Shopify Blog: How to Start a Blog for Your E-Commerce Site in 2021

Blogs have been an essential part of marketing for well over a decade. Many businesses have a website with a dedicated blog where the company regularly publishes articles about industry-relevant topics.

Many people mistakenly think that blogging is irrelevant, especially for e-commerce websites. This line of thinking couldn’t be further from the truth.

E-commerce is a growing field with lots of advantages. There are an estimated 2.05 billion digital buyers in 2020, accounting for over 15 percent of all sales. While Shopify is not the only platform available, it is one of the more popular ones among business owners looking for a streamlined platform to manage their businesses.

Creating a blog for your e-commerce business can help you increase brand awareness and revenue. A blog turns your e-commerce business into more than just a place where people transact and allows you to connect with customers on a more personal level.

The good news for Shopify users is that Shopify has a built-in blogging feature. That’s right – if you have a Shopify account, you also have access to a blog at no added cost.

So, what are you waiting for? Let’s dive in and explore how to create a Shopify blog that will boost your business and get more traffic to your website.

Quick side note: Shopify does include a blog feature in their platform, but there are other features you may be looking for which you can find in the Shopify app store. For example, if you want an automatic way to track expenses and profit for your Shopify business, you can use BeProfit – Profit Tracker.

It’s a lifetime Shopify profit calculator that presents all of your expenses and net profit margins in one easy-to-understand dashboard. BeProfit is the ultimate way to make sense of your money and pinpoint where you can make changes in order to increase your bottom line.

How e-commerce blogs boost SEO

As with other business blogs, e-commerce blogs are essential for helping businesses rank in search results, get more traffic, and make more sales. This is achieved through a process called search engine optimization (SEO). Several factors impact how you rank on search engines. Optimizing your website to rank higher will drive more traffic to your website and result in more sales.

When people type a query into the search toolbar on Google, you want to be at the top of the list. Getting that coveted number-one spot doesn’t happen by accident (usually). Brands that hit the top spot on search results have effectively mastered SEO so that the search engine believes their webpage is the best source of information on a particular topic.

This is why SEO is critical for every business that operates online to know and understand. When your website is optimized for search engines, you are more likely to rank for important keywords. People don’t tend to scroll past the first page of search results.

Search engines like Google rank websites based on an algorithm that quickly scans the internet to find the closest match to what the user wants. It calculates a lot of things, including how frequently the page is visited, how long people tend to stay on the page, and how directly the content on the page matches the searcher’s intent.

Blogs can help boost your shop’s SEO in several ways. The first is by providing content that tells search engines what your website does.

Think about how much text is on your e-commerce website. If you’re like most e-commerce businesses, there isn’t much there, aside from the names of the products you sell and some short descriptions.

The thing is, textual content is crucial for helping you rank in search engines. SEO relies on text-heavy content that tells search engines what your page is about so it can direct users to it when they perform a related search. You will need to incorporate keywords in your titles, content body, headers, and tags to make it even easier for search engines to classify your content and improve your rankings.

In addition to helping readers find your website by writing blog posts that rank for critical keywords, a blog can also increase engagement on your website – another significant SEO metric. User engagement demonstrates to Google and other search engines that your website provides useful information, tools, and resources for users.

A lot of Shopify business owners underestimate the power of SEO to increase their presence online. You shouldn’t think that your business is unable to outrank some of the larger brands. There’s no reason that smaller Shopify store owners can’t compete with big brands – if they apply the right strategy.

Understanding Shopify blogging

Now that you understand how a blog can help you grow your business, it’s time to dig deeper into what tools you have available as a Shopify store to create and promote your blog.

Shopify has a helpful resource that you can follow to create your blog. We’ll summarize it here, but refer to the more comprehensive resource if you get stuck at any point in the process.

Your Shopify blog is automatically labeled as “News.” You can keep this blog or create a new one with another name. Some people like to call their blog “Resources,” while others stick to “Blog.” Whatever name you choose, use something that will be easily identifiable as a section of your website where users can find helpful information about your product and services. Or, you know, a blog!

The next step is to edit your description. This is important because your description is what search engines will use when they list your blog. Use keywords that describe your product offerings and stay within the character limit. Google imposes these limits, so anything additional that you write will get cut out. Because of character limits, it’s important to list your keywords early in your description.

Your Shopify blog comes with a default URL. You can keep this, or you can change it. There is usually no big advantage to changing the URL, but it’s good to know that it’s an option.

That’s it! Now you have a Shopify blog set up and ready for your brilliant content.

Tools to create your Shopify blog

Ok, so you have your Shopify blog set up. Now what?

It’s time to get creative by writing some content to fill up your blog.

