6 Reasons Why Your eCommerce Store Needs A Blog
Do you know that there are over 570 million blogs on the internet, with 7 million + blogs being published every day?
Blogs allow creators to connect with their readers on a more intimate level and share thoughts or opinions from a personal standpoint. You can also offer a “comments” section where readers may engage with the author by asking questions or expressing their thoughts.
This is probably one of the biggest advantages of blogging. This interaction, if maintained properly, can skyrocket viewers’ engagement and encourage them to keep coming back for more.
This ability to hold viewers attention and present a flexible communication platform has made blogs a crucial part of modern-day marketing as well. This is especially true for eCommerce stores as their entire business model is based on attracting qualified traffic to their websites.
While most of your eCommerce site content is focused on products and their descriptions, a blog offers the freedom to share your brand’s values and stories directly with the customers. No wonder ‘blogs’ are given a special mention in all professional inbound marketing guides.
Blogging is the most affordable and effective digital marketing tool for eCommerce stores. While it’s true that starting and growing a successful blog demands a lot of hard work, the end rewards far outweigh it. From site engagement to lead conversions, the right blog can drive it all up.
If you’re still not convinced, then here are 6 reasons why your eCommerce store needs a blog.
1. Blogs help in boosting your SEO
The first benefit of adding a blog to your eCommerce store is improved SEO. Blogs that employ a number of on-page SEO techniques can help your store rank higher in search engines while also making it more interesting for visitors.
In addition to this, a blog that is regularly updated with high-quality, relevant content can make a tremendous difference in the overall performance of your eCommerce site. As Google does not wish to provide out-of-date information to its users, fresh and updated blog content will allow search engine algorithms to index your website more frequently.
Blogs also allow you to add long-tail keywords to your site that are otherwise quite difficult to be used in product pages. Interesting blog content can help in improving dwell time i.e the amount of time a visitor spends on your site, which is also an important ranking factor.
2. Blogs help in educating customers
eCommerce stores are usually required to write short and crisp product descriptions. This is important in order to avoid overwhelming the customer. However, short descriptions limit your ability to add targeted keywords.
On the other hand, customers want to compare similar products from many different brands before deciding which one to buy. This means that they need detailed information about every product. This is where blogs fit in.
Blogs enable you to publish tips, user guides, comparison pieces, and other similar types of content to educate your customers about your products. This can also help you in highlighting the advantages of your products over competitors’.
3. Blogs help build a community online
As we already discussed, blogs allow brands to interact with customers through comments. Being asked to drop their opinions at the end of the blog makes readers feel that you value their opinions. This feeling when nurtured right can help you build a strong online community for your brand.
Entertaining and relevant blogs can also improve your reader engagement levels, resulting in loyal followers who keep coming back for more content. However, this is possible only when you actively engage with your customers too. Solely asking for their comments is of no use, if you are not replying to them regularly.
4. Blogs help you answer specific customer problems
Though this is, in a way, an extension of the last two points, it deserves to be discussed separately. In today’s digital era, a lot of customers prefer solving their problems themselves. This means they are actively seeking reliable information related to your products and services online.
Now, if you want them to keep using your products, it is your responsibility to make sure that the required information is available to them. While adding FAQs to your product pages is a must, detailed blogs focusing on specific customer problems can be beneficial too.
A blog essentially provides you with a larger and better platform to communicate with your customers. You can not only address their issues regarding your products but also discuss how your products can make their lives better. You can also post tips to make optimum utilisation of your products and services.
5. Blogs help increase site traffic
Primarily, your eCommerce store will attract visitors who are looking for the products or services that you offer. However, a regularly updated blog attracts even those people to your site who are not looking for any products, but only the related blog. This helps in creating brand awareness.
Now, if your blog content is entertaining, informational, and relevant, the chances of that reader going through your product pages fairly increase as well. This is because good content encourages visitors to trust your brand, and when a visitor trusts your brand, he is more likely to make a purchase from you.
Additionally, your visitors may share your blogs with their contacts, who will go through the same journey, too. This conversion from simply a reader to finally a customer may take some time, but if you keep publishing the right content, it is inevitable.
6. Blogs are a cost-effective marketing platform
Irrespective of the size and marketing budget of your business, blogs are the simplest, most impactful, and cost-effective marketing tactic. First, creating and setting up a blog is not a herculean task, even for a novice. There are hundreds of tools available, both free and paid, that allow users to create a professional blog in just a few minutes.
Second, if optimised correctly for search engines, blogs can lead to a huge inflow of organic traffic to your site. Plus, most of your published content will stay relevant for a long time. This means that it will continue to bring in traffic, without requiring you to invest any more time or money in it.
To be honest, this is as cost-effective as any marketing tool can get.
Conclusion
Blogs have become quite popular as an effective marketing tool in the last few years. Given the advantages that they can bring to the business, this popularity is well deserved. Using blogs to promote an eCommerce store is not only a great means to boost SEO but also to connect with the audience.
Another point to note is that blogs are multipurpose tools. Apart from publishing the information mentioned in the above points, you can also use them to share new product announcements or details about upcoming sales and events. However, this is all possible if and only if, you are able to create the right content
Latest posts by Vaibhav Kakkar (see all)
- How can website design affect SEO results on search engines? - September 1, 2022
- 6 Reasons Why Your eCommerce Store Needs A Blog - September 16, 2021
