Director of SEO. We Offer SEO Fuelled By Digital PR to Increase Business Sales, Profits and Brand Growth
The Problem With E-commerce Blogs. Last year, I talked with an E-commerce website that spends about £30,000 a month on paid search. Yet, their traffic rose monthly, and their paid search costs were still too high. What was happening? They'd been advised to write blog content. And sure enough, their blog content was ranking well. The problem? None of their commercial pages were ranking high enough. Sadly, we couldn't agree on the contract terms, and we never got to work with the client. But today, the website suffers from exactly the same problem. They have increasingly high traffic, but not for the commercial pages. In the image below, you'll see the 'prospect' on the right and another site of the exact same authority on the left. Both are e-commerce sites. Both are in the same niche. Both launched around the same time. The site that was advised to write blog posts has achieved what many refer to as 'topical authority'. The issue is that this 'topical authority hasn't helped them to rank their commercial pages higher. Many 'content marketers' will talk about how the content helps to promote the brand, email list, retargeting, etc. But there are far more effective ways to do that than churning out blog posts. And a core issue with this is that the blog posts are written for people 'not in the market' to buy what they sell. Yes, they are helpful posts. The content is well written and I'm sure they are read and enjoyed. Just not read by anyone in the market to buy what they sell. Now, that's not to say you shouldn't create helpful content aimed at being generous and useful for your audience. It's just that perhaps it isn't a priority when you're slipping Google £360k a year for a link placement in the SERPs. This is why SEO strategy is perhaps the most important part of SEO. The wrong strategy can waste thousands. The right strategy can change businesses. The best SEO strategies focus on taking action that leads to commercial benefits for the client. Traffic is vanity. Profit is sanity. #seo
Bima Satria
5mo
"Traffic is vanity. Profit is sanity.". Nicely said, Andrew Holland 😁 I think that high traffic is still better than no traffic, though. If you already have high traffic blog pages, you can optimize the content and, probably, create some kind of funnels to help channeling users into your commercial pages. Of course, as you said, strategy is crucial to ensure the company's spending are optimized for conversions.
Martin Greif
5mo
From a CRO perspective, I've seen many e-commerce sites fall into the same trap: driving high traffic through blog content that doesn't convert. Creating valuable content is great for building brand awareness, but it often fails to address the immediate commercial needs of the business and this needs to be aligned
Sunny Grewal
5mo
Been there with a client who focused on blog content that brought tons of traffic, but none of it ready to convert. The "helpful, not-quite-buying" audience trap is real. Love your point about SEO strategy being key. Focusing on what actually moves the needle (sales!) is so important. Would love to hear your thoughts on better content approaches for e-commerce clients!
Akarsh K.
5mo
Hey Andrew great post! Would you mind sharing what was done differently? What are your thoughts on entending categories as a means of building authority? Facewash > Facewash for Dry Skin > Facewash for Acne > Facewash for Glowing Skin Here I build authority, set contextual relevance and also tap into more transactional keywords. Thoughts?
Andrew Chornyy
5mo
This is a valuable insight into the importance of prioritizing commercial page rankings over blog content for e-commerce websites. 🚀 While blogs can drive traffic, focusing on pages that convert is essential for profitability. Thanks for sharing!
Major key 🔑 Andrew Holland! This is so good. When clients don’t focus on yielding results from TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU articles for informational and commercial/transactional use, they lose out on credibility and “omnichannel opportunities”.
One thing I want to make sure I understand: Are these eCommerce writing generic blog content about every possible keyword they spot, or are they targeting only those keywords with a higher purchase intent, Andrew Holland? 🤔
It perfectly captures the essence of effective SEO.
Hassan al Banna
5mo
It's essential to prioritize SEO strategies that drive commercial results, not just traffic. Integrating content marketing with targeted commercial pages can be a game-changer. Thanks for sharing!
I help SaaS companies, agencies, tech, and AI companies drive revenue through link building
5moAndrew Holland While I get and agree with the point you made, do you think this stands true for b2b businesses as well? Let's say you offer Shopify services and you create all the commercial pages such as development, maintenance, performance optimisation, etc. But by the end of the month, you realise these pages barely drive any traffic despite ranking high on Google. What do you do? Most tech-B2B services don't have massive search demand. Agencies promise to spike up the vanity metrics, but they fail to do it with the commercial pages. So they resort to having endless blogs which give their clients a sense of relief. How do you deal with such issues?