How to build a successful blog for your ecommerce business
Building a successful e-commerce business takes hard work, time, and persistence. Marketing is a vital element as you may have an amazing product, but if no one knows about it it’s unlikely to ever become successful.
We recently sat down with the folks at Hepper, an e-commerce business selling modern cat furniture, who in March 2020 launched a pet blog for their website. This has been a tremendous success, allowing them to reach over two million readers, and many more customers, every month. It has truly been a game-changer for them as it’s they claim it to be the most effective and cost-efficient method for them to get in front of potential customers.
A graph from Ahrefs.com showing the amount of organic traffic coming to Hepper.com. This means the estimated amount of traffic coming to Hepper.com from Google.com.
So buckle up, because in this post, Simon Treulle will be sharing some top tips and advice on how you can also start a blog for your e-commerce business that hopefully becomes enormously successful.
Simon, why start a blog?
I highly recommend e-commerce businesses have a blog because it can be an impactful and cost-effective way for you to get in front of potential customers.
Let’s imagine you own an e-commerce business selling pet products. Now, thanks to modern keyword research tools like Ahrefs, you can see data that shows you what questions people are Googling every day. For example:
- How to wash dog toys (this might be a great post to mention your easy-to-clean dog toys?)
- Why do dog toys squeak? (this might be a great post to mention your dog toys that squeak and/or maybe also mention your dog toys that don’t squeak?)
- Why does my dog destroy their toys? (might be a great post to mention your indestructible dog toys?)
If people are Googling these keywords then it’s quite clear that they are interested in dog toys, and maybe other dog products. And if they are interested in dog products, then they should of course know about your pet brand!
It’s reasonable to assume that if someone is looking to clean a dog toy, then they might also be looking to buy new dog toys—and this would be a perfect opportunity to put your products in front of the reader. You could also mention other essentials such as your brand’s dog beds and food bowls.
So, by publishing articles around these keywords, you’re able to:
- Help people who are looking for information about your industry
- Sell more products (for example: see our best-selling dog toys here, plus our very popular dog harnesses!)
- Increase brand awareness (maybe the person reading the blog post won’t buy something from your brand right now. But next time they are looking to buy a dog product they might remember your brand because they read a helpful article from your blog)
Here’s a real example of an article at Hepper.com where we mention our product. In the post, we’re teaching people how to remove cat urine from carpets. It’s very clear that the reader intends to remove cat urine. So, this is a perfect place for us to mention that our brand has a cat urine stain & odor eliminator spray they can purchase to help them solve their problem.
Here’s how we do this:
What’s the formula for getting success with your blog?
My team has been doing this for many years, and we’ve managed to grow multiple sites (such as PetKeen, and ExcitedCats) up to a level where they receive millions of readers from organic searches (Google) every month.
I’d say that the most important way to get success with your blog is to focus on this:
Publish helpful, high-quality content for the keywords that your audience is searching for.
First, I’ll show you how to find great keywords for you to write articles about, and afterward, I’ll share my learnings on growing a talented content team of writers and editors. Let’s get started!
How to find the keywords your audience is searching for?
- Take out the guesswork
It’s not ideal to write articles about topics just because you guess that a lot of people are searching for them every month. Why? Because relying on guesswork is usually not very accurate. You might think a lot of people search for “how to clean your dog’s blanket” but in reality, this may not be the case.
The great news is that we live in the fantastic year of 2022, where we don’t have to guess! Instead, we can use modern keyword research tools such as Ahrefs to tell us how many people search for a certain keyword every month. This is incredibly valuable data, and with this, you can strategically determine which articles to write, and which keywords to include in those articles.
- Keyword research—finding great keywords to write articles around
Okay, let me show you the basics of doing keyword research so that you can figure out which articles to write. For this, I recommend using Ahrefs as I find it to be the most accurate, and simplistic tool.
Let’s go back to the previous example and imagine you are a company selling dog toys. Now, you want to figure out which articles to write that your potential customers would probably be interested in reading.
First, go to Ahrefs Keywords Explorer. Select “Google”, and “United States” (or another country if relevant), and then search for “dog”.
Image from Ahrefs.com
Then click on “Matching terms”
Image from Ahrefs.com
Then click on “Include” and inside the dropdown write: toy*
Image from Ahrefs.com
Then click “Show results” and click “Questions”
Image from Ahrefs.com
Now, you will be presented with something that looks like this:
Image from Ahrefs.com
What you see here is a list of keywords. And to the right, you’ll see Volume, which is Ahrefs’ estimation of the number of people searching for this keyword every month from the US.
Ahrefs has a lot more data you can look at. But in the beginning, I would recommend keeping it simple by only focusing on Keywords and the Volume of those keywords.
So, you can see that “how to wash dog toys” has around 1,000 searches per month. It may not sound like much but remember—there are many different ways of saying the same thing. For example, you can see the keyword is “how to clean dog toys.” Cleaning is fairly synonymous with washing. This means I would only write one article in total, but then I would make sure to include both the primary keyword and the synonymous keyword inside the post.
So, even though this primary keyword has around 1,000 searches per month, the final article might be visited by a lot more readers every month because there are probably many ways of Googling the same thing.
Before writing this article I highly recommend double-checking that you don’t already have an article written about this topic on your site. Here’s a very simple way to do this. Go to Google, and write this in the search field:
site:example.com how to wash dog toys
(Make sure to replace example.com with the domain name of your website)
Now, check to see if there are any search results from your site about washing dog toys. If there are none then that’s great news. That means if you publish an article around this topic, you are potentially able to get in front of thousands of people who own dog toys. This can be great for helping pet parents whilst building brand awareness of your products! The best of both worlds!
