One of the best promotional strategies an eCommerce business can do is to create a blog. As more and more brands are going global, it’s important to use everything at your disposal in order to rank as high in the search results as possible, and of course, to grow sales. Because of this, you need to have a solid marketing strategy in place, you need to have a sales funnel, and you also need a blogging platform to help achieve those results.
Let’s go ahead and talk a little about why it’s important to have a blog on your site, how to do it, and what the best practices are when creating and managing a Shopify blog.
Shopify Blog Features
Shopify’s blog offers several basic features that will help you quickly create and manage your article content.
1. Create Multiple Blogs
Rather than using a category structure like WordPress, Shopify allows you to set up multiple blogs within your online store; this is especially effective if you plan to create content across diverse themes or audiences. You can create one series of articles to showcase industry news, keep one for tutorials and information on products, and maybe have one where you keep all of your brand’s promotional materials.
2. Manage Comments
Of course, you’re likely interested in filtering your blog’s comments. Nowadays, there are a lot of people and bots trying to post comments featuring their articles or business URLs, or even use improper language. Because of this, it’s important to have a system that lets you moderate every comment before publishing, to keep your site as clean as possible.
For comment management, you have three options in Shopify.
- Disable comments: If you don’t have the resources to manage comments, this option will eliminate the need to monitor and approve by removing comment functionality from your blog altogether. However, we don’t recommend this option because it can make it hard for your brand to directly engage with your community.
- Moderated comments: This is the best option, as your community can still comment on your articles, but you have the ability to manage what is displayed on your site.
- Automatically published comments: This option allows any comment to go live the moment the commenter presses “Publish.” In most cases, we don’t recommend this option because your blog will likely become filled with SPAM.
3. Schedule Your Articles
One of the most important aspects of blogging is scheduling. You may want to have multiple posts created at once and then publish them at specific dates and times. This can be easily set up as you create the article. Simply set the status to “Visible” and select the time and date you want it to go live.
4. Customize an Excerpt
By using the Excerpt feature, you can have your blog article featured on your home page, with the exact text you want to be shown. It’s very useful because you can customize a short and engaging call to action (CTA) for each article that leads your visitors to check out your blogs.
5. Organize Your Blog with Tags
Even though tags don’t have a positive or negative effect on search engine optimization (SEO), they are incredibly important for site structure. Correctly chosen tags will help your visitors when they search for a specific query on your site. All the articles assigned to that tag will show, but they need to be relevant.
Tags are not typically necessary when you first start your Shopify blog. However, once you reach 50 articles, finding a specific article can be difficult to navigate. At this point, adding tags will definitely improve user experience (UX).
6. Connect to Social Media
If your brand is active on social media platforms, it’s a good idea to show those icons at the top of every article. They will help your visitors find and engage with your brand on the platforms they are most active on.
7. Optimize for the Search Engines
Shopify allows you to fill in the basic fields that are considered important for SEO. This means that you can set a custom meta title and meta description, as well as alt tags for your images. Keep in mind that the alt tag needs to be relevant for the image and article you’re publishing, while the meta title and description need to be engaging and convince the user to click on your link from the search engine results page (SERP).
Learn More: SEO Actions You Can Take in Shopify to Make Your Site Rank
Shopify Blog Categories
As mentioned above, Shopify offers the ability to create several blogs on your site, which can either be used independently from each other to target different audiences or be considered the same as categories of one unified blog. Whichever you choose, it’s important to have an effective blog structure for two reasons.
- UX: It makes it easier for visitors to find the information they are looking for.
- SEO: It helps the search engines understand how your content is structured, which helps to rank each article accordingly.
How to Add a Blog to Shopify
In order to add a blog to Shopify, you must go to “Online Store” from your Dashboard, and then click on “Blog posts.”
From there, click on “Manage Blogs” in the top left corner, and then push the “Add Blog” button.
You will then choose a name for your blog, decide on whether or not you want to moderate comments, and fill in the search engine listing preview. After that, all that’s left to do is press “Save,” and start assigning articles to that blog.
