Most ecommerce businesses use various marketing strategies to reach potential customers online, including SEO and paid advertising. But apart from these, one of the most powerful ways to grow an ecommerce business is through a blog.
Whether you write content yourself or hire freelance writers, regularly updating a blog with fresh content is one of the most cost-effective ways to market your business online.
If you’re new to blogging or simply wondering whether adding a blog to your ecommerce website is worth it, here are five good reasons why you should seriously consider it.
1.Boost Online Visibility and Website Traffic
One of the main goals for any ecommerce company should be to drive website traffic to the online store in order to convert visitors into customers. Using paid advertising is one approach, but it has its limitations. First, you may have a limited budget to spend on advertising. Second, not all consumers trust ads from brands (see below).
This is why many businesses create a blog. By regularly adding new content—including relevant keywords, links, and metadata—to a blog, it’s more likely to show up higher in search engine results pages for relevant search queries. The more relevant pages you have on your site, the more likely it is that a potential customer will see one of your page links in search engine results and click through to your site.
According to one study, companies that update their blog regularly generate 55 percent more website visits, and receive 97 percent more links to their website.
2. Organic Search Results Are More Credible
Not all consumers trust paid search results. With ads, many people tend to tune out. In fact, up to 70 percent of the click-throughs from search engine results pages are from organic links.
When blog content shows up naturally in search results, it’s because it’s relevant to the search query and therefore more likely to be of interest to your target audience. While running paid advertising campaigns can work for certain promotions, it’s not always the cost-effective route to take, especially if you’re on a tight budget.
3. Build a Trustworthy Reputation
One of the best things about a blog is that the content it contains can remain online for as long as you want it to. This means that it’s always available for people to find when they’re looking for answers online. Just make sure you write about things that will interest your target audience—for example, tips and tricks, tutorials, and breaking news.
There’s something about offering free information that makes your brand seem more trustworthy and credible—as long as the content is useful. Blogs are also a great space to highlight your brand values and showcase your personality.
4. Engage Customers and Increase Loyalty
Once people have found useful information on your blog, they’re more likely to remember you and revisit your site. A well-maintained blog becomes a trusted source of information that keeps people engaged with your brand and makes them feel a part of a community.
With a good product, most companies can make a sale. However, only the companies with the most interesting, useful content keep customers coming back to buy more.
It’s difficult to get people talking about your business if you don’t have much content to share. With regular blog content, on the other hand, you’ll have a growing resource of content that people can share with others again and again.
Whenever you create a new blog post, you can share it on social media with a unique URL that links to the blog page. This will create more backlinks to your site, which further boosts your SEO. Don’t forget to add share buttons after each blog post that also link back to your social media accounts.
Not sure what to blog about? You’ll find various ideas you can take inspiration from in our post: “Five Must-Write Blog Topics for Your Ecommerce Business”
The good thing about blog content is that while you have the reader’s attention, you can direct them to other pages on your site, including product pages. So, your blog can become a long-term platform to drive conversions and sales.
The Bottom Line
There are many reasons why ecommerce companies need blog content, but these five should convince you to start blogging, if you’re not already. Post frequently and you should start to see the benefits, including more website traffic and sales.
Is blogging a key part of your online marketing strategy? If you need to get started or you’re struggling to meet your content demands, you can get all your blog content from Constant Content, including images.