Ecommerce SEO plays an important part in your overall ecommerce marketing strategy, helping your online store get found more easily. Whether you have a large online shop with hundreds of products or a smaller store that specialises in a range of niche products, making sure that your store can be found in searches is essential for growth.
While ecommerce SEO entails several strategies, one of the most important aspects by far is content. Ecommerce content takes many forms, from blog posts that help to promote products more organically to informative guides that show customers how to use your products. Good content will not only help your SEO – it will also add genuine value to your customers. Content that provides useful information, relevant ideas and inspiration, and practical tips will also keep customers coming back, building loyalty and increasing lifetime value. Content that answers specific questions is equally useful – especially if it saves customers having to perform complicated searches that waste time and effort.
What type of ecommerce search engine optimisation content should you be adding to your site? Ultimately, rather than simply flooding your blog and menu pages with content that you think your customers would want to see, it is always best to focus on content that you know customers will want to see. Tried and tested content that is universally used across ecommerce stores of all types and sizes will always have the best chance of delivering results. In this guide, we share some of the most useful types of SEO content that should be included within your site.
Useful Types of Ecommerce SEO Content
Ecommerce SEO content takes on many forms. Aside from ecommerce product descriptions, which are an entirely separate area to focus on for results, you will also need additional content that helps to bolster your product content. The most beneficial types of content include blog posts, how-to guides, product guides, FAQ, and idea galleries. Here’s how to incorporate each of these content types into your online store.
Blog posts
Blog posts continue to be one of the simplest and most effective ways to drive traffic from search engines to your website. Rather than simply churning out overly promotional blog posts featuring your latest products or duplicating content you find online, you will need to start with a comprehensive blog strategy that focuses on highly relevant keywords and topics that are specific for your product niche. For example, if your store specialises in outdoor furniture, you would need a blog strategy that focuses on related topics such as outdoor entertaining, outdoor dining, patio style tips, small patio tips, large patio tips, and other similar topics. If you sell plants, you would focus on topics relating to indoor gardens, choosing plants, benefits of plants, and other related topics.
Subtly incorporating your products will help to promote products in a less obvious way. Readers will be able to learn and find inspiration from your blog posts, even if they do not purchase your products. If they find your content useful, they are more likely to come back again to view more blog posts. The majority of people who arrive on your blog posts are actively seeking products within your niche, which means a far higher chance of conversion.
How-to guides
How-to guides can be added to your blog, but they work even better as evergreen stand-alone pages that are linked to from your primary menu. You could create an information section that features a selection of guides. These guides are more factual than blog posts. Using our patio furniture example from earlier, you could include practical guides on table dimensions, choosing the right chairs, choosing the right wood, plastic vs wood, wood vs metal, maintaining wooden outdoor furniture or any other guide that helps customers choose products or care for products after purchase.
The value of information guides is that they can be viewed by potential customers as well as existing customers. A customer who is looking for outdoor furniture but concerned about whether wood will last in an outdoor environment would find plenty of value in a guide covering such a topic. This can often help to increase trust, making purchasing decisions easier, and removing potential barriers to purchase in the process.
Product guides
Another important type of ecommerce SEO content is product guides. Although similar to how-to guides, these guides focus more on the products you are selling. For example, you would have guides that relate specifically to a foldable patio table you sell. This guide could provide instructions on how to fold the table. It could also suggest the best chairs to use alongside the table and include specifications on the size, height, wood type, cleaning and care instructions, colour or any other specifics relating to the table.
This type of content further aids the buying decision, helping customers learn more about the product they are viewing. Videos work especially well in this type of content. Using video along with images, bulleted lists, and short sections of text that can be read easily and quickly will have the best results.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions are a useful yet often overlooked resource. Aside from standard questions that are typically asked at almost any online store, such as shipping costs, delivery times, return policies, and anything else that applies to the store in general, there are always questions that are asked about your products. Your support team may often receive the same questions on a regular basis. Making use of these questions and turning them into a resource that helps new customers find the information they need to learn more about your store and products is key to conversion.
The best way to use FAQ is to create a comprehensive FAQ page that is easy to view. You can keep things simple and place all the questions on a single page or you can go one step further and create a support hub that divides questions into groups such as product care, account information, shipping, and other categories. For best results, don’t simply guess questions. Do some competitive research, go over your own support tickets, invest in a solid keyword plan, and use questions that are being asked online by real-life customers. The more relevant and useful your questions and answers are, the more value they will add and the more chance you will have of boosting your rankings. You may even have a better chance of being featured in Google Snippets if your questions and answers are planned carefully.
Idea galleries
Idea galleries are also a good addition to your ecommerce SEO content plan. Many online stores use this feature but not in a way that helps SEO much at all. Rather than creating galleries of images and videos that contain no content and only images and/or video, focus on creating multi-media galleries that are rich in optimised content as well as images and videos. Our outdoor furniture store example could create an idea gallery showcasing summer dining trends for the upcoming season, for instance. This gallery could include products from the furniture store’s line as well as videos and text outlining trends and tips for summer dining. Blogs can be linked to from these galleries, along with products and category pages.
What makes this type of content effective is that it encourages customers to visualise your products being used. Inspiration can be a powerful motivator. When customers can imagine themselves using your products in a real-life environment rather than simply viewing product images in a listing, the products become more ‘real’ in the customers’ minds.
Invest in Ecommerce SEO Content
Just as you put thought and effort into your product listings, make sure that you put some thought into your content as well. Used as part of your ecommerce SEO strategy, content plays an integral role in your store’s success.
