5-Steps to Boost Your eCommerce Blogging Results

The Benefits of an eCommerce Blog

You've likely been told that you need a blog for SEO right? Well, this is right and wrong.

You see, 'fresh' blog content isn't as significant to Google as we are told. If you look at the ranking factors that Google takes into account, the freshness of content is only 1 part of an enormous puzzle.

So how does your blog help you? By gaining auxiliary traffic!

By blogging about topics that your customers are actively looking for, and by providing them with answers to questions they are turning to Google to solve, you'll gain a tremendous amount of additional traffic to your website.

Before we go there, here are a few additional benefits of an eCommerce blog:

• They are useful in building your email list - You should offer compelling opt-in offers on your blog either via pop-up or sidebar offers to capture this valuable traffic.
• You can pixel your readers - If you have a remarketing pixel from Facebook or Google installed on your blog you can then follow up with your readers with relevant ads to convert them to buyers.
• They attract links - By writing great quality and useful content you'll likely attract natural, white hat links.
• Non-pitchy reason to post to social media - Your blog gives you content to share that builds relationships, not just sales pitches.

The 5 Steps To A Successful And Profitable eCommerce Blog

Below I've broken down my exact process to generating massive amounts of traffic from blogs. Each of these steps is important.

Step 1: Get Clear On The Purpose Of The Piece

There are only three purposes that a blog should ever be written:

1. To get organic traffic
2. To go viral
3. To pre-sell

For long term growth, you should run a 70:10:20 ratio. That is, 70% of your posts should be geared towards organic traffic, 10% should try to go viral, and 20% should position your readers to buy a product.

Step 2: Keyword Research

The second phase is to find the right keywords for your blog. To do this, I recommend using the Google Keyword Planner.

When choosing your keywords it's easier to rank for 'long tail' keywords than it is for 'short tail'. For example - Rather than writing a post about 'kids presents', narrow it down to '10-year-old boys presents'.

Step 3: Planning your article

Now it's time to start putting your article together. To get significant traction from your blog, there are a few best practices:

1. Build your title around your keyword - don't stuff it.
2. Use sub-headlines to provide dual readership pathways - There are two kinds of readers: those who read every word, and skimmers who only read subheadlines.

Step 4: Optimizing your article for SEO

• Always use only one H1 tag - Multiple H1's can confuse Google.
• Check your Meta Description is set - This helps improve click-through rates.
• Only show a snippet on your main blog page - Use the 'read more' tag.
• Internal Link from other posts where relevant - This helps distribute link juice evenly.

Step 5: Promoting your post

In the world of content marketing, you should spend twice as much time promoting your content as you do producing it.

The three fundamentals for blog promotion:

1. Social Media - Share on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and all channels you belong to.
2. Email marketing - At minimum, email your blog to your blog readers email list.
3. Getting links - Submit your blog feed to sites like alltop.com for fresh links.

eCommerce Blog Blueprint Wrap Up

So there you have it - A complete guide on how you can grow your website traffic and sales using your blog. Master the basics before investing time in advanced techniques.