Blogging for Ecommerce: 6 Reasons to Start a Blog
If you are questioning yourself whether your e-commerce website should have a blog then you are on the right path. Many online entrepreneurs often underestimate the importance of blogging in their marketing strategy thinking it’s a waste of time and effort. A good blog can help your online business get noticed on SERPs. It can help you get quality traffic organically for your eCommerce store. More traffic means more customers and through blogging, you can educate your audience about the products and services you have. The more informed your customers are the more recognition your brand will have. If people are aware of your brand you have a better chance of driving leads and sales. By posting regularly you establish yourself as an authority. But wait, - there’s more, blogging is a free marketing and SEO tool that can help your company stand out as the competition is fierce nowadays. How can you beat that?
Adding a blog to your website and writing articles consistently can create a huge opportunity for growth. Even though it may sound easy but blogging isn’t a walk in the park. It is extra work. It is a tricky and time-consuming process and it requires effort and attention.
So, is it worth it to include a blog on your e-commerce website?
The answer is yes, it is totally worth it.
This article will cover the top reasons why your e-commerce store needs a blog.
But before we go into that, let’s start with the definition of a blog. Then we’ll talk about how it is different from a website.
What is a Blog?
Social media is a great way to connect with people but what if Facebook, Instagram or Twitter posts aren’t enough to share your thoughts? What are you going to do? What if you want to reach a wider audience with your message? That’s where a blog could be of great use.
A blog is a type of website that serves as an online journal or informational resource where new content is published regularly. Information is displayed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent posts being presented first at the top. It is a place where you post short or long articles on different topics.
What’s the difference between a blog and a website?
As you can see, the biggest difference between a blog and a website is that the former is updated frequently when a new blog post is published, while the latter is static and doesn’t need frequent updates.
Unlike blogs, a website is easier to manage because it doesn’t require a lot of time and work. You don’t have to write the posts every single week or month unless you need to add new products or services or change addresses.
But when you have a blog and you publish a new blog post, it appears in reverse chronological order as you can see in the example below.
The most recent posts are displayed at the top of the page. It allows your visitors to find the most recent articles with ease. Blogs also allow interaction through “commenting”.
A blog can be a website itself or a part of your eCommerce website where you can inform and educate your customers but not all websites are blogs.
Why Is a Blog Important for Your Ecommerce store?
The blog is an affordable marketing tool and it is still effective in 2022. It is a perfect way to answer your customers’ questions about your products. If your customers frequently contact you with “How do I do such and such?” inquiries you can just direct them to an instructional blog article. But there’s one thing you need to remember and it is quite important. You should avoid writing solely about your products. You really don’t want your whole blog to sound too “salesy”. The idea is that you want to create high-quality content that interests your target audience. You should always write with consumers in mind. Write about topics they search for. Google loves great content and a good blog can benefit you, especially in the long run.
Adding a blog to your e-commerce website might be something you’ve been thinking about lately. But if you need further convincing, read on to find out.
1. E-commerce Blogging Improves your SEO
Search engines index all of the content on the internet, and they only provide results that are suitable to the searcher’s query. By providing relevant blog content that answers their queries you can significantly expand your business reach. With so much free content on the Internet, it’s critical to answer important questions for your customers or potential customers.
Blogging for your eCommerce store is an actionable step to improve your SEO and it shows that you understand your customer’s needs. To improve your visibility, insert search engine-optimized keywords into your content. In order to inform search engines about the content of your site, keywords are essential. For example, Google Trends API is a great tool if you want to search certain keywords in a large volume. Write SEO-friendly blog post titles that drive traffic along with relevant and useful information about your industry or niche. From SEO and customer value perspective, blogging is crucial for the success of your online business. It makes your online store visible, searchable, and competitive.
Share your new compelling posts on different social media platforms. If you create targeted blog posts, your visitors will share them with others. Your content will be easier to find via search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and etc. You’ll drive more inbound traffic and you’ll also get backlinks to your website. The quality of backlinks really matters as they affect your ranking. This way you can climb to the top of search results and it will put you in the spotlight. That’s the beauty of free marketing.
Blogging will also increase the amount of content your eCommerce site has and the more pages you have indexed, the more people might come across your website. You will drive more ecommerce traffic organically.
