As an e-commerce brand, your goal is to drive as much targeted traffic as you can to your store—most of which, ideally, should turn into paying customers. You can initiate this by going after paid traffic, which can bring in instant traffic. However, this does require a substantial budget and you need to get it right, else you may expend your entire budget without the results to show for it. E-commerce blogging is free, on the other hand.
It can help you embrace organic, targeted and converting traffic, without spending a dollar. Although it takes some time to see results, when you do it’s continuous, and a blog can help you get a ton of it.
Having a blog can positively affect your search engine ranking
When blogging is done well, blogging can help your site rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERPs). The best way of doing this is by creating content that is worth linking to. As your content archive gets bigger you’ll have even more opportunities to earn natural links, which creates an even greater SERP footprint.
For content, instead of housing only product pages, you can add stellar content that’ll enhance the value of your site as well as give you more chances of adding internal links to your homepage—further growing your website’s authority.
Another advantage of keeping a blog is that it keeps your site updated. Search engines love sites that are regularly updated with fresh content and new insights. Fortunately, the freshness factor is factored into the algorithms, where search engines like Google send more traffic to a site when it’s regularly updated. And if the content is timely, you can get more exposure through trending searches, too.
You can also link to your product pages with each blog post you write. Creating such internal links will increase the relevancy of your product pages and someone visiting your blog will benefit from the link because they are well-informed about your products before hitting the product pages, which increases your chances of making a sale.
Integrate blogging with email marketing for best results
You can equally try to rank for keywords which are further up in the buyer process and guide your customers towards your product.
By really focusing on your customers’ buying mentalities, the keywords they’re using and adding value to them via your blog, you can reinvent the buying experience for your target market by employing aggressive marketing and impressive content marketing.
This highlights the exact power that a blog can bring; by using keyword research and providing content that answers the questions that your potential customers are already searching for, you’re automatically engaging them throughout their buying decision. You can double this up by using internal links on your e-commerce site between your blog and your sales funnels, further establishing your footprint in the SERPs and as an authority.
Use blogging as a marketing tool
Combined with effective social media campaigns, blogging serves as a powerful publicity tool.
Common e-commerce blogging mistakes to avoid
Having a lack of scope defeats the purpose of your blog, which is, ultimately, to drive targeted traffic to product pages.
It’s important that you are specific and stay within the niche your product falls in. If you are selling mattresses, for example, it makes sense to center your blogging around topics like sleeping, mattress buying, choosing a pillow, duvets, and similar topics. When you keep writing around a specific theme, you are able to display your expertise and can be seen as an authority on the topic you are talking about.
A lack of consistency
Yes, you own your blog and have every right to post anything you want on it. But if you want to create value and cultivate a loyal reader base, you have to blog about what’s relevant to your readers.
Your audience doesn’t care about the blog’s editor, nor do they care that you have celebrities on your payroll. Make your blog a marketing tool, not a soap opera. If customers are finding your blog because they need answers to their questions, they want that answer, not a story about your accomplishments.
Letting the blog outrank the product pages
This is a common problem among e-commerce store owners. The blog sometimes outranks the product pages for some of the search terms, which confuse readers as they reach the blog.
This often happens because you mentioned the part of a query you are trying to rank the product page for on your blog, and Google picks that up faster. As you can imagine, the click-through rate will be poor, which might cause the page to lose ranking positions.
If you are facing this problem, the first thing is to diagnose the issue and see what is causing the problem. If it is linking, indexing, or a content issue, then these are easily remedied.
Another possible scenario may be that the ranking ability of the product page is overwhelmed by the blog. In this case, it might be better to put the blog on a subdomain—a practice that is very popular among e-commerce giants—so you have two chances of ranking for the keywords instead of the blog overshadowing the e-commerce side of things.
Final words
Your blog serves as a two-way conversation, one where you can receive feedback from your customers as well as constructive criticism and open comments that you can use to improve the customer experience of your product and brand. The more you blog, the more leads you can generate; more email signups, quote requests, and most importantly, an increase in sales.