How to Change the Author Name in a Shopify Blog
One limitation of Shopify’s blog functionality is assigning authors to articles. Currently, only staff names associated with your Shopify account can be selected, which makes attributing guest or freelance authors impossible unless you add them as staff. There are a couple of workarounds such editing the liquid to remove the author field altogether or using the paid Shopify app Custom Authors for $7.99 / month.
If you’re okay with adding a new staff member to your Shopify account, this can be done from your general settings in the bottom left corner, by accessing the “Plans and Permissions” tab. Depending on your plan, you should be able to add new staff accounts to your store and set their permissions.
After you add the new staff member, it’s time to update your blog articles. Whenever you edit or add a new post, you can see the “Author” section on the right control bar. Simply click on it and select the new author.
Useful Shopify Blog Apps
In order to improve UX, the Shopify App Store has a variety of tools to help you organize your blog, showcase your products, and offer more to your visitors. Let’s go ahead and take a look at some of the best apps you can add to your Shopify blog.
Blog Product Spotlight
Price: $6.99–19.99 / month
Blog Product Spotlight is perfect if you want to showcase your products inside of your blog articles. The app allows visitors to quickly check out products and their features without clicking away from the content and also gives you more insights on how they engage with the products. So, if part of your content strategy is to feature or compare products, this is an essential app to use. You can try it for 14 days before committing to one of two monthly payment plans.
Blog Studio
Price: $14.95 / month
Blog Studio is one of the best blog builders available in the app store. While Shopify’s blog is perfectly functional out of the box, it’s features are very limited compared to blogging platforms like WordPress. If you want every blog article to look unique and really stand out, you can use one of Blog Studio’s hundreds of options and easily configure the authors, tags, and SEO features. The app offers a 14-day free trial.
PageFly Landing Page Builder
Price: Free for basic features, $19–99 / month for additional features
Even though it’s a little different then Blog Studio, PageFly Landing Page Builder does basically the same thing, but on a larger scale. With it, you can customize all your pages: your blogs, home page, and custom landing pages for different products or campaigns. It’s very easy to use, and it even has a free plan available where you can create one of each page type.
Best Practices for Effective Blog Content
If you want your articles to bring in traffic, developing a content strategy is absolutely necessary. You need to know exactly what type of content you’re going to publish, you need to set up a schedule, and you need to do thorough marketing and keyword research in order to know exactly what audiences you’re going after.
When you start creating your content strategy, your first step is to develop a purchase funnel. This funnel will help you decide what kind of topics you’re going to approach. In general, there are three stages before the purchase: top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, and bottom of the funnel.
Source: commons.wikimedia.org
1. Top of the Funnel (Awareness)
The prospects at the top of the funnel are usually just discovering their problem. They don’t know any specific terms, so they will probably just describe the problem as simple as they can. In this stage, you should consider writing about general topics, so if you have a store that sells computer parts, you should answer questions like “why did my screen go black?” instead of focusing on talking about the parts directly.
2. Middle of the Funnel (Interest)
In the middle of the funnel, the prospects need information about specifics, but not necessarily brands. They will want to know the difference between specific items that they need. If their computer breaks down, they may want to know whether they should only change the RAM or graphics card, but they won’t be ready to consider brands just yet — purely the differences and advantages of the needed parts they discovered at the top of the funnel.
3. Bottom of the Funnel (Desire)
At the bottom of the funnel, the prospects already know what they need, so they are going to start looking for brands or services to satisfy those needs. The content at the bottom of the funnel should be created with the purpose of selling your brand’s products and services. It’s just one step before the buying decision, so it’s particularly crucial that the articles targeting this stage are created strategically.
Content Strategy Tips
1. Define Your Goals
Before you jump in, you should first know what the goal of your blog is. What do you want to achieve? Do you want to gather leads for email marketing, or do you want to convert visitors into buyers? This needs to be decided up front, as the goal changes how you create the articles.
