Attracting Customers to Your Website
A blog is an important source to attract customers to your website and potentially turn them into buyers. This is the main reason why people use them, however, there are more benefits involved, especially for eCommerce websites. Considering it’s a very efficient marketing tool, no wonder there is a whole industry behind creating content and blog posting!
A recent study shows that 61% of Americans purchase their products based on a blog recommendation. This is a fantastic opportunity to expose your business and attract more clients!
This article will explain to you why you should consider having a blog on your website, what improvements you can expect by implementing one and what are the tips and tricks you can use to get ideas and how you should present them to your audience.
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Drive traffic to your store
Having a blog increases the number of pages on your site, therefore the number of links that take back to your homepage. Internal links are great, but having links from other sites is even better. When your blog post gets shared one way or another, your page rankings improve a lot. The more content you add, the more chances you have to create links back to your website while ranking better in the search engines. Adding posts regularly also shows you have an updated site, which search engines pick up on. Adding content that includes the keywords you are aiming for turns your site into a point of interest for people that are looking for similar topics.
To understand better how SEO works, search engine bots have two roles: to crawl content and to build an index. This allows them to provide answers to users by determining relevancy and providing results. Having a blog helps the crawling process through content and links. Each time to add a new post, a new page gets indexed and search engines associate that with your business. The quality of your content can help you rank better.
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High chances of positive conversion
A good-quality content on your website helps retain existing customers and attracts new ones, which means you stand more chances of selling your items. According to Hubspot, overall ROI increases for companies that make a habit out of posting articles on their blog.
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Brand recognition
As blog posts are a great method to advertise new things about the company, its products and customer experiences, this inspires new readers to trust the brand. For example, an image of a customer using the product will be a reliable source for a new potential one. Blogs are also a great channel to spread social media initiatives or company messages.
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Creates a customer base and gathers leads
Once you have increased the traffic on your website, or at least you are preparing to, don’t forget to include a call to action links in your posts. These can guide the visitors to a free promotion or a free service. The bottom line is to offer something in exchange for information. The visitor must be interested in what you have to offer and he/she will need to be willing to fill in a form with their information. This data can add up to a database that you can use later on for marketing promotions.
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Increases customer engagement
Opening a discussion with your customers or readers on the comments section of your blog is a great way to show them you are involved and interested in what they have to say. The theory works both ways. The more you commit to answering to their questions or concerns, the more they will trust you and keep an eye on your future blog posts. Even negative comments have to be handled elegantly, showing you are serious and willing to improve your communication and services.
With blogs, you never run out of ideas. Writing regularly on your blog can set you as an authority in the eyes of the readers, so you need to focus on quality content for your articles. Here are a few ideas of what your posts can talk about:
- Talk about your company, its history, products, corporate culture, how your products are made, share your stories with your audience, news
- Present special promotions and sale periods
- Announce your involvement in social events, such as presentations, conferences, product releases
- Discuss industry “secrets”
- Talk about products and offer your honest opinion about how they are, how to use them, use own experience too
- Let your customers know why they should choose you – present your key features
- Address a problem or a question they had for you
- Present industry news and developments
- Simply share something fun you found and think might put a smile on your readers’ faces
- Get to know your audience so you can speak their language
- Use interesting visuals in your posts – infographics, nice banners and images
- Link the post to your products
- Use interesting titles for your posts, something with the potential to go viral or a hot topic
- Create categories for your blog, splitting the topics of interest
- Use social media to promote your blog post
- Use plenty of keywords
- Consider using a guest blogger, someone of a high-authority in the industry, someone famous that people trust
- Include videos, quizzes, contents
Blogging can be fun and dynamic, you just need to put in the effort and the creativity – be sure your customers will appreciate it. Be bold, be involved, be original and add unique content to your web store. Soon enough, you will be seeing the improvements and the benefits of having a blog on your website.