Also, having a blog helps you rank for long-tail keywords and obscure, less common keyword phrases. Without a blog, you most likely won’t rank for high-converting keyword phrases.
Through blogging, you can accumulate natural links from columnists, authors, and bloggers as you continue to add content that could serve as resources on your blog. Remember, links are important for SEO but they can also bring valuable referral traffic.
Blogging is a critical part of any marketing strategy regardless of your type of business, however, e-commerce companies have so many other critical tasks on their plate that they often overlook the potential impact high-quality content can have on their brand.
According to HubSpot1, marketers who prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to achieve a positive return on their investment—meaning that companies who invest in regular blog content are dramatically more likely to translate their marketing efforts into revenue.
That figure alone should be enough to catch your attention and ask whether or not your e-commerce brand should be investing in blogging as a customer acquisition channel.
The Real Benefits of Blogging for E-commerce Brands
Every e-commerce brand has one thing in common: they have competition.
Therefore, it’s crucial to find ways you can set your brand apart from others in your space. And blogging allows you to do just that.
Here are the biggest benefits of using blogging as part of your e-commerce marketing strategy.
Show a Human Side to Your Brand
As we’ve mentioned already, your blog is truly a direct voice for your brand to reach the outside world. This is an extremely powerful tool for an e-commerce brand, as most customers (and prospective customers) often see online brands as nothing more than the products they sell.
While showing a human side, you can simultaneously establish authority in your space.
Authority means something different to everyone, but in the context of blogging for e-commerce, building the authority of your brand is all about:
- Proving your knowledge to your audience
- Sharing answers to common questions they have
- Addressing common concerns (which can help increase conversions)
- Providing in-depth, easily digestible content that entertains and educates
- Aligning your brand with key influencers in your space
Take for example NET-A-PORTER2, a wildly popular e-commerce company that’s well-known for selling products from the world’s most coveted designer brands.
While this interview-based article starts off as an editorial introduction to the personal life of Homeland actress Claire Danes, it also does a great job of tastefully weaving in elements of her personal style and fashion choices—two things that NET-A-PORTER knows their readers care deeply about.
You will also see a prominent series of original photos taken with clothing items that are for sale on NET-A-PORTER mixed in throughout the article, with a clear call-to-action, “Shop the Look” that allows you to quickly add any of the items worn by Danes directly into your own shopping bag.
This e-commerce brand has mastered the marriage of editorial blog content with product placements as a seamless channel to help drive incremental sales and convert new readers into email subscribers (prospective future customers) to build a closer relationship with.
Note: Be sure to properly label any advertorial content (that is, an advertisement presented in the form of editorial content) or explicitly state when you’re showing placements of your own product advertisements throughout your blog content, if you decide to develop a close connection between your blog and e-commerce store.
More Traffic to Your Website
Traffic, traffic, traffic. The more you get, the greater chance there is to boost your store’s revenue.
But before you can drive traffic to your e-commerce store, you need a plan for making it happen. Generally speaking, your options as an e-commerce brand include marketing strategies like: blogging, search engine optimization, organic & paid social media and pay per click (PPC) campaigns on a variety of different platforms.
Here’s what you get when you blog:
Ammunition for search engines
Every time you publish a new (high quality) blog post, it’s another indexed page on your website. Which gives you yet another opportunity to drive search engine traffic via carefully selected keywords.
Search engines, just the same as your audience, are interested in fresh content. But without a blog, it’s a challenge to publish high quality new pages. With a consistent blog marketing strategy, you can post regularly to show search engines that your website is active (and to attract repeat visitors). It’s the best of both worlds.
Content for sharing
A consistent blogging strategy has the potential to drive more traffic to your website over the weeks, months and years to come.
With more visitors frequenting your site, you will find ways to creatively showcase your products, contextually weave them into your overall strategy and encourage more movement to your store—all of which make it easier to reach your primary marketing goals.
Convert Readers into Customers
It’s one thing to generate traffic to your website, but another activity entirely to succeed at converting those consumers into paying customers.
