How To Grow An E-commerce Blog In 10 Steps

Intro

Do you think product and collection pages are the only ways to drive sales for your e-commerce store?

Big alert!

One of the best avenues to drive extra organic traffic and sales is through a blog. For example, Chewy; a pet e-commerce giant, gets 1.2M organic visits from their blog every month.

Imagine the sales and brand recognition their blog is contributing.

In this article today, you’ll learn how to grow your e-commerce blog in 10 easy steps. So you get:

• More brand authority.
• Increased organic traffic.
• An additional sales channel.
• Enhanced customer engagement.

Let’s get started. I promise it will be an actionable roadmap.

Step 1: Finding the right keywords to target

The first step is to find the blog keywords you want to write articles on. If you have the investment, choose paid keyword research tools of Ranktracker or Ahrefs.

If you’re short on cash, you can carry out free keyword research using ChatGPT, Google Keyword Planner or Answer The Public.

Depending on the keyword difficulty and intent, let’s break down these keywords into 3 types.

1. High-intent keywords

These are the keywords that have a buying intent. You can also call them commercial keywords. For instance, if you have an e-commerce store selling home décor items, keywords like:

• Home décor gifts for couples
• Best table decorations for Christmas

Will be your high-intent keywords. Generally, articles on these keywords will be list posts.

2. Medium-intent keywords

These are the keywords that make up the mind of your reader to purchase your products. In the purchase journey, they are just one step behind the high-intent keywords.

Some medium-intent keywords can be:

• DIY home décor projects
• Best home décor styles for small spaces
• Cool stuff for kids room

3. Low-intent keywords

These keywords are purely informational. The motive behind targeting them is to build authority and provide answers to your readers regarding their queries.

Some examples can be:

• Tips for arranging furniture in a small apartment.
• Ways of organizing a cluttered kitchen.
• Home décor tips for a lawn.

Try to find the keywords that have a low keyword difficulty (KD) score so you can rank on search engines easily. As a rule of thumb, anything below 10 is considered low.

(Image Source: Ahrefs)

Once you’ve developed some authority in the eyes of Google, you can start targeting difficult keywords also.

Also, during this process, don’t write every article with the intention of ranking it. Every niche has some topics that need to be discussed necessarily. Cover those, as well.

Step 2: Research of topics by writers

Once you have finalized the keywords, you have to forward them to the writers. They must carry out insightful topic research before jumping into the writing part.

Here is how to do it.

1. Leverage top 10 results

To ensure you stand out with unique content, carry out a SERP analysis of the top 10 results for a keyword and find out important information to mention. Also, identify content gaps, important keywords to target or unmentioned details. This is called content gap analysis.

2. Go to YouTube.

YouTube is a diamond mine of information. Enter the main keyword into the search bar and see the videos that come as results. With 3.7 million videos uploaded daily, you’re bound to find relevant and updated information there.

3. Get into forums

Forums like Reddit and Quora are goldmines for writers to collect insightful information on diverse topics. The best thing about them is that real people ask questions from professionals and get honest replies from contributors and experts.

Your writers can simply enter a variation of the keyword followed by “reddit” or “quora” on Google to get access to the threads.

And you would get loads of useful information.

(Image source: Reddit)

Your writers can rephrase the information while writing the articles or simply externally link the respective thread.

4. Dig into questions & queries

Let’s be honest. Most of the people around the world get their answers from search engines by entering question-based queries. And with the rise of voice search, this has become even more important.

There are platforms like AlsoAsked that give you tens of questions related to your topic. Since these are real questions people are typing in the search engines, it’s a smart approach to optimize your content to align with them.

(Image source: AlsoAsked)

These questions will also provide sub-topic ideas for each article that your writers are going to write. You can use the “People Also Ask” section of Google to find relevant questions, as well.

Answer these questions in your articles and improve your chances of ranking in this section.

Step 3: Research of keywords by writers

What good is an SEO article without the use of keywords, right? After all, search engines understand the theme of your articles based on the relevant keywords you use.

