Adding a blog to your Magento store can bring many benefits to your business. Not only will it help improve your brand trust and awareness, but it can also provide valuable content for social media, answer customer questions and solve real-world problems, build trust, support your e-commerce SEO efforts, and increase site traffic.
But perhaps the most important benefit of all is that a blog can turn content into sales – making it a long-term investment that offers years of potential ROI.
We will also suggest different blog extensions recommended for Magento 2 eCommerce platform.
E-commerce content strategy
The blog on a Magento 2 website supports other forms of content used in an online store, such as product pages and product descriptions, video content, infographics, and reviews.
Blog content can be easily reused on Social Media to build consistent communication on your brand and products to enrich online marketing with valuable content.
Blog extensions for the online store
Magento eCommerce platform requires blog extension to enhance content marketing efforts with the blog features.
For Magento 2 blog integration, you can choose between a WordPress blog and a Magento blog extension. In both cases, the blog URL can be the same as the eCommerce store URL or as a separate domain.
We describe the different Magento 2 blog extensions in the following blog article – Why is it worth creating an integrated blog on your Magento e-commerce site?
Brand trust and awareness building
The blog as a part of the eCommerce website content strategy is meant to build trust with potential customers. By reading blogs, people can get a feel for what they are buying before they even look at prices or reviews.
The blog is one more way of increasing brand awareness. Blog articles allow you to present your brand from various perspectives and deliver brand and product information that can be spread to the market through social media.
Answer the clients’ questions – solve real problems
The majority of retail consumers, in fact, 81% of them, according to GE Capital Retail Bank – start their journey by searching online.
It is no surprise then, that most shoppers will make at least some information-based assessment before buying a product or service from any source.
The blog’s role as a part of a content strategy is to identify customer problems and give solutions as well as answer all questions customers may have.
Answering direct questions and delivering detailed and reliable information builds trust evoking engagement and loyalty. And trustworthy eCommerce business owners use this capital to increase sales.
eCommerce blog SEO support
A good blog will also have a positive impact on eCommerce SEO. Google likes when there are new pieces of content being added to websites on a regular basis. A blog provides new content that Google can index.
Additionally, a blog gives you the opportunity to use relevant keywords throughout the articles that will help improve your site’s ranking in search results. Linking between the blog and product pages helps build internal links.
And finally, blogs can also help increase traffic to your website. However, this requires a consistent and persistent strategy. As an eCommerce merchant, you should plan it and conduct it consequently to gain an advantage over other online store owners.
Search engines for traffic increasing
Many eCommerce business goals depend on increasing organic traffic. Blog features go along with this goal. No matter if you decide on a WordPress integration or one of the Magento blog extensions, blog pages will do their job if you will follow some rules.
Google rewards an extremely user-friendly interface, responsive design, a clear page structure that is easy for users and bots to navigate, and high-quality content.
Google E-A-T score
Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines evaluate the quality of a website’s content based on three main criteria – Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness, which are called the E-A-T score.
Ecommerce store blogs stand a chance to improve this score if the blog articles are well researched and written by experts on a particular topic.
To sum up, eCommerce blogs have many benefits that can positively affect various aspects of the online business.
It is a long-lasting investment, with a perspective of years rather than months. The blog should be one of the key elements of an eCommerce website content strategy.
How to prove Magento 2 blog expertness?
Expertise in eCommerce comes from knowledge of the product or service confirmed by third parties e.g. manufacturers, brands who know the issue from the expert’s site or even from users who can bring social proof to contribute to your reputation.
What action’s you can take to become an expert?
To become an expert, interact with others in the industry, take actions that people will talk about and share your knowledge. Participate in events and charities. Show engagement in real life and the problems your product or service solves. Publish product reviews and recommendations.
Magento platform blog authoritativeness
Being authoritative on the subject you cover in your blog means being a source of truth and experience. You become an expert on the topic you write about by delivering genuine knowledge and know-how. When selling sports shoes you write not only about the product itself but also about the sports disciplines, the technology used for manufacturing, and advice on who, why and when will be satisfied with the specific shoes.
Authority signs on the blog section
Creating manuals and instructions for products and services that come from you as an expert. Step by step guides, tips and hints based on your original experience and deliver useful knowledge to the buyers or users. When selling AGD products you may write about the cooking recipes and show the equipment in action.
Trustworthiness of the eCommerce website blog
Magento’s e-commerce platform is perceived as trustworthy when making users comfortable with buying process, delivering all necessary information, not hiding important data and preventing misleading. On the blog, you may give all extra information that can not be placed on the product pages, show the products in use and persuade that you have nothing to hide.
How to conduct a trusted Magento blog?
Trusted eCommerce platforms do not hide extra costs, offer wide delivery options, and allow to communicate and get extra information when needed. The same rules exist on the blog.
Revealing the source of data, authors’ names and, delivering true information and objective product and services comparisons persuade the readers they can rely on the blog and on your store as well.
It’s also a good idea to enable readers to leave comments with Disqus comments for example. It allows engaging readers and give an opportunity for interaction which is valuable in digital marketing.