Sticking with NET-A-PORTER as a phenomenal example of conversion-oriented content in action, here’s a blog post that’s very intentionally designed to convert their readers into buyers:
Take notice of these factors:
- The attention-grabbing headline
- The mix of content and product images
- The engaging, informative nature of the content
- The ability to “add to shopping bag” with one click
After reading through these product reviews, getting very clear use cases and seeing high quality photos, readers have all the information they need to decide if one or more of these products are right for them.
Not every blog post will hit this hard in regards to being optimized for immediate sales, but it’s a content format that should be used within your blog marketing strategy as an e-commerce business.
Engage Your Audience
With each blog post you publish, you have the opportunity to engage with your audience in ways that simply can’t be done through any other marketing channel. Try this:
Activate blog comments
Move the conversation to social media
Remember that it’s not good enough just to attract readers to your new content—that’s not a true blog marketing strategy. It’s your job to thoughtfully engage those readers at every turn of their experience with your website.
Even if the readers of your blog content don’t make a purchase right away, a high level of engagement increases the odds of them wanting to sign up for your email list to get new product updates, to think of your brand first for a particular product category and to return in the future.
Blogging is a Long-Term Marketing Strategy
Let’s face it, some of the marketing decisions you will make in your e-commerce business are naturally short-sighted. There’s nothing wrong with looking for quick wins, as opposed to investing in long-term projects that won’t realize a return for many months into the future.
While blogging can generate immediate revenue—especially if you’ve built a strong and loyal audience that just needs the right nudge to come back for a repeat purchase—this marketing channel is particularly unique in the way that it can generate massive long-term results, while traction in the short-term feels a little sluggish as you’re just getting started.
This phenomenon is known as the plateau of latent potential5, which describes the natural expectation of seeing noticeable progress at the very beginning of your journey, yet we rarely do. The ensuing valley of disappointment most people (and businesses) go through, shows up prominently when launching a new blog marketing strategy—so you need to plan accordingly.
Take for example a hypothetical e-commerce brand that sells designer shoes. Maybe you will publish a blog post in January titled, “The 50 Best Designer Shoes of 2020.”
In this fictional example, it took four months to start reaping the rewards of your labor, but you now have an asset that will continue to send traffic to your website for many months (hopefully years) to come. The success of this single article will also serve to boost your site’s credibility in the eyes of search engines, making it easier to quickly rank for tangentially related keywords moving forward.
The key is to remember that a blog marketing strategy is a long-term endeavor. You build momentum with every new post you publish, so it requires the ability to keep releasing high-quality content over the course of the months to come.
There’s an undeniable snowball effect that will eventually lead to great results—if you stick with it.
3 Key Types of Blog Posts for Every E-commerce Business
It’s a common concern amongst bloggers in all types of businesses—not just those in the e-commerce space—that you will start out with the best of intentions and a long list of topics to write about, but you will one day find yourself running short on actionable blog post ideas.
The Product Post
The NET-A-PORTER blog regularly employs this type of post. Here’s a recent example:
In addition to their editorial team crafting an engaging headline and using an eye-catching featured image, the content in this product-focused blog post is concise, direct and full of suggestions for fashionable coats to pick up for this winter season.
And speaking of suggestions, here’s the direct (dynamic) product selection widget you will see placed at the bottom of the article to encourage a related purchase:
The Informative Post
In a smart blog marketing strategy for e-commerce, not every post should be created with the primary goal of making a sale—that’d quickly exhaust your audience and give them the impression you’re being strictly transactional with your content.
- New product launches and service offerings
- Company updates
- Community-related news (events, meetups, customer stories)
This type of content is much more about forging a long-term, trusted relationship with your audience and is less about making a sale—but nevertheless it’s an important element of a successful content marketing mix.
The First-Person Post
A first-person narrative-style article comes across as more like a story than anything else. And for an e-commerce brand, storytelling—whether from your internal team, from customers or otherwise—is hugely beneficial in many ways.
For one, creative storytelling allows you to more naturally sell the benefits of your products through descriptions of how they’re being used out in the real world, rather than a direct sales pitch to your audience.
