I am truly amazed when I check out the average ecommerce store website and it does not have a blog as a key part of the overall site.  One thing all successful ecommerce businesses know is that competition is intense online so getting the edge on the competition is critical.  If you are running an ecommerce website adding a blog as a key part of your current website can provide you that edge. 

Here are 3 reasons.

Blogs Are Free and Easy To Update – Since open source blogging software (like wordpress) is completely free there is little reason not add a blog to your ecommerce store website. 

You can set up a blog in as little as 5 to 10 minutes and adding content to a blog is as simple as pushing a button.  This provides you considerable benefit to easily keep content freshly updating on your site which will have the search engines frequently coming back indexing your site which can help you improve your search rankings.

Search Engines Love Blogs –   Yes that is right search engines do love blogs.  But do not misunderstand that search engine ranking is as easy as just throwing up a blog and getting a top 10 rank.  You need frequently updating quality content and income links to your blog. 

Now you may be saying that is no different than my ecommerce store website.  If I update the content and get links I will rank.  True you can rank, but blogs provide you some great advantages that can be difficult to achieve with an ecommerce website.

Here are 3 advantages:

First there are hundreds of quality RSS and blog directories with lots of page rank  that can be passed to your blog if you get listed in the directory.  You can not get your ecommerce store website listed in many of these blog directories so having a blog provides some additional seo benefit to help your site rank. 

Secondly, blogs are a great way to focus on long tail keywords in your industry.  You probably do not want to optimize a product page on your ecommerce website for the keyword coleman 17 x 10 red canyon tent sleeps 8.

But it is easy to create a blog post optimized for the keyword coleman 17 x 10 red canyon tent sleeps 8 which then cross-links to the appropriate product page on your ecommerce store website. Your blog can be used as a strategic advantage to suck in long tail keyword traffic from the search engines. Then you will lead this traffic to your ecommerce store product pages. 

Once your blog grows in size and you have hundreds of posts created around long tail keywords, you will see your traffic explode.  It will be kind of like fishing for sales with diatomite versus a fishing pole.

Thirdly, since you will write your blog posts in a more relaxed perspective the content will appear very natural and likely intertwine semantically related keywords.  This will help give your blog a boost in the search results since search engines love content that is naturally written with semantically related words.

Brand Yourself As An Expert And Communicate With Your Customers –  Since blogging systems already have built in ways for your customers to comment and ask you questions they offer an easy way to start building a relationship and brand with your customers. 

In your blog post you will be writing about your industry, news, and products from many different angles and that will stimulate interest and comments.  You can take these comments and questions to open the dialogue between you and your customer so that you can improve your business.

Many blogging systems have plugins that will allow you to take a poll of your customers.  If you have a hot issue with your business this is a great way to see how your customers feel about it.

Also, since you will be blogging about many different angles of your industry, it will brand you as an expert.  If you are selling tents talk about how they originated, how they are manufactured, different materials, the market share in the industry and tips on how to set up a tent.   This way if the press is looking for an interview, you will be a prime option which will give you some free exposure.

While the above 3 benefits can give your business a competitive advantage, don’t just add a blog to your ecommerce store if you’re not willing to consistently invest time and effort updating it.  An outdated or inactive blog will reflect the opposite image of whatever it is you want potential customers to know about your company. 

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