2. Blogging Helps you Develop your Brand
As an e-tailer, your online business should have its own brand voice and personality. Blogging gives you a perfect opportunity to introduce yourself, tell your business story, what you stand for, what’s going on with your business, and prove the benefits of your products. It is a great way to humanize your brand. It helps your potential customers see that you’re not always about selling.
Blogging for your eCommerce business also allows you to connect with your audience on a deeper level as we humans are emotional creatures. Your “soon-to-be” customers would want to know more about you. So, if you tell a good story, they are more likely to respond well to it. The more they know about you, the more they trust you. Your brand is your promise to them. Do what you say you will do.
Don’t forget about visuals. They are everything. Make sure you include high-quality product images in some of your blog posts. Images have power and they give your words more authority.
Make your blog and social media profiles work together. It’s critical to your e-сommerce brand. This way you can improve your customer engagement and organically build an online community for your business, and products.
3. Blogging Establishes you as the Go-To expert in your Niche
It doesn’t matter if your eCommerce business is big or small, product-based or service-based, blogging gives you an opportunity to provide well-thought, accurate information that brings value to your customers. It costs you only time. People would see you as an authority in your niche. By publishing relevant online content you let your customers know that you are the real deal. You know what you are talking about and you know about your industry.
Having a blog on your eCommerce store allows you to share tips, tricks, how-to’s, and the latest eCommerce trends. Giving your customers what they want positions you as an authoritative figure and attracts more customers to your site. When your content is relevant you tell search engines and fellow entrepreneurs that you are trustworthy. This results in more traffic and sales.
4. Blogging Helps you Talk Deeply About your Products and Services
Short product descriptions that simply describe products are a common mistake among online merchants that don’t have a blog on their site. Of course, you don’t want to overwhelm your consumer with too much information but you need to be more descriptive and precise. Writing a well-crafted blog post about your product is essential to your business. You need to make sure that you are targeting the right keywords to boost quality traffic to your online store.
Your product descriptions tell your prospective customers why they should choose you and you should be creative when writing blog posts. You can write guides, tips, product comparison articles, etc. Keep it simple, use eye-catching visuals and answer your customers’ questions in a fun and engaging way and you will bring more customers to your business. Having a good product description on your online shop can help you highlight key features of your product, convince the buyer of its benefits, and showcase your brand.
5. Blogging is a Proven Way to Drive Traffic
If you’ve got good writing skills and blog about things that interest your potential customers then you can increase traffic to your site. Blogging is a long-term investment when it comes to the SEO health of your eCommerce site. By doing it regularly, you are giving your customers more reasons to check your website and products. What’s more, Google loves new fresh content on websites. You can utilize AI writing tools like ChatGPT for the same. If you are wondering how to use ChatGPT, you enter the topic and it will generate the content for you. That’s enough reason for you to start blogging regularly. The more you write the more pages you add to your website. More pages mean more internal links. And internal links improve rankings.
Sometimes all it takes is one blog post to generate traffic for months. The more high-quality articles your produce the higher you rank on search engines like Google.
6. Blogging is The Free Marketing Tool you Should Be Using
When it comes to promoting your business online, blogging is one of the best free advertising tools available to you. By writing compelling valuable articles you can generate a steady flow of visitors to your website for free. More visitors means more traffic, and you can transform that traffic into paying customers. As we’ve told before quality content can help you get relevant traffic from search engines and you should always keep your target audience in mind. Your blog should captivate your readers, educate them, and influence their decision to purchase your products or services.
Conclusion
Now that you know all the benefits of blogging it’s time for you to take action. Blogging can be an important part of your content marketing strategy. It is totally free and it can help you grow your authority online, establish a strong client base, and turn your website visitors into leads. It is certainly worth your time, but it is not easy. You need to be consistent and you should work hard to see results as it is a long-term strategy. Make sure you write blog posts that your readers would love to read as relevancy is a must. Your e-commerce store definitely needs a blog as it can be an information hub where people will go to find answers to their e-commerce questions. Blogging will give you an edge over your competitors because there’s no shortage of e-commerce stores out there competing for your customers’ attention. You need to be different to stand out.