6 Reasons Why Your eCommerce Website Needs a Blog

Is content marketing a valuable strategy for eCommerce businesses? While it’s certainly possible to sell products and services online without creating a lot of content, so many online businesses focus on their products and the ways they market them to online audiences.

However, doing so becomes quite risky because the content is the link that connects an eCommerce store and search engines. Google, for example, needs websites to provide content to help with better indexing, so it could be said that the success of an online store largely depends on its brand visibility across the search engines used by their target customers.

While this reason alone makes strong content a critical component in the success of eCommerce businesses, there are many other important reasons why your online store should have a blog.

• Drive traffic.
• Improve SEO ranking.
• Provide value.
• Increase brand loyalty.
• Create shareable content.
• Get valuable feedback from your customers.

As a business owner, you should have a good understanding of how each of these reasons is important to the success of your venture, so let’s review them in this article.

Reason #1: A Blog Drives Traffic

This one is pretty obvious. Google and other search engines need strong content that people can use to meet their information needs, so if a store doesn’t produce that content, chances are its position in the search results won’t be high.

There’s evidence to support this, too. Content Marketing Institute, for example, found that online businesses publishing 16+ blog entries a month enjoy almost 3.5 times more traffic than those publishing between zero and four entries.

The mechanism behind this success is simple: a blog gives you better visibility on search engines, therefore, more people are exposed to your content.

Reason #2: A Blog Improves SEO Ranking

Content creation is widely regarded as the most effective SEO technique, and for good reason. According to the aforementioned Content Marketing Institute research, websites with blogs have 434 percent more indexed pages than those without blogs.

Once again, the secret is quite simple: by creating content that your target audience finds helpful, you’re creating thousands of little pathways all over the web that lead back to your website. And, the more relevant your content is, the more chances you get to rank high.

Here are some of the ways in which content can improve your website’s SEO ranking:

• Publishing frequency. Google appreciates if a website produces a lot of good and popular content on a regular basis, so it deems it as more valuable to the users.
• Links. The number of links pointing towards a page with content is another important indicator that Google uses to define SEO ranking. Since content is the main source of links for eCommerce sites, writing guest posts and blog entries that have links to a certain piece of content can dramatically increase the latter’s position in the search results.

Reason #3: A Blog Provides Value to Customers

According to Google’s content creation guidelines, the usefulness of content for users is one of the most important elements that define a website’s position in the search results. In fact, the search giant makes it very clear by commanding content creators to “give visitors the information they’re looking for” and avoid low-quality content, which is a sure-fire way to destroy the credibility of a site and make it irrelevant in the eyes of Google.

Since 88 percent of consumers research products and services online before buying, having your content ready is simply crucial to help them with their information needs and, ultimately, buy from you. Naturally, a lack of a blog with good content will eliminate you from this game altogether.

The most popular content types that provide the most value to online shoppers include:

• How-to articles. These are great for explaining how to accomplish a certain goal with a product or how to use it
• Videos. How-to videos could provide a product review and help viewers with using them properly
• Infographics. These can explain how to choose a good product or deliver useful information on a product range, industry, niche, etc.
• Customer-generated content. It provides additional evidence that a product/service or a business is worth considering
• Newsletters. These supply online shoppers with the latest news, sales, discounts, product introductions, and encourage them to buy.

Since creating this content requires a lot of writing, editing, and proofreading, eCommerce bloggers often use online tools as a safety net against common spelling, grammar, and other mistakes.

The list of available tools is quite long, so it’s recommended to read editing service reviews before using them; however, feel free to check out Grammarly and Hemingway Editor – these ones are quite popular and reliable.

Reason #4: A Blog Increases Brand Loyalty

There are two types of content that can help you achieve this goal: product/service-related and brand-related. For example, the first respective content type helps online shoppers with online research of products, this helps them with making a good choice and reduce the chance of getting a poor product.

Next, brand-related content introduces your company, describes why people should trust it, and how you work to be one of the best in your business. In other words, this content helps with building a positive online reputation and makes your business more ‘human.’

If you create quality, helpful content on a regular basis, you’re increasing the chance that people will continue to come to your site for useful information, therefore, you’re building a reputation of a brand that’s also a thought leader in the niche.

Reason #5: A Blog Increases Visibility on Social Media

According to a recent blogger survey by Orbit Media, almost 100 percent of bloggers promote their content on social media. This makes a perfect sense because social shares is essentially an organic way of promotion generated by readers/viewers of content.

If a person shares a piece of content on a certain product or service, chances are that person really wanted to do that, which makes the share much more trustworthy in the eyes of people who discover that content.

Since 91 percent of online shoppers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, creating sharable content is tremendously important for your eCommerce business.

Achieving this goal requires to meet the following:

• Create really useful content. if a visitor thinks that a piece of content on your website is useful for them to make an informed purchase or achieve other related goals, he or she is more likely to share that piece with friends on social media
• Make it clear how your content can help your target audiences. Describe the ways how your target audience can use your videos, how-to articles, and other content to achieve a certain goal such as spot a fake
• Include social media share buttons on your blog pages to make it easy for visitors to share them using their personal accounts.

If you’re struggling with coming up with sharable topics to write about, just ask your audience. Chances are they’re looking for a lot of specific information, so you can increase your readership by describing the topics they find relevant.

Reason #6: A Blog Allows to Collect Valuable Customer Feedback

As it was repeatedly mentioned above, your blog posts should cover topics your target audience finds the most interesting and relevant, which makes them a good way to collect additional feedback about those topics.

For example, you can encourage readers to leave comments and engage with you through the feedback form or social media. This way, you can get more information about the target audience’s preferences, interests, and concerns, and use it to improve your product and services.

What Should You Be Blogging About?

Now that you know how important having a blog on your eCommerce website is, we can talk about what you should blog about. There are a number of options – some of which were described above – but remember that you should write/make videos about topics that provide the most value to your target audience.

Ask your customers, check out the blogs of your competitors, use content discovery tools – do your homework before engaging in content marketing. Remember: every piece you create will have an impact on your brand’s bottom line. If you do this and remain consistent in your content creation effort, chances are high that your blog will become a go-to source of fresh and useful information for many people.