A blog supporting Magento 2 e-commerce SEO
As you know, product descriptions, product pages, meta descriptions, and alt descriptions are the places where you place keywords to support SERP (Search Engine Result Page).
Keywords placement
A standalone blog gives you another space to place valuable keywords. With a settled content strategy, you will take advantage of organic SEO results and support paid campaigns based on the page content.
Link building strategy
A blog is also a great place for internal link building. You can link to products directly from the text or recommend products related to the blog subject right under the text.
When choosing a Magento 2 blog extension, pay attention to key features that support your search engine strategy. More about possible Magento blog extensions and their features please find in another blog article on Why is it worth creating an integrated blog on your Magento e-commerce site?
Blog options for Magento 2 platform
As was mentioned it’s up to you if you want to use Magento 2 blog extension or integrate WordPress blog into your Magento store. In case you want to manage a blog on WordPress and e-commerce on the Magento platform, you have two basic options.
Magento and WordPress integration
The first one is Magento and WordPress integration with special extensions e.g. Magento WordPress Integration.
The benefits here are:
- the same design on the blog and in the store,
- one admin panel – to operate the blog you can use the Magento dashboard.
A significant disadvantage is that most of the WordPress plugins can not be used in this option.
Magento and WordPress as separated platforms
The second option is to separate both platforms for Magento e-commerce and WordPress blog. It gives you the following advantages:
- WordPress plugins’ limitless accessibility,
- security issues are easier to deal with when separating blog and e-commerce environments.
In this option, you will need to unify the design on two separated platforms which means additional design work.
Here is an example of Magento and WordPress separation – tink.de BLOG and tink.de STORE.
Compare WordPress features with Magento 2 blog extensions and make the right decision.
From Panda Group’s experience, we recommend choosing a solution that:
- Is easy to install and set up and allows simple integration with your online store;
- Has an attractive, ready-made design which can be easily customized according to your brand guidelines;
- Supports social media integration and allows to sharing of blog posts;
- Allows product recommendations under posts,
- Has an SEO-friendly structure and is responsive;
- Comes with a handy user guide or video tutorial;
- Goes along with your online store structure and so far experience to make your store maintenance easy not overly complicated.
If you want to add a blog to your Magento eCommerce platform, but don’t know where to start. Let’s talk about it! We know how to help and give you professional knowledge adjusted to your individual situation.
Please find below more benefits of blogging for eCommerce stores. You’ve already learned about the importance of content strategy, building brand trust, and delivering more traffic.
Blog influence for Magento store performance
As you can see, there are many benefits of adding a blog to your eCommerce store. But how does it affect your store performance?
Apart from traffic increase, you will observe that blog participates in the buying process on your site.
Conversion rate increase
Most of our clients observe that users who read the blog content go from the blog to recommended products. When they are engaged by the content, they go for the products as well.
Informative blog articles persuade users not only to learn but also to buy. When they find solutions and answers to their questions, they are more willing to purchase from the site that gave them valuable content. It’s a matter of trust.
eCommerce Blog ROI (Return on Investment)
Like all SEO efforts, a blog is a long-term investment, but it gives you also long-lasting results. This is a business model for stores that have a scaling-up strategy and plans for years to come.
The measurable results will come twice:
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Increasing website traffic
Even one outstanding blog post that is better than the ones from the competition attracts bots and users to your web page. Thanks to Google Analytics and Google Search Console data you will know precisely how it works for your business.
Measurable results will give you knowledge on how to create further content to meet the user’s needs.
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Growing conversion rates
Well-constructed and planned content will support store product sales with product recommendations, enhance engagement, and loyalty and support cross-selling.
The more engaged a user is in consuming content on your site, the easier it becomes for a loyal returning client to convert again and again.
Evergreen blogging ideas
When planning your blog content, consider using a publication calendar. It will make the work easier and more organized. When predicting occasions and combining them with promotions, you will not be surprised and your work will be much calmer.
However, working on the content of an online store blog is not easy and requires as much automation as possible. A calendar is a simple tool that will give you a hand in the publishing process.
What can you write about on your blog? Here are some ideas you can use:
- Posts related to the products or services you sell;
- Educating your clients on how to use them;
- Comparison posts (e.g., the best juicers for beginners);
- Step by step, how-to guides (e.g., how to make cold brew coffee at home);
- Recipes or posts with tips;
- Posts with infographics, photos or videos;
- Industry news and updates (e.g., the latest trends in juicing);
- Contests or giveaways;
- Client stories and testimonials;
- Tools and questionnaires e.g. checklist;
- Occasional posts about seasonal events and celebrations;
- Social issues that are important to your clients and from your business perspective to show that you care e.g.sustainability, eco-friendliness, zero waste, charity etc.
Magento store blog conclusion
We hope we have inspired you to consider adding a blog to your eCommerce store. It is always worth investing in long-lasting actions and following the SEO practices to support all the other solutions you implement to run your business, and to get all the benefits of your marketing activity.
If you are considering a WordPress blog integration or a Magento blog extension, we can give you a hand and advice on the best possible option for your store’s specific situation. Let’s stay in touch!
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