2. Do Your Research
It’s important to know exactly what the prospects are looking for in the different stages of the funnel. A marketing analysis combined with keyword research will help you determine what your audience needs. Remember to also check out your competition, see what they talk about, and think about how you can create better content than them.
3. Don’t Overachieve
It’s perfectly fine to want to do more, and Shopify’s blog apps go a long way in making your vision a reality, but sometimes you need to be patient and wait until your strategy is fully realized before branching out. In the beginning, keep everything in your niche and do your best to create the kind of content your audience needs for that niche.
4. Measure Your Results
It’s important to keep track of your results: how many sales, how many conversions, and how many leads. If you regularly monitor this data, you will be able to create even better content and increase those numbers considerably. Use free monitoring tools like Google Search Console and Google Analytics, as well as paid tools like heatmap apps and keyword rank trackers.
Learn More: How to Set Up Google Analytics for Shopify
Apply SEO Best Practices
SEO is one of the most important aspects of making your blog successful. You’re writing articles because you want people to find your Shopify site organically through search engines, and that’s only possible if you do your SEO right.
1. Research Proper Keywords
The first thing you need to do is search for proper keywords that will become the topics of your blog articles. This means that they should have little competition and a decent number of monthly searches. If you’re just beginning, then you’re going to have to guess what an appropriate number of monthly searches is for your industry or used paid tools that will quickly provide you with that information.
There are a number of free keyword tools available to help you get started, such as KeywordTool.io, Answer the Public, and Ubbersuggest. Effective paid tools include Ahrefs and SEMRush, which provide more robust data and keyword suggestions. If you have been running your eCommerce store for awhile and already have Google Analytics and Search Console set up, you can also find potential keywords through those tools.
2. Optimize the Text
In order to effectively optimize your articles, there are a few very simple guidelines you need to follow. For starters, you need to make sure that your primary target keyword is present a few times in the text. The first occurrence should be within the first 150 words of your article, in order to let the search engines know what your article is talking about.
Then, you should use it a couple more times within the body of the text as well as once in the conclusion. Remember that there is no such thing as “keyword density,” so do not “stuff” your article with the target keyword, because doing so will make the information less pleasant to read.
3. Optimize the Title and Section Headings
The article’s title needs to contain the target keyword, and possibly synonyms of it. Not every section heading (H tag) needs to have the keyword present, but make sure at least the H2 and H3 tags are related to that keyword. You can use the rest of the H4–H6 tags for outlining your article’s structure if needed.
4. Optimize the Meta Title and Description
Your meta title and description have a very important role in the effectiveness of your article’s click through rate (CTR) in search engines. They need to be engaging and convince the searchers that your article provides the information they are looking for. Also, adding the target keyword close to the beginning of the meta title helps the search engines understand the importance of your article to the searcher’s question.
5. Optimize Images
It’s best if you add images within each article. When it comes to image optimization for Shopify, there are a few aspects you should keep in mind. For starters, make sure your file name contains the keyword, and the file size is no larger than 200 KB. You should also provide an alt tag for your image inside the blog. This will help your images show up at the top of image search results.
Set Up the RSS Feed
By setting up the RSS feed, your visitors will be able to subscribe to your blogs and read all the latest information without having to actively seek it out. In Shopify, the RSS feed is automatically created, and all you need to do is allow your visitors to subscribe to it by sharing a link. You can do this by accessing your blog and copying the RSS feed URL along with providing a CTA.
In general, your RSS feed URL is the blog link plus the “.atom” extension.
“www.mystore.com/blog/blogpost.atom”
Grow Your Sales with a Shopify Blog
Having a Shopify blog is incredibly important for a well-rounded promotional strategy, but it’s important that you educate yourself beyond the information provided above in order to reach the full potential that a blog can provide to an eCommerce store. With Shopify, you have many effective tools at your disposal to create great content, gather a lot of leads, and generate new sales!