Here’s a great recent example from the Patagonia blog:
This blog post is a first-person account from someone who has direct experience working with Patagonia Action Works, the clothing brand’s initiative that informs people of local activism opportunities around land, water, climate, communities and biodiversity—with the goal that more customers will take action and help preserve the planet.
It’s designed to build stronger customer bonds around a shared cause.
Is that all a first-person post can be used to accomplish, though?
Just a few other actionable ideas include formats like:
- Interviews with customers, vendors and employees
- Commentary on relevant current events
- How-to guides
- Industry news
- Infographics
- Reviews, unboxing videos and tutorials
The content topics—and even the various different formats6—are truly endless.
Experiment with multiple types of formats in your blog marketing strategy to better understand what clicks best with your audience and what drives the most results in terms of traffic & sales.
Don’t Have a Blog Yet? Fear Not, Here Are the Basics
Even if you don’t have a blog set up for your e-commerce business yet, you will be able to get one off the ground in a matter of minutes—and expect to start seeing measurable results in the weeks and months to come.
Thanks to a variety of extremely easy-to-use tools and platforms, it’s now faster than ever to start a blog from a technical perspective.
However, the actual steps you take to create a blog will depend largely on factors such as:
- The platform your website (e-commerce store) is running on
- Your preferences in regards to which content management system7 to use
- How much technical knowledge you or your team have today
Pick a name for your blog today
Don’t spend too much time on this step, as you can always change the name in the future. It can be something as simple as “Your Brand Name Blog,” or you could go for something more unique. For example, the Patagonia blog is called, “The Cleanest Line.” The choice is yours, but don’t get hung up at this stage.
Choose a content management system
Design your blog
There’s no limit to what you can do when it comes to the design of your blog, but there are some key principles8 to keep in mind. The style and design should match that of your e-commerce store, navigation should be clear and the content should be easy to digest. Take cues from other blogs in your industry for a better idea of what does and doesn’t work.
There are plenty of additional steps you will end up taking on the road to perfecting your e-commerce blog, but these basics will set you down the right path.
Once your blog is set up, it’s time for the fun stuff—populating it with valuable content.
What to Include in Your Blog Marketing Strategy
While high-quality content and patience are critical to any blog marketing strategy, it’s the active marketing component that will make or break the true success of your in the long run.
When devising a blog marketing strategy, you will need to approach the activity with both your short and long-term goals in mind. According to HubSpot research9, marketers actually have a variety of different priorities (and goals):
- Fortnightly insights, tips and free assets
- Shape a global audience for your business
- Unsubscribe any time
Define your target audience: Before you ever start writing, it’s critical to define who your target audience is. It’s safe to assume you’re targeting people who are interested in buying your products, but strive to dig deeper than that. Where do they live? What’s their age range? What are their other interests? Where do they hang out online? Drill down until you’ve created a buyer persona10 that can guide your content creation efforts.
Create a content calendar: This is where documenting all of the work you’ve done up to this point will come in handy. Your content calendar outlines the type of content you will publish, who will create it and most importantly—the topics you will cover. Don’t take for granted just how powerful a content calendar can be in terms of keeping your workflow organized and on track with target publishing dates. It will also help prevent the accidental duplication of content11 in the future.
Choose key performance indicators (KPIs): Don’t assume that your blog marketing strategy is working, just because you’ve seen an influx of readers coming to your new content. Instead, choose specific KPIs that will allow you to track your progress against the measurable goals that stand to have a real impact on the growth of your business. Generally speaking, the most important KPIs here will be based on traffic, engagement, email subscribers, sales and attributable revenue.
Once you do these three things well, you will have a solid blog marketing strategy in place that will allow you to hit the ground running with your content efforts.
From here, it’s all about tracking your performance, tweaking your plan along the way, experimenting with new traffic sources and conversion optimizing your content that has the greatest chance of translating into direct product purchases.
Helpful Tools for E-commerce Blogging Success
When it comes to blogging, there’s a tool for almost everything out there.
Many of these tools are free and some are paid, but regardless of your marketing budget, you should be able to find several useful blogging-related tools that fit into your plans and provide you with a helpful service that amplifies your results.