Sounds easy enough, right?

Well, it can be a bit harder than you might first think.

This is the part where people get stuck. It can be challenging to commit to publishing blog posts consistently, especially when you don’t have any ideas for generating content.

Don’t fear. There are dozens of blogging tools that can help you develop creative blog post ideas and ensure that you publish engaging content. Below we’ve listed some of our favorites.

Tools for generating topic ideas

Coming up with an idea can be the most challenging part of writing a blog. These tools can make that process easy by giving you fresh ideas every time you sit down to write. 

Blog Topic Generator

The blog topic generator tool from HubSpot will give you up to a year’s worth of blog post ideas. All you need to do is input up to five nouns (the more, the better), and you’ll instantly get five blog ideas. For the price of sharing some information about who you are and what your business is, you can unlock 250 ideas at once.

Answer the Public

The free tool Answer the Public is useful for understanding what questions people have about a particular topic. Just input a word or short phrase. In return, you’ll see what questions people are asking about that specific word or phrase. The free version offers a limited number of searches. If you love Answer the Public, you can upgrade to a pro plan for $99 a month.

Portent Title Maker

Portent’s free title maker is similar to HubSpot’s title generator, but it doesn’t limit the number of times you can refresh and get a new title. Save the ideas you love for future inspiration. This tool is excellent for those who like to sit down and generate multiple blog topic ideas at once.

Tools for creating professional-quality content

Grammarly

Think of Grammarly as an upgraded version of spell-check. It’s an AI-powered writing assistant that will catch bad grammar and typos as you type. The free version only does grammar and spelling checks, while the premium plans also help you rewrite clunky sentences and more. Premium packages start at $11.66 a month.

Fastreel Video Editor

Creating videos is easier than ever with a quality video editor, like the one from Fastreel. All you need is an image or a video to start with. Change the video speed, add filters, and include free background music to bring your video to life. This is a great way to repurpose blog content to share on social media.

Canva

Whether you have a degree in design or are a complete amateur, Canva can make sure every post has a unique, professional-quality image. This tool is free to use and has over 8,000 templates that can get you started. It also includes thousands of images that you can edit and alter to use for website images, blog posts, and social media posts.

What does a successful Shopify blog look like?

Seeing what other people have done well can help you find inspiration for your blog. Deathwish Coffee is an excellent example of a successful Shopify blog. It is engaging and eye-catching while offering valuable information about its product and coffee in general to its audience.

The name alone is intriguing, and the blog doesn’t disappoint. You can get a good feel for the brand just by looking at their blog. Browsing through their posts, you can see that they deliver a mix of industry news, company news, and general cultural news and information to stay relevant.

Nobody wants to read a blog post that is a 500-word advertisement.  Deathwish Coffee has found creative ways to talk about coffee without being overly promotional. The content they deliver is fun, engaging, and informed. Their multimedia approach combines textual blog posts with accompanying videos to satisfy readers as well as visual learners.

Every post has a call to action that directs readers to their product page, thereby keeping readers engaged on their website and further driving traffic to their revenue-generating Shopify landing pages.

The company’s approach seems to be paying off. It reports getting 42,000 organic visits every month. That means 42,000 people click on their website after finding them through a search result or other non-paid advertising method.

How to promote your Shopify blog

Once your blog is up with a couple of posts, it’s time to promote it so that the world can enjoy everything you have to offer!

Here are a few ideas for promoting your Shopify blog:

Use social media

If you don’t already have social media pages for your business, create them! Social media marketing is an effective way to increase brand awareness and gain a following of loyal customers. Share your blog posts and videos on social media. Make sure to use relevant hashtags to make it easier for potential customers to find you. Include your store URL in your bio on every social media page to make it easy for followers to click through to your site.

Send out an email newsletter

Email marketing is another great way to get the word out about your business. Include a link to your blog in every email newsletter and highlight some top posts within each newsletter. This will encourage people to click through to your website and, once there, make a purchase.

Ask other business owners to link to your blog

If you have relationships with other Shopify or e-commerce business owners, ask them if they will link to your blog in one of their blog posts. If you take this route, make sure to return the favor. It can be useful to connect with businesses in a related market, so you are not directly competing. For example, a Shopify store specializing in women’s footwear might partner with a store specializing in women’s handbags.

Bottom line

A Shopify blog for your e-commerce business shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should be an essential part of your business strategy. Use these tips and tools to create a blog that educates and engages your readers while helping you rank higher in search engines and get more traffic to your store. Post consistently (at least once a week) to keep your content fresh and let search engines know that your website is active and relevant.

This guest post was written by Victoria Greywing of Movavi.