For all e-commerce websites, SEO plays a significant role in web traffic and converting sales, and if there’s a brick and mortar location as well, foot traffic and in-store sales can also increase. Blogging may only be one of the many strategies of on-site SEO, but there is a specific way to go about it to make sure each blog makes the biggest impact possible.
Title:
The title of a blog serves as the reader’s first clue to what the post is about, or in other terms, its purpose. While blogs are shorter and much more conversational, their titles should be similar to one of a research paper, highlighting the main points and the questions that are going to be answered throughout the piece.
In addition to this thought, headlines should also contain enough word balance for it to be understandable yet catchy — something people will be intrigued to click on. According to CoSchedule’s headline analyzer, these are some of the points to consider:
Word Balance: A mixture of common, uncommon, emotional, and powerful words. Running your desired title through this tool will give you an idea of how much of each word you have.
Length: “Headlines with approx 6 words tend to earn the highest number of click-throughs.”
Keywords: “Headlines should include searchable keywords and phrases so that readers can find your content easily.”
Sentiment: “Headlines that convey strong positive or negative emotions tend to perform better.”
With these points said, it’s also beneficial to consider what your headline will look like when it comes up in a search result. Believe it or not, this plays a role in clicks, shares and SEO. It’s best to display a full, clean headline rather than one that is cut off. A preview of how it would appear can been seen through CoSchedule’s headline analyzer, as well as various plugins such as Yoast SEO.
Write for Your Audience:
When writing for your audience, you must consider two main parties, existing customers and potential customers. Existing customers are the ones already making purchases through your website. Potential customers are the ones that end up on your blog, whether by search or they’ve been there before, and your goal should be to turn them into customers. The blog visitors that aren’t converting are at least enjoying your content. Continue to share the same content, but try to find ways to make it better. Maybe you’re not sharing enough links to related products, or maybe you don’t have enough imagery. You could also be failing to mention the benefits. Do this for your potential customers, but don’t neglect your existing ones.
For existing ones, do your research. Create a content schedule based on what type of products are being sold. It could be a good idea to create some blog posts that highlight other products that might pair well with your best sellers. It’s also a good idea to take note of how they’re getting to the checkout page. This can help you tighten up your blogging strategy even more.
Keyword Usage & Linking:
Your own blog is one of the best places to utilize keywords, especially since you have control over which ones and how they’re incorporated in the sentence. While you can try to get those who use or share your content to keep the anchor text you’ve placed, it’s not guaranteed.
After performing keyword research and narrowing down which are most applicable to your blog post and website, you’ll have to work it into your post naturally. For an e-commerce blog, branded, buying intent and product-related keywords are the main ones to look out for.
It’s also important to avoid keyword stuffing. Just because it’s your content and you have control over it, it can hurt your website in the long run. Keyword stuffing is not only negative SEO, which is frowned upon by Google, it’s unappealing and inconvenient for readers. You want to make sure you’re only linking to relevant, purposeful content that adds value to the post. You’ll lose readers’ interest if they’re clicking out to random links.
Meta Descriptions & SEO Titles:
The SEO title is slightly different than the blog title, as it shows up in the search preview like mentioned in the above “Title” section. For the most part, you’ll want to keep the wording the same, but you’ll want to add your brand to the end separated by symbols (- or |). An example of this is: E-Commerce Blogging Tips for SEO – Fourth Source. If it doesn’t fit properly in the SEO title, take out any unnecessary words or shorten it to something similar.
The SEO title is part of the gateway to the blog post and you’ll want it to be clean and optimized. The other part of the gateway is the meta description, a short description of what’s to be seen on the page. Since search engines like Google want to display the best and most convenient results for their users, it’s encouraged to have a meta description for every post. This is also a way to strengthen your keywords. Utilize one or two keywords within the meta description as long as they make sense.
Local Focus:
As expressed by our SEO company, Always Found, “having a local SEO presence is paramount when you are a brick and mortar business – and there is a science behind it.” Doing the occasional post about events or other businesses in your area can increase your blog’s views. Not only are other companies in the area recognizing you and possibly sharing the content about them, you’re increasing your local audience as a whole. Local individuals may check your blog to see what’s going on in the community. When your blog becomes a source for information other than product-related information, you’re doing it right.
Call to Action:
Always wrap it up with a call to action to persuade your audience to go the next step with the content provided. Ultimately, the call to action will be related to the actual post (check out a product, sign up for discount codes, etc.), but there are general ones worth using as well if you don’t have a specific one in mind. While your main content matters the most, you do not want to end a post without one.
As a final note, remember that your e-commerce blog should not be solely about sales. Use it to educate, inspire and connect with your audience and local community.
