Have you considered the benefits of content marketing yet? 

To say the very least, it can help you indefinitely with your marketing efforts. 

It can help boost your brand, gain more targeted leads, and increase sales - it's a proven method that the majority of eCommerce sites have chosen. 

Content marketing has proven effective for every type of business. However, you need to make sure one thing is impeccable for it to really work - SEO. 

We've compiled a comprehensive guide to writing SEO friendly content, that will benefit your eCommerce website and blog. 


Why is SEO important? 

Before you dive into making the SEO changes to your content, you must know the benefits. 

SEO means Search Engine Optimization - and it does exactly what it says on the tin. It optimizes for search engines. 

This means when a user searches a query, the top results will be the most effective at SEO. 

Users trust search engines at a profound amount; if your page ranks high on search results, they'll automatically trust your site, and value your opinion. 

For an e-commerce site, ranking high on search results is one of the most important things. 

When you write content for blogs, product descriptions, or landing pages, if they rank high - they will automatically prove valuable for your company. 

Follow the below guide, and your content will likely rank high in search results. 


Identify your target audience 

If you've performed other marketing campaigns, you'll know the benefits of a target audience. 

Make sure that you take the time to really research your target audience, to an extensive degree. 

We recommend that you compile together customer personas so that you can thoroughly understand what they'll be searching for. 


You should know your target audience’s: 

  • Age 

  • Gender 

  • Interests/hobbies 

  • Occupation 

  • Location 

  • Their needs 

  • How your product could be beneficial to them 


It's only when you know this, that you can get into their brain - and try to decide what they might be searching, and what may interest them. 

Once you've gained a detailed portrait of every future customer, you can decide to build your SEO content around this particular data. 


Set your objective 

Secondly, you should make sure that you have clear goals and objectives, this way you can be sure that your SEO efforts are driving you in the right direction. 

As with every marketing strategy, these objectives should motivate you and promote your company - but should also help you to move forward with other plans. 


If you're unsure what your objectives should be, some ideas are: 

  • Raise brand awareness 

  • Attract potential customers to your site 

  • Find a new audience, perhaps internationally 

  • Drive engagement on your content and social media 

  • Illustrate all the benefits of your products and services 


Where will you publish your content?

There are many different ways to create and publish content, which can all help with your SEO efforts. 

Once you create your content, it will be published somewhere, or maybe even in multiple different places. You must know your platforms, before creating content - this way you can ensure its relevant, and will be useful. 


The main types of platforms are: 

Earned Distribution: This is when your website, blog, or brand is mentioned by another company or influence. This can be really effective, and increase your search rankings - outbound and inbound links help significantly with SEO. 

Owned media: These are your own platforms - website blogs, landing pages, etc. Publishing on this channel is the most important thing, as it keeps your website active, and ensures that you keep driving up the search results. 

Paid media: Of course, you can always pay for influencers and websites to feature you, or mention you in their blogs. This is the closest thing to a traditional form of marketing. 


What type of content will you publish?

Now that you know the channel, you'll have to decide what type of content you will actually publish. 

Of course, we'll be predominately focusing on written content - but other forms can help you and your marketing. 


The different types of content are: 

  • Blogs and articles - These will be the most essential part of your content marketing campaign. These are also the most effective when it comes to SEO. 

  • Videos - Videos are increasingly becoming the most critical piece of content for companies. You might want to consider creating product videos or even webinars. 

  • Infographics - These are particularly useful when conjoined with a blog post. Pinterest is a great way to share these and gain more potential customers that way. 

  • E-books and podcasts - You might not think about this niche pieces of content when you're considering your SEO efforts, but they can really help build up a following, and your mailing list. 


Now that we have all the nitty-gritty details out of the way, the next steps to creating SEO friendly content are the following. 


Don’t sleep on useful tools

Whether you’re a professional writer, solopreneur, or just starting your first eCommerce — you’ll have to use a wide array of tools to make sure that your texts are well-optimized and are up to the latest SEO standards. Here are a few you’ll find useful: 

  • 1. Hemingway — a valuable resource that can assist you in editing your pieces. 

  • 2. Grammarly  — a great service for editing and ordering online content creation. 

  • 3. Yoast’s Content Analysis tool — an essential tool for SEO optimization. Yoast’s real-time content analysis makes sure that your material will abide by readability and SEO standards, based on scales like the Flesch-Kincaid score, Gunning Fog, SMOG Index, and so forth. 

 

Assign certain tasks 

Whether you have a small eCommerce team or not, everybody should be assigned a specific task. These tasks should be taken extremely seriously, and ensure that you have the right person on the right job. 

For instance, you should hire a specific person for writing content - which should reach a particular deadline. 

You might also want to hire a specific person to help with SEO. These can be freelancers or permanent members of your team, depending on your objectives, budget, and size. 

Remember, if you're doing this yourself (which is excellent), some tools can help you. Grammarly, Trust My Paper, Grab My essay, and Plagiarism Checker are excellent options. 


Find keywords 

Keyword research is the most essential part of SEO friendly content. 

When people search for certain words or phrases, you want your site to show up at the top. To even stand a chance at ranking high, you need to include these keywords and phrases in your content.


Create your content 

Now that you have a great plan - it's time to actually start creating the content. After all the research, this should seem like quite an easy task. 


The following are certain things that you need to remember when writing blog posts or articles: 

  • Be informative 

  • Solve problems 

  • Make sure it's grammatically correct and error-free 

  • No copying 

  • Keep it relevant/topical 


Sharing is caring 

Don't be afraid to share your content around, for all the world to see. Publish it on your company's social media, share it on your personal accounts. 

You have to be your own biggest fan until you can gain the attention organically. 

You can use various tools to make sure that you publish all your content, regularly. 


Keep track of your analytics 

Once you've researched, published, and shared your content. Unfortunately, you can't just sit back. 

Track your analytics, and find out what does well, and what doesn't do well. From this, you can make changes to your SEO strategy in the future. 

Remember to keep transforming your strategy as new trends come and go. This way, you can gain one of the best SEO strategies.


Conclusion 

Marketing for your eCommerce company isn't a difficult task. You don't have to have extensive experience or be an expert writer to succeed. 

As long as you research correctly, and write genuinely helpful content - you'll be onto a winner. 

Author Bio: Diana Nadim is a writer and editor with a Master’s degree in Marketing. She combines her passion for writing with her interest in research and creates thought-provoking content. What inspires her the most in her writing is traveling and meeting new people. She is currently a writer at Is Accurate and Wowgrade. Or you can check her own blog.