So, in addition to incorporating your main keyword in important places like:

• H1 heading.
• First 100 words.
• URL.
• H2/H3 heading.
• Last paragraph.
• Meta titles.

You also need to consider other related keywords. This makes sure you don’t just rank for the main keyword but all sorts of related keywords, too. How do you get them?

1. Find secondary keywords

Secondary keywords refer to the keywords that are closely related to your main keyword. When you include these in your articles, you’re, in fact, covering the topic in detail and helping search engines to understand your topic better.

You can find them from tools like Ahrefs. Just click the Matching terms, Related terms or Search suggestions tab in the top left corner.

(Image source: Ahrefs)

2. Find LSI terms

LSI, or Latent Semantic Indexing terms are the terms that are contextually relevant to your main keyword. E.g some LSI terms for “home décor gifts for couples” will be “romantic,” “perfect gift,” “newly married” and “gift guide.”

Although their usage is not a ranking factor, but nonetheless, they help search engines to determine the overall topic of an article. You can easily find them through the bold terms in the “Related Searches” present at the footer of Google’s first page.

3. Find long-tail keywords

These keywords are generally longer in length than your primary keyword and have a low search volume + competition.

Since they are generally easier to rank, optimizing the articles for them is always a good idea. You can find them through Ahrefs. This is what Steven, founder of TrioSEO does.

(Image source: LinkedIn)

or free resources like:

• ranktracker.com
• Google Autosuggest.
• Keywordtool.io

Step 4: Writing the articles

Only once you’re done with the research, should you turn towards the actual writing part. This step is crucial because it's only then that you can write with a clear path ahead, avoiding any bumps in the road. (e.g. finding keywords, researching the topic, etc).

1. Structure it well

The average attention span of web visitors is only 8 seconds. That means your content should be formatted and structured in a top-notch manner for mobile and desktop users both.

I asked Tom Spruce, an experienced freelance B2C & e-commerce writer and this is what he said:

So structure your articles through headings and sub-headings.

(Image source: Ranktracker)

Format the content through bullets, graphs and tables.

(Image source: Backlinko, Backlinko)

And have short paragraphs of 2-4 lines.

All these steps improve the readability of your articles.

2. Use simple but creative language

The SEO articles on your e-commerce blog will be read by people from all around the world, each with varying levels of proficiency in English reading. Which means the content should be written in a simple language. But mind it, it shouldn’t be as dull as dishwasher.

Maintain a grade level of 6-9 (using Hemmingway Editor).

(Image source: Hemmingway)

3. Add internal & external links

Internal links (links pointing to other pages of your website) improve the indexing, pass link juice from one page to another and help search engines to understand the hierarchy of the articles.

Make sure your writers add at least 5-6 relevant internal links with contextual anchor texts, in each of the articles.

(Image source: Ahrefs)

Also, they should add at least 3-4 external links as well. Why? Because Google likes it when you link to trustworthy resources. And it also enhances the user experience of your readers.

4. Write clickable meta titles & descriptions

A good meta title and description are pivotal in improving the CTR (Click-through rate) of your articles. The more attractive and clickable they are, the more will be the chances that your readers click them.

If more visitors are clicking on your meta titles on the SERPs, this will send a signal to search engines that this article is highly useful for the reader and they’ll push it up the ranking.

Some of the best practices in this regard are:

• Including a number.
• Integrating an emotion.
• Adding a parenthesis.
• Summarizing the main topic idea.
• Writing is under 60 characters. And meta description under 160 characters.

Step 5: Adding/designing images & infographics

I mentioned the diminishing attention span of web readers earlier. Images and infographics are a great way to get their attention. And increase the dwell time for your articles.

Add high-quality and relevant images after every 100-300 words of your content. You can use websites like Pinterest, Instagram & Unsplash for them.

(Image source: The Spruce)

If you have an in-house graphic designer, that’s better because then, you can make personalized images and infographics.

