loyalty. The flow of content in the blog can attract many new prospective clients as well as help retaining the existing one.
According to hubspot, overall ROI is more likely to increase for companies who blog regularly, especially businesses that prioritize blogging experience a 13X increase in ROI year after year.
Reason 8: It creates an online community
Many blogs allow customers to comment on their posts. It makes your customers feel as if they are part of a larger online community. Just like social media, ensure that you actively respond to all comments and private messages. Best eCommerce blog creates the field to make an online community, where you can share your post and products.
You can set up your blog in a manner in which you can approve all outside comments before they go live. So, there is no chance to add questionable comments or spam.
Reason 9: It create Calls to Action
Whenever you start blogging, you are opening a new path to tap into a consumer’s mind in ways that most eCommerce store owners cannot do. As they are reading your content and visiting your site, you have their attention, and the ability to direct them to wherever you want them to go, that means different product pages.
When you’re blogging about more than your products, answering frequently asked questions, and providing testimonials, you can bring your visitors closer to becoming customers. Then, throughout the content, you can use a “call to action” to specifically direct them to one of your product pages after you have warmed them up to the idea of completing a purchase.
Reason 10: Increase website traffic
The most obvious reason, is that introducing a blog in your eCommerce site will increase site traffic. When publishing regular, relevant content to your site, you are giving your potential customers and visitors more reasons to visit your site from social media or a Google search.
Blogging will increase overall traffic to your website, which is an important ranking signal for Google. This means that with increased traffic, you have the opportunity to rank better. If each blog post is created for a specific audience and has in place the right funnel to drive sales, this will increase traffic and it can steer people to the products you want them to buy. Plus, you’ll have the opportunity to grow your eCommerce store from an average shopping site to an educational site where visitors will often visit.
How to Come Up With eCommerce Blog Post Ideas
You might have already read why Blogging is valuable. If you have the time to maintain multiple social media platforms, then you have the time to write a blog content in a week.
You don’t need to be a great writer. Your blog posts can be short. Think of blogging as the extension of a tweet or a product description. Or you just want to link to interesting content you’ve found around the website. You can simply embed a related video. None of these things require a great deal of writing.
Here are a few ideas for things that you can blog about:
- The story of your founding organization or store: the history, the vision, and the growth
- Your products description: where it came from, how it’s made, and its special features and price
- Tutorials on how to use your products
- Announcements or any offer for a sale
- Events you’re running, organizing or participating in
- Advice on products, not just your own (Customer reviews)
- Company updates
- Developments in the similar industry
Start Writing!
Hope you have got eCommerce blog ideas and know major reasons why you should have a blog, it’s time to start writing! Though it requires a lot of hard work, dedication, and man-power to manage, but content marketing is key to any eCommerce business’s success.
A business blog helps to show that your eCommerce site actually values the needs and interests of their customers. Combined with providing valuable information and having your site rank higher to get more traffic, you actually make a presentation that keeps customers wanting to return back for more. Blogging will set your eCommerce site apart from your competitors and with time, building up content may help you advance in a way that serves both your online business and customers.
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