Why Ecommerce Sites Should Prioritise Informational Content

June 4th 2020 | By Sarah McInerney

Looking at crucial search engine optimisation strategies, content marketing has to be right up there, but how to write great SEO content that augments your chances of having your products and services found online? Well it’s all about making use of informational content. Let’s take a look at what that means.

How to write great SEO content that augments your chances of having your products and services found online?

Selling online has never been so important, the past few months in lockdown has certainly taught us all that. But whether you run a local business that’s just recently gone digital to secure revenue streams whilst in-person store visits are outlawed, or you’ve had an online storefront since day one, the fact remains that now really is the ultimate time to be doing all you can to pull in those customers and maximise web sales. When it comes to SEO tips 2020 has been a year of change for sure, especially from an ecommerce point of view.

Why your ecommerce website needs content marketing at the heart of its SEO strategy

• Content marketing gets more keywords onto your ecommerce site
• Content marketing helps to boost valuable backlinks to your online storefront

Your ecommerce website content mainly sits on product and category pages. These are going to have limited text and therefore can only rank for so many keywords. Once you’ve maxed out those pages, there’s not much else you can do. Step in content marketing courtesy of a blog or resources section on your ecommerce website.

Search engine consultants will tell you that additional informational content bridges the keyword gaps left by product and category pages. Content built around the likes of ‘how to’, ‘the ultimate guide to’ and ‘best choice for’ opens the gates for you to include valuable long tail keywords that potential customers are using within your industry to find your products.

Let’s take a look at the stats…

Companies that blog receive 97 per cent more links to their website

What does this mean? Every time an authority website links to a page of your website, your WHOLE website reaps the SEO rewards. You need links, and getting them becomes so much easier when your website has quality, engaging informational content.

Websites with a blog tend to have 434 per cent more indexed pages

What does this mean? A crucial aspect of SEO is having plenty of quality content for search engines to crawl and index. Content helps the search engines recognise that your website is a fantastic resource offering a hub of useful information.

Informational content is one of the easiest ways for an online store to rank for more keywords and therefore boost visibility and increase traffic and therefore sales, but there’s something else it does… it’s also an effective way to build more backlinks, which increase domain authority, again a vital aspect of SEO.

Backlinks from other websites are vital to rank your site on Google. But getting backlinks to product pages is a challenge. Much less of a challenge is achieving backlinks from high quality informational content. Follow proven tips on how to write great SEO content, and you should find it fairly straightforward to achieve links into your useful resources and blogs. But how does that help boost the ranking of your ecommerce product pages? Good question.

How does link building help boost the ranking of your ecommerce product pages?

It all works around internal linking. When an informational page on your website gets a lot of links, any page it links to achieves more SEO ‘juice’. More kudos if you like. So say for example you have an ecommerce website selling camping gear. You write a blog about the benefits of spending a night under the stars. Related websites love the blog and link back to it.

Within that blog, you’ve linked to your tents and swags product page. Even though no other websites are linking directly to that page, it still has a higher change of ranking in the search engines, because it has been indirectly linked. It’s because those backlinks to the blog post also deliver ranking authority to any page the post links to. Product pages included!

So those are the whys covered. But what about the ‘hows’? Let’s take a look at some simple strategies that search engine consultants highly recommend to drive traffic to online storefronts.

How to write great SEO content to boost online sales

The first step in writing great SEO content is to pick interesting topics that people are searching for. The easiest way to do this is through searching for high quality, top ranking blogs in your industry sector. This is where you’ll find popular content that resonates with what you offer.

Another great tip is to use tools like BuzzSumo. Their content insights can be used to generate ideas and create high performing content, as well as finding other quality blogs. Just enter your niche keywords and see what comes up. Remember, you’re going for informational content that fulfils user intent. So you need to come up with content that answers the most common questions people are asking about your product lines.

So once you have your topics, you know what you’re writing about. But how to actually write great SEO content? Here are some top tips.

Use semantically related keywords

Semantically related keywords are words and phrases that are related in some way. When we use semantic keywords in SEO content writing, they help the content to flow more naturally, a real positive for the reader. Search engines favour natural sounding content that relates to the search term. To fathom whether they’re dealing with a quality piece of copy related to the user’s search, they measure how many semantic keywords appear in a piece of content.

Read more on how to find and use semantically related keywords, one of the most important SEO tips 2020 has highlighted.

Search engines favour natural sounding content that relates to the search term.

Follow website readability best practice

If your content is a challenge to read it’s just not going to engage your audience. And an unengaged audience tends to depart a website quickly, leading to a high bounce rate, which in turn results in low search engine rankings. The average reading age in the UK is just 12-13 years. This means simplifying your language is vital. Keeping paragraphs short. Using lists. Breaking up content with relevant images. And just generally making sure everything you’ve written is easy to understand.

Read more about website readability best practice.

Expert advice on promoting your ecommerce website from trusted search engine consultants

Creating great informational content is vitally important if you want to see your ecommerce website ranking above your competitors. But it’s just one of many strategies that will boost online visibility and drive sales.

Figment is regarded a leading SEO agency London businesses are happy to recommend. From taking full advantage of the best SEO tips 2020 has to offer, to developing your very own tailored ecommerce SEO strategy, we are ready to take your online store to the  next level.