Infographics are great for capturing attention. They explain complex concepts in an attractive and simplified manner. This one by Backlinko is a good example.

(Image source: Backlinko)

Step 6: Publishing on the CMS

After the final editing of the articles, it’s time to publish them on the CMS (like WordPress). Perform final checks like optimizing the URLs, finalizing the shopping links, correcting technical errors, etc. If it’s convenient, try to follow a fixed posting time. This improves the indexing speed of the pages.

Step 7: Generating backlinks (Off-page SEO)

Content alone will not rank your articles. You would need backlinks, too. According to Backlinko, it’s an important ranking factor, and, “They act like votes of confidence. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your website will rank.

That’s where Off-page SEO comes into play. Here are 3 popular ways of getting backlinks.

1. Guest posting

Look for websites that accept guest posts relevant to your products and pitch them your content contributions through emails. Look for websites that have high domain authority. That way, the backlinks you get will be more powerful.

2. Broken link building

This includes finding website pages that have broken links (404 error), reaching out to them and letting them know that you have a similar article or product to swap in its place.

3. Link insertion

This entails contacting a website owner who has published a relevant article to your niche (e.g. home décor or kitchen).

You ask them to add your article’s link as an addition which will make their content more helpful and relevant to their audience.

Step 8: Making content clusters

Content clustering stands out as one of the most effective SEO strategies to incorporate into your content marketing efforts.

It involves creating closely related topic clusters and linking them to one another through internal links. There’s one pillar article surrounded by cluster articles.

(Image source: Semrush)

For example, if you’ve written a comprehensive pillar article on “best home décor products,” you can write cluster articles like “best home décor products for living room,” “best home décor products for bedroom,” and “how to choose the best home décor products.”

An e-commerce marketplace, Inspire Uplift has done it beautifully in their blog.

(Image source: Inspire Uplift)

This strategy aids in developing topical authority that in turn, allows you to rank for more keywords. It also demonstrates E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).

Find out keywords for your pillar and cluster pages and publish successive articles on them. You can have as many clusters as you want for your e-commerce blog.

Step 9: Updating the content

One of the top digital marketers, Neil Patel is a fan of content update. He says that instead of focusing all your attention on writing new articles, you can easily update your old content to improve rankings. And I agree with it wholeheartedly.

Because your old articles have already developed some authority in the eyes of Google, it requires less hard work to tweak them a bit for better rankings rather than creating fresh articles.

Here are some ways to update your content:

• Fix broken links.
• Add fresh media.
• Add new sections.
• Link to better resources.
• Target new long-tail keywords.
• Remove irrelevant information.
• Update meta title and description.
• Correct grammar and spelling mistakes.

Step 10: Keeping technical SEO strong

The final step in improving your e-commerce blog's SEO is focusing on the technical aspects.

1. Fix indexing issues

• Try to publish your articles at a fixed time.
• Ensure that the site structure is simple so search engines can navigate it easily.
• And delete orphan pages.

These are some of the techniques that will improve your blog’s indexing.

2. Fix broken links

Install a broken link checker and locate all the broken links in your blog. Then, either change them with new links or remove the hyperlink from them.

Having broken links devalues your SEO efforts because they hamper the user experience and create a hurdle in passing link juice.

3. Remove zombie pages

These are your articles that are not generating any organic traffic even though they’ve been published for quite some time. It’s good that you get rid of them so the crawl budget can be saved.

4. Locate any no-index tags

No index tags mean the search engines cannot index your articles. It’s a technical blunder, to be honest. If you find any such tags, rectify them. But make sure you’re not indexing all sorts of blog pages e.g. author bios and tag pages.

Bottom line

Having an optimized blog can enhance your e-commerce sales and build brand authority. In my view, it’s one of the best techniques to multiply your revenue.

Hope you learned the complete process of growing your e-commerce blog through this article. Now it’s time to implement it on your personal stores and marketplaces. Good luck.