5 examples of great blog content for ecommerce SEO

It’s one thing to read advice and best practices on what makes for great SEO blog content, but what’s better is seeing what it looks like live and online from real brands. Blog writing isn’t always easy, though it sounds like it should be. Getting the right keywords in there, while also choosing topics your audience will be interested in, optimizing it, getting the right balance of long and short form content - there’s a lot that goes into just one article, nevermind an entire content calendar.

So, today we’re looking at 5 examples from real Shopify stores where they don’t just have one article that fits the “great SEO blog” bill, but an entire blog content strategy that sets them up for success.   

#1 - Verve Coffee

Specialist coffee can be a difficult category for a consumer to dive into as a newcomer. With different roast types, bean varieties, and brew methods, it can be quite daunting. Verve Coffee’s blog does an excellent job of demystifying coffee, in a way that’s easy to understand for a beginner while still being interesting for a veteran caffeine addict. 

Much of their content focuses on education that will improve the customer’s product knowledge before purchase, as well as their product experience after purchase. So if a customer finds their blog article about how to best grind coffee at home, they’ll get answers to their questions as well as potentially discover a new brand that sells everything they need should they want to try it for themselves.

Good blog content for SEO will focus on the kind of topics that target customers will be searching for. For Verve, they're looking at the topics that surround their product, which is specialist coffee. This means their target audience may be looking for information on brew methods or techniques. After all, their product pages will target keywords that are directly related to their products, but blogs will target broader, long-tail, question-based keywords. They won’t have space on a product page for “How do I grind coffee at home?” or “Why get an electric grinder over a manual one?”, but a blog article can focus entirely on this one topic niche.  

Within blog articles, they also use simple, straightforward language as well as include plenty of helpful images. These will add to the usefulness of the article, as well as allowing them to add keywords into their image alt text and this will in turn benefit the page's SEO. They also include internal links to products that the reader may be interested in if they’re reading up on that specific topic.

#2 - Homesick

A great SEO strategy will involve not just evergreen content, but also seasonal content. Evergreen content is that which is going to be relevant long after it’s published, which is beneficial given it can take anywhere from 6 to 12 months for a page to rank in search results pages. The exception to this is seasonal content, where Google may rank a page higher faster if it’s seasonally relevant to their users. Examples of this would be gift guides for the holidays, or a blog about Black Friday deals. Showing users recently published content in this case is much more useful and relevant, rather than showing them an article from the previous year. 

Homesick’s blog content has a mix of both evergreen and seasonal content, which allows them to remain relevant and useful in all different search queries with different types of intent. 

Buying guides are just one of the types of content that Homesick creates to target evergreen and seasonal search intent. They also publish articles related to the seasons themselves such as the best scents for Fall or Winter, which will be relevant when published then regain relevance the following year.   

Beyond this, they regularly publish question based articles which fall into topic clusters around their products. For example, if a topic cluster for Homesick is “candle care” and another is “scents and smells”, they publish articles like “How to Use a Wick Trimmer for Your Candle” and “What Does Balsam Smell Like?”. The latter is more likely to come in search results unrelated to their product, expanding their reach. 

#3 - Greenies

In some product categories, you want your brand to be seen as an authority on your niche. Greenies is a well known pet brand for dental chews, and as part of their blogging strategy they focus on positioning their brand as knowledgeable and insightful on topics like pet care, wellbeing, and health. 

Their target audience will obviously be pet owners, which sounds like a narrow enough niche however there are lots of segments within that audience. For example, dog vs cat owners, senior vs kitten/puppy owners, owners who have pets with specific health issues, etc. Therefore, they want to cover as many topics as possible that target all these different audience segments. 

They do this by employing a mix of short and long form content depending on the issue being tackled. For instance, some issues take less to explain and therefore the reader may want a quick answer rather than a long article explaining everything in detail. Whereas with more complex issues or questions which may take more explanation, they give it the word count it warrants and which the user will expect to see. 

They also add in short-form listicle style content, to add more topics and keywords to their content strategy. Add to this targeting those long-tail question-based keywords we mentioned earlier, and Greenies are covering all their bases. These questions revolve around common issues pet owners may look for answers to, and that brings those users to their brand.

Creating a great blog strategy can be as simple as considering what topics related to your product category your target audience may search for. By providing answers to common questions, you’ll position your brand as one that knows what they’re talking about and can be trusted to provide high quality information. And in turn, provide a high quality product. 

#4 - Yummy Bazaar

When you have a very specific product and niche, it can be straightforward to identify those topic clusters that allow you to develop your content strategy for SEO. However, when you sell a very broad variety of products, it can be difficult to know what you should focus on. Yummy Bazaar is a great example of where a large catalog and broad product range can be turned into focused and cohesive content for SEO. 

They consistently write and publish blogs that focus on question based, insightful content around the foods and cultures they sell from. Posting regularly is the key to developing your blog, as it demonstrates to Google and other search engines that you’re engaged in creating useful content.

Their blog could easily run the risk of trying to write on too many topics and topic areas, which could dilute their authority, appearing to be a “jack of all trades, master of none”. Their content is instead insightful, eye-catching, and engaging.

If you have a broad product catalog, find a common thread and choose your most relevant topic clusters that are most likely to come up in search results. For Yummy Bazaar, this is cooking techniques, education about world foods, recipes, and food history. These all have plenty of topics to write about, with their own keywords, search intent, and audience to target. 

#5 - Facetory

Skincare and beauty are huge categories in ecommerce, with plenty of advice articles out there on the internet competing for search ranking. It’s a category for which content can often sit on the line between medical and category expert advice, and this can make it tricky to write SEO-led content. You want to be seen as an authority, but you don’t want to be mischaracterized as offering medical advice if you’re not a professional yourself or the article doesn't reference a credible source. This can often be the case for other categories like health and wellbeing, and fitness. 

Facetory does a great job at balancing solid skincare advice and positioning their brand as knowledgeable, while also steering clear of advice that may fall under Google’s YMYL (Your money or your life).

 

Their blogs focus on common skincare topics and questions, focusing on their product niche to position themselves as a category expert. They frequently write a few blog posts per topic, allowing them to target different keywords and long-tail search terms that their target audience may search for. 

Writing just once on a topic is a great start, but if you want to start ranking for that topic you need to have more content on your site that speaks to it. Consider this - if you write one article about how to pick the best running shoes, whereas your competitor has published three high quality articles on the same topic covering different areas, they’re more likely to rank. No matter how high quality your single article may be, they’ve demonstrated that this is a topic relevant to their audience and website, and search engines will take note of that.

This approach also allows you to target different long-tail keywords around the same topic, without keyword stuffing. Instead of writing one long article that includes every single keyword, you can optimize each blog and focus on a group of keywords. 

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Writing blog content which is SEO-led and engaging can be difficult, but it’s certainly not impossible. By looking at examples of other brands who do it well, you’ll be able to spot patterns in content that show you strategy you can adapt and apply to your own content.