You’re probably already aware that blogging is extremely important for your website. It helps promote audience relationships, keeps content fresh and engaging, and makes the people behind the site (i.e. you) appear more like real people, and not just faceless beings flogging their wares. But did you know that blogging is incredibly important for your search engine optimisation as well? This is a critical point that many e-commerce sites, new and old, fail to take into account; subsequently, they lose out on maximising their online exposure, which can be absolutely crucial when it comes to maintaining visibility in a crowded, competitive pool.
And not just any old blog will do either; you need a high-quality blog, one that can genuinely engage your readers and turn them into customers. A little bit of wit, a little bit of personality, and a strong dose of subtle keyword inclusion are all components to a high quality blog, which is what every e-commerce website worth its salt needs in 2018. If you produce a generic, flavourless blog and post once a week, you might get your keywords out there, but you won’t engage your visitors, and you definitely won’t turn them into paying customers. People are very discerning when it comes to online content; they can tell in an instant when something’s been manufactured to simply boost a website’s profile. Therefore, it can really pay off to invest some serious time and money in your blog, positioning it front and centre of your site.
SEO is also an important issue, which you can tackle at the same time as presenting polished, engaging contact to your visitors and clients. Above all, search engines respond favourably to sites that are updated frequently, so by keeping your blog fresh, you’ll automatically raise your standing in the search engines. In fact, blogs provide pretty much the only way to keep your website updated regularly, as many elements of your site won’t change much week to week. How often you decide to post is up to you, but as a rule of thumb, at least once a week is usually the best bet. Even if you decide to only post once a month, the golden rule is to keep it consistent, and keep the quality high.
Timing is crucial to SEO; even if you only post once a month, do it at the same time and on the same day in order to stay in Google’s good books.
Blogs also give you an opportunity to link out to other sites, which may in turn run traffic back to you, and also affords the option of linking to related posts in your own site. This is an advantage because it basically gets some extra mileage out of older posts, making them relevant again as it applies to SEO and to your customers. Blogs can also incorporate images and video into posts, which have their own separate algorithm within the search engines, and can be extremely useful in pushing your site up the rankings. Finally, blogs give you a constant opportunity to link to your social media pages and vice versa; the cumulative effect increases your visibility and presence for people searching through popular sites such as Google.
All in all, if you’re not running a blog for your e-commerce site in 2018, you’re doing something wrong. More to the point, if you’re not running a high quality blog, you’re doing something seriously wrong. In the competitive world of online visibility, a super-charged, premium blog is a weapon you definitely need to have in your arsenal.