Since there are quite literally thousands of different blogging-related tools to choose from, it’s important to do your own research to find those that best align with your strategy and goals. But for now, here’s a breakdown of the best tools in several important categories:
Google Analytics
Ahrefs is hands down the most useful tool suite in a digital marketer’s arsenal today. With a long list of functions and features that will help you do everything from keyword research, to gathering actionable ideas on how to boost your own traffic, observe how a competitor’s website is performing and everything in-between, it will be an indispensable part of your blog marketing strategy. Ahrefs can help you answer incredibly insightful questions like: Which topics are your competitors blogging about (and why)? How much search volume is there for a particular keyword phrase? Where is my competitor’s traffic coming from? Why does their content ranks higher than yours?
Content Creation Insights
With an AI-powered platform, Clearscope helps you get more out of every piece of content you publish. It was built on the premise that great content isn’t always enough to reach the top of search engines—and that your content also needs to be highly relevant in order to outperform everything else in your industry.
Topic Selection
If you want to build your e-commerce brand and you’re invested for the long-haul, blogging can be one of the most impactful strategies to focus on this year. Before you start churning out content though, it pays dividends to develop a true blog marketing strategy (like we’ve broken down here today). As a reminder, here are the action steps you should take in order to set your e-commerce blog down the path to success:
Design and launch your blog
When you do all of these things well, you will find yourself in a position to create relevant content that ranks in the search engines, attracts (and engages) your target audience—and converts more of your readers into paying customers.
Ryan Robinson is a blogger, podcaster and side project aficionado who teaches 500,000 monthly readers how to start a blog and grow a profitable side business at ryrob.com.
3 Claire Danes, Woman of Action, Net-a-Porter, Feb 2020
5 Overcoming the Trough of Sorrow, Four Pillar Freedom
6 105 Types of content to fill up your editorial calendar, Convince & Convert
7 Content management system definition, Wikipedia
8 8 Web design principles to know, CXL.com
9 State of Marketing, Hubspot
10 How to create a buyer persona in 5 simple steps, AWeber
11 Duplicate content, Moz.com
Serious about taking your brand global?
Content marketing has become one of the best (and most cost-effective) ways to get traffic to a website. When done right, the traffic keeps coming long after you stop actively promoting it.
If you own an e-commerce website and want to learn how to utilize blogging to grow your brand and increase your sales, this is the guide for you.
I’ve personally grown blogs to over 250,000 monthly visitors, and I’ve worked with dozens of clients in the e-commerce space to help them do the same. Here’s an overview of my seven-step process to starting and growing an e-commerce blog.
Table of ContentsWhy start a blog on your e-commerce site?Seven steps to start and grow an e-commerce blogFinal thoughts
Why start a blog on your e-commerce site?
Creating a blog has a whole host of benefits for e-commerce websites:
- It can help you move visitors along your marketing funnel so they eventually buy.
- You’re able to rank highly for keywords on Google that your product pages could never rank for but that are still important for building brand awareness and finding customers.
- It can help you grow your email list.
- You’re able to continue to get traffic without constantly spending money on ads.
- It provides many opportunities to link to your product and category pages to help them rank better on the SERPs.
If you don’t know what some of these things mean, don’t worry—I’ll explain them along the way. But for now, let’s take a look at some e-commerce blogs that are working well right now so you can see the end goal.
Examples of successful e-commerce blogs
Three of my favorite examples of e-commerce websites using blogging are:
Solo Stove comes in at the top of my list due to its excellent use of videos, photos, and helpful information on the blog. It also does search engine optimization (SEO) really well, bringing in an estimated 329,000 monthly visits from Google (data from Ahrefs’ Site Explorer).
Ranking for these keywords does two things:
- It introduces Solo Stove’s brand to people who may eventually purchase a fire pit from it.
- It gives the brand the opportunity to promote its products to an audience who may not have even known it existed, such as the “mosquito free backyard” keyword.
Moving on, skater brand Flatspot also does blogging well, with a cool ~80,000 monthly visitors to its blog just from search engines.