Now would be a great time to tell someone from your team to write a great article about how to wash dog toys. Obviously, you want to make sure that the post title sounds interesting, so you can allow your team to come up with a great post title. In this example a great post title could be:
- How to Wash Dog Toys Safely (Quick & Easy Guide)
That’s really the core of basic keyword research, but it’s important to remember that keyword research is a skill that you get better at by doing it repeatedly and always improving. I highly recommend this guide from Diggity Marketing if you’re looking to do some more advanced keyword research.
Focus on Creating the Most Helpful Article for the Reader
When writing the article your team should focus on creating the most helpful article for the person who will read it.
Do NOT fall into the trap of thinking that you should do “SEO writing” or write in a way that’s optimized for search engines. Instead, focus on creating the best resource for the reader.
OK, so how can we grow a talented content team of writers and editors?
I recommend writing the first couple of articles yourself to get a feeling of what it takes to write a great piece of content that provides the best resource out there on the topic. Then, I recommend building up a content team consisting of talented writers and editors that are experts in your industry.
Hiring: where to find them
I recommend looking to hire writers and editors from the following places. My team has tested dozens of job boards and communities, and has found these four to be the best places to look:
- Problogger.com
- Dynamitejobs.com
- UpWork.com
- Facebook groups in your industry
When hiring writers and editors I recommend interviewing them for the position and then having them do a paid trial assignment where they must write or edit an article. The paid trial assignment is a very important element because you never truly know if someone is great until you’ve seen them do the actual work.
And remember—great writers and editors are typically friends with other great writers and editors. So, once you’ve found a good hire it can also be fruitful to ask that person if there is anyone in their network who might be interested in a writing or editing position.
Helpful tools for creating great articles
For content workflow, I recommend keeping it extremely simple. Here’s what we use:
- Google Drive: for file management (assigning articles to writers, etc.)
- Google Docs (where the writers write, and where the editors edit)
- Grammarly (very helpful for catching simple errors)
- Copyscape (useful to put all trial articles through this as it’s great at detecting plagiarism)
And that’s really the core of it. Try to keep it very simple so that it’s easy for new writers and editors to understand your company’s processes, and so that they can quickly start creating great content.
Only hire the best of the best
Remember to set extremely high standards for article quality, and never settle for subpar quality. Never. This is also the mindset you should have when hiring potential candidates. You should ONLY hire the best of the best.
Everything gets easier when you hire smart, hard-working team members. Your company can create the best content in the industry and if done right, your team can do this without you needing to be involved in the day-to-day content operations.
Delegate responsibility and empower your editors
One of the biggest game-changers for me in content creation was when I hired my first editor, to whom I delegated responsibility and empowered him to excel in his role. Part of this was to make it very clear what his responsibility areas were, and then trust that he would get it done well.
- Hire writers (always be looking for new writers)
- Edit articles
- Communication back and forth with writers
- And ultimately, make sure that all articles that we create are of extremely high quality
I trust him with all these responsibility areas. I don’t micro-manage, and this makes him excited about taking charge of growing our content department by improving our systems, hiring writers, and coming up with new ways that our content department can improve.
If done well, you can get to a position where you as a CEO aren’t involved in the day-to-day operations of content creation. Instead, you can focus on the other high-impact decisions of your business.
What’s next? Getting the content beautifully formatted on your website
Once you have great content then it’s time to get it posted to your site. I recommend doing this yourself a couple of times to get a feeling of what it takes. And then, I recommend hiring a content posting team that is in charge of taking the article and posting it. This might initially sound like a simple responsibility, but it is actually a lot of work if you want to do it right. For example, add these elements to your posts:
- Images (we recommend using Shutterstock, your own pictures, or free stock photo sites)
- Buttons
- Tables? (comparison tables? overview tables? etc.)
- Making sure that links are formatted correctly
- Etc.
If you’re posting dozens of articles every week I definitely recommend building out a content-posting team. DynamiteJobs, UpWork, and OnlineJobs.ph are great places to hire for this kind of position.
Should you use Shopify or WordPress for your blog?
I highly recommend that if your E-commerce store runs on Shopify, you also publish your blog through Shopify’s blog function. It’s a simple blogging platform that’s very easy to use and understand.
However, if your store is not running on Shopify OR if you and your team are accustomed to using WordPress, then I would recommend using WordPress.
WordPress allows for more customization than Shopify, and if you’re used to using WordPress then it may be frustrating to get used to other blogging platforms as they tend to have less room for customization.
A Catalog of Content That Helps People While You’re on Vacation is a Beautiful Thing
Remember, it often takes 1–2 years or more before you start seeing any meaningful traction on your blog. That’s normal, and perfectly fine. Yes, it is a lot of upfront work to reach that point, but it is also a beautiful position to be in when you’ve written a catalog of helpful resources that help people. This is because these articles can be visited by readers while you are doing other things such as sleeping or even on vacation.
Once you’ve built up a high-quality blog it often happens that traffic starts coming in passively without you needing to do much. However, it is of course always a good idea to make sure everything on your blog is up to date at all times.
Simon, some final words from you…
These are some of the first steps to building up the blog of your e-commerce business so it has a high chance of succeeding. It’s hard work, it takes time, and it’s something that you and your team will get better and better at the more you do it.
I can tell you that reaching the point where your blog is visited by millions of readers every month is an amazing feeling, as it allows you to help people plus increase sales and brand awareness at the same time.