One of its tactics is to piggie-back on the popularity of new shoe releases from major brands like Nike, then use that traffic to get readers to buy the shoes directly from it:
Finally, let’s look at v-dog—a plant-powered kibble manufacturer that gets ~8,000 visits per month.
My favorite post it’s done is its guide to making wet dog food at home, which ranks for the featured snippet for “how to make wet dog food”:
This guide directly promotes v-dog’s product to make wet dog food. So people who search the query will be introduced to its brand and potentially buy its product to make their own wet dog food at home.
And there you have it—three examples of blogging for e-commerce that’s working right now. With that, let’s talk about how you can start your own blog.
Seven steps to start and grow an e-commerce blog
In my 10+ years as a professional SEO and freelance writer, I’ve worked with over a dozen e-commerce stores to help them grow their website traffic. I’ve also run several of my own e-commerce websites.
Do some keyword research
I never start a blog without first doing keyword research. Not only does this make coming up with blog topic ideas much easier, but it also ensures that every blog post you write has a chance to show up in Google search results and bring you free, recurring traffic.
While we wrote a complete guide to keyword research, here’s a quick and dirty strategy for finding keywords fast:
First, find a competitor who has a blog. Let’s say you’re selling dog food just like v-dog—if I search for “dog food” on Google, I can see some of my competition:
At this point, I look for relevant competitors. For example, Chewy and American Kennel Club are good competitors for research. But I’ll skip sites like Amazon and Walmart, as they are just too broad to get relevant data from.
Next, plug the competitor’s URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and click on the Organic keywords report to see the keywords its website ranks for on Google:
In this example, it has over 700,000 keywords. That’s way too many to sort through. Let’s add some filters to make things easier:
- First, set the KD (Keyword Difficulty) score to a maximum of 30 to find easier-to-rank-for keywords.
- Then we can exclude brand name keywords using the “Keywords” dropdown, set it to “Doesn’t contain,” and type in the brand name.
- If the website has /blog/ in its blog post URLs, you can also set a filter in the “URL” dropdown to “Contains” and type “blog” in the text field. In Chewy’s case, it doesn’t do that, but it does use a subdomain for its blog, which we can search specifically.
When you’re done, it should look like this:
- Minimum monthly search volume of 100
- Only keywords in positions #1–10
- Only show keywords containing “dog,” since my example website only sells dog food, not all animal food
Here’s what it looks like with these new filters applied:
Now I can find some more related keywords like “what to feed a dog with diarrhea” or “can dogs eat cheese.”
In addition to picking interesting keywords, you can also get an idea of how to become a topical authority on the topic of dog food by searching “dog food” in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer.
This keyword is extremely difficult to rank on page #1 for. However, if we go to the Related terms report and set the KD to a max of 30, we can see keyword ideas that are still relevant but may be easier to rank high in the search results.
Go through and click the gray + sign next to any keywords you may want to target to add them to your list of potential article ideas.
Create templates for future blog posts
One of the first things I do when I create a new blog is to establish a repeatable template that I use for every post. Typically, it looks something like this:
Within the article itself, I will use headers (H2s) and subheaders (H3s) to make my content easier to skim and to help Google understand what each section is about.
While you’re at it, you should also create a standard operating procedure (SOP) that you go through for every article. This could include writing guidelines, what to do with images, formatting, tone, etc.
Outline your article
I never dive into writing an article without outlining it first. An outline ensures the article is well structured and planned before you start writing, and it bakes SEO right into your writing process. It’s another big time-saver.
Typically, you want this outline to include:
- Potential title or titles of the article
- Target keyword
- Brief description of the article angle
- Links to competing articles on Google for research
- Headers and subheaders, with brief descriptions of the section as needed
Here’s a look at part of an example outline I’ll either send to my writers or write myself:
Write, optimize, and publish your post
Next up, it’s time to write your article. As you write more articles, you’ll find what works for you—but you may find it easier to fill in the sections then go back and write the intro once the article is finished.
Here are a few writing tips to help you become a better writer:
- Ditch the fluff – If a word isn’t needed to bring a point across, cut it.
- Keep your paragraphs short – Two to three lines per paragraph is plenty, especially for mobile readers where the screen width is shorter.
- Use active voice over passive voice – Here is a guide for that.
Once you’ve written your article, do some basic on-page SEO to help it rank higher in search results:
- Ensure your article has one H1 tag – The title of the article.
- Have an SEO-friendly URL – Include the keyword you’re targeting, but keep it short and easy to read.
- Link to other pages on your site using proper anchor text – Here’s a guide for that.
Finally, publish your post and give yourself a pat on the back.
Add product promotions, email opt-ins, and internal links
Before you promote your content, there are a few things you can do to squeeze more ROI from it—namely, you should add a way for people to either push them through the funnel toward purchasing a product or subscribe to your email list. I’ll give an example of each.
First, Solo Stove wrote an article titled “Ambiance Is A Girl’s Best Friend,” where it promotes its tiny Solo Stove Mesa as a way of improving a space’s ambiance:
Beyond directly promoting your products in the articles, you can also add email opt-ins that give people a percentage off their orders. You may lose a little money on the initial order. But once you get someone’s email address, you can promote to them again and get multiple orders from them.
For example, Primary sells kids’ clothing and uses this email pop-up to promote money off its products after you spend a certain amount of time on its website:
Finally, when you publish an article, you should make it a point to add internal links to your new article from older articles.
This won’t be as important for your first few because you won’t have a ton of articles. But as your blog grows, it’s an important part of the process to ensure your readers (and Google) can still find your articles and that they aren’t buried deep on your site.
Promote your content
At this point, your content is live and optimized for both conversions and search engines. Now it’s time to get some eyeballs on it.
We have an entire guide to content promotion you should read, but here are some highlights:
- Send the article to your email list if you have one
- Consider running paid ads to your article
There’s a lot more you can do to promote a piece, including reaching out to other blog owners. But I won’t cover all of that here.
The other important piece of promoting your content is getting other website owners to link to your new articles. This is called link building, and it’s a crucial part of SEO.
There are many ways to build links. Some of the most popular include:
Link building is an entire subject on its own. If you’re serious about blogging and getting search traffic, it’s a crucial skill to learn.
Scale your efforts
The final step in blogging for e-commerce is scaling up your efforts by creating repeatable processes for each step and hiring people to do the tasks you yourself don’t need to be doing.
You can hire freelance writers, outreach specialists, editors, and more. You can put together a full SEO team for your business.
If you’re not in a place to start hiring, there are still things you can do to squeeze more output from your time, such as creating the SOPs I mentioned earlier.
Final thoughts
This guide will hopefully help you start your e-commerce blog and publish your first post. But remember that success with blogging doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, it takes three to six months on average to see any results from your SEO efforts. Keep learning and be patient.
Disclaimer: The information set forth above is provided by Ahrefs independently of Alibaba.com. Alibaba.com makes no representation and warranties as to the quality and reliability of the seller and products.
A business really flourishes when there is always an inflow of knowledge. In the digital world, blogs are a major source of learning for any type of business, including e-commerce.
Don’t forget to bookmark the article as you may want to check it later.
And as you know, we are always open to hear your suggestions.
2xEcommerce
A blog of strategic growth for online retailers.
Foundr
SEO is one of the key factors in inbound marketing and Backlinko is one of the sources you should keep on mind when it comes to e-commerce SEO. Brian Dean – the founder of the blog – is popular with his listings and lengthy articles.
BigCommerce
The BigCommerce blog delivers news, strategy and success stories to power 2 times growth for scaling brands. With their free ebooks, you can learn the latest e-commerce trends and tips related to marketing.
Blueacorn
Blueacorn is an e-commerce agency dedicated to integrating intelligence into the design and optimization services. Their blog provides articles related to online marketing, optimization and news related to Magento.
Blue Stout
Blue Stout is a development company specializing in traction related to e-commerce companies. Their blog covers articles related to a/b testing, Shopify optimization and responsive design.
Bootstrapping Ecommerce
A blog features articles on working with tight budgets to help people with ecommerce marketing. Topics like SEO, PPC, Social Media are included.
Brainsins
Brainsins is a company focused on helping online retailers to boost their sales by means of personalization. Articles related to product recommendations and online marketing can be found on their blog.
Buffer
Thoughts on every aspect of social media like converting, analyzing and creating.
Conversion Voodoo
Articles related to landing page optimization and tips.
Conversion XL
Covers articles related to e-commerce implementation.
Dynamic Yield
Personalization and conversion optimization blog.
ECommerce Fuel
Ecommerce Influence is an online agency whose aim is to help ecommerce shop owners progress from selling their first product to running their first business. In their blog they cover articles related to online marketing.
Ecommerce Platforms
Get free e-commerce tips, news and inspiring ideas.
Get Elastic
Tips, tricks, news and commentary related to ecommerce world.
Hubspot
Latest sales and marketing tips, trends and ebooks.
KISSmetrics
A blog about analytics, marketing and testing.
Lemonstand
Provides best practices, customer stories, technical issues and Magento news on the blog.
Marketing Profs
Thousands of articles related to e-commerce marketing.
The Moz
Anything related to e-commerce SEO.
My Wife Quit Her Job
Podcasts and articles related to e-commerce conversion rate optimization and e-commerce tips.
Nerd Marketing
The founder – Drew Sanocki – covers data-driven digital marketing for online retailers.
Nosto
Provides best e-commerce tips, tricks and news.
Optimizely
A blog about e-commerce landing page optimization, conversion rates, and personalization.
Paymill
A blog about online payments, marketing and e-commerce advice.
PFS Web
A collection of merchant stories and industry insights to help e-commerce stores to start and grow their online business.
Practical Ecommerce
Provides in-depth articles and listings to help e-commerce sites to succeed in online marketing.
Presta Shop
Covers e-commerce tips and advice, e-commerce in general.
Prisync
As a shameless plug, we encourage you to check out the rest of our blog!
Quick Sprout
A blog about e-commerce referral marketing. There are also in-depth articles and case studies included.
Sailthru
Mostly covers articles on e-commerce customer retention and optimization.
Search Engine Land
A leading daily publication that covers all aspects of the search marketing industry.
Segmentify
Useful tips related to conversion optimization and online marketing in e-commerce.
SemRush
Thoughts and informative articles on e-comemrce SEO, social media marketing, optimization and paid marketing.
Ship Station
Covers articles related to shipment process of ecommerce sites.
Shopify
It’s a blog of Mastercard mostly related to payment solutions in e-commerce.
Smart Insights
Spyfu is a software as a service that shows yours and competitors performance on Google Adwords and SEO. In their blog, you can find articles related to PPC channels, SEO and keyword optimization. Quick solutions and in-depth tutorials parts are also should be seen.
Store Growers
Loyalty is one of the factors that e-commerce sites keep an eye and Sweet Tooth Rewards is one of the best resources in loyalty programs and customer retention.
The Future of Commerce
The Future of Customer Engagement and Commerce is a great destination for relevant and timely information and analysis on commerce topics, both consumer-facing and business-to-business. The purpose of the site is to keep its readers ahead of the commerce trends with daily updates that are informational, educational and entertaining.
Trinity Insight
Covers articles related to landing page and conversion optimization.
Volusion
Volusion’s e-commerce blog – Ecommerce Insights – is an industry-leading e-commerce design and marketing blog providing entrepreneurs and small business owners useful information, resources and inspiration to establish and grow their online businesses.
Wordstream
Anything you want to learn related to e-commerce paid marketing, SEO and content marketing too.
Bonus
Covers articles related to customer support, design, marketing and product management.
Oberlo
Covers free dropshipping tips and resources to grow your business.
Sleeknote
Anything related to email marketing.
The Raven
Anything related to SEO, marketing and UX.
YotPo
Great eCommerce resource full of tips, guides, case studies and information.
Shift4Shop
Anything related while creating your online store, e-commerce marketing, useful resources, SEO tips.