For many new Shopify brands, blogging might not be a top-of-mind concern. You want to optimize your product pages and start racking up those sales.
But customers don’t just materialize out of the ether.
People find brands and products by doing their research, typing out problem-based curiosities in Google to find a solution.
Product pages are essential, but they don’t grace the search engine result page (SERP) for these initial informational search queries.
For that, you need content.
And blogs are the content you’ll most reliably find for those topics that are product-related but not yet directly commercial in intent.
Luckily, Shopify makes it easy to add a blog to your store so you can start driving that vital organic traffic. And, with Shogun Page Builder, you can easily create a blog design that your audience will love.
#cta-paragraph-pb#YOUR AI-GENERATED TL;DR: In our exploration of the Shopify blogosphere, we’ve unearthed some real gems. These blogs are nailing it with content that hits the mark with their audience, SEO that’s on point, and design that’s easy on the eyes. They’ve mastered the art of weaving a narrative that draws readers in, offering up valuable nuggets of information, all while subtly showcasing their products. They’ve got their posting rhythm down to a science, use images that pop, and never forget to include a compelling call to action. Each one has carved out a distinctive brand voice and turned their blog into a buzzing hive of brand enthusiasts. So, if you’re looking to make your mark in the Shopify blog world, these are the blogs to take a leaf out of.
#cta-visual-pb#
The internet is built on the information economy, and ecommerce brands are no exception. You don’t need to be a media company to be a trusted source of information.
At any moment, someone can pull out their phone and search for whatever just came to their mind.
In seconds, they go from having a question to getting served hundreds of thousands of answers. If it’s in your wheelhouse, you can be the one that gives that answer, thus making them aware of your brand and products.
The benefits of blogging are huge when done well. Great content marketing is extremely effective. Let’s look at a few benefits you can realize.
Ecommerce brands are constantly looking for new customers.
Paid ads are a great way to get fresh eyes on your stuff, but each click costs you. The great thing about organic traffic is those clicks are free.
For that, you need to do search engine optimization for your blog. And it needs to serve your target audience.
Say you are a coffee brand.
You want to get in front of people researching methods of brewing coffee and the best varieties to buy. So you create how-to videos and blogs to cover the various ways to make great coffee and what types to use.
As your content moves up the search rankings, you start seeing an influx of coffeeheads whose intent is to make good coffee. Great news—you sell just such a thing!
Not only do blog posts drive organic traffic to your site (which accounts for over half of all online traffic and 43% of ecommerce visits), but high-quality blog content can also boost your site authority, ranking, and online visibility.
Maybe your content has impressed the random passer-by, and they decided to opt-in to your newsletter for more valuable content.
This is great news.
Not only can you continue to serve them your amazing blog content, but you can also get exciting special offers and product launches right in their inbox.
Within blog posts, you can also merchandise your products where it makes sense to do so.
For instance, the coffee brand can write a post about the best types of coffee and roast for every brewing method, linking to their products for easy purchase.
Your content isn’t only for new customers, though.
Your existing customers still have questions. You want to be a place they keep going back to for answers.
Beyond that, you can keep them updated on your newest products, initiatives, and special offers. Send them engaging and relevant email newsletters and special deals so they stick around and bring their friends.
Great content can really aid in retaining those amazing customers you already have.
Like every other part of your online store, leveraging a blog to grow your brand takes some thoughtful strategy.
If you post irrelevant or low-quality content, your audience will drop off and look elsewhere for the content you should have been creating.
So, to make your blog a success, you need to implement the right tactics.
To successfully grow your blog, you need a content plan, not some scattershot posting.
That means staking out the topics you want to cover, researching the keywords you’ll hit, and understanding your competition in the SERP.
Good SEO is essential to building a blog that actually gets organic traffic.
So, think through what your brand does best and how your ideal customers find products like yours. What questions are they asking, and how can the answers also feature your products?
Plus, by adding contextual internal links throughout your blogs, you can drive readers deeper into your content and on to your product pages.
It isn’t all about SEO, though.
Some brands find that their customers hang out on social or niche communities, so they build content for those channels.
Whatever it is, it starts with a plan.
Your blog isn’t for the hard sell. The purpose is to educate and entertain.
When readers show up at your blog from an informational query, they don’t want to hear all about how amazing your product is and why you must buy it today.
So, write to inform and subtly introduce your products where it makes sense. Product promotion is definitely allowed, but it isn’t the point.
Sales talk is a real turn-off this early in the customer journey, so just don’t.
People have a low tolerance for badly written content.
So, don’t lean on cheap writers or AI to write subpar, soulless posts in an effort to try to grab some quick traffic. It won’t work.
Prioritize quality over quantity on your blog.
Even if you got a lot of initial traffic from a bunch of bad posts, it will result in the highest bounce rates you’ve ever seen and a massive loss of trust and authority.
Give readers a reason to come back time after time.
Also, you should create brand voice guidelines that can direct your writers to the right voice and tone for all your content so it is consistent across all touchpoints.
Your brand is defined, in part, by its voice. Included in that voice is a clear point of view about your products and industry.
That’s what sets you apart from other brands, and it’s what can set your content apart from every other post in the SERP.
What do you have to say that nobody else is saying? Why should people listen to you?
Hook them from the first line and keep them engaged throughout. You’ll increase dwell time, which Google likes, and you’ll earn their ongoing attention and possibly dollars.
We can all get a little too focused on making Google happy.
While that’s definitely a helpful thing to do, you have to remember that Google isn’t your customer.
As you are making sure that your posts are hitting all the SEO checkboxes, don’t forget to write for the humans that you want to become your customers.
Again, write with a brand voice that is distinct and create content that is compelling, entertaining, and informative.
A block of text is no friend to anyone. If I see a wall of words, I’m turning tail and finding something else to read. Buh-bye.
Leave the long paragraphs with no images to novels and scientific journals.
Our eyes need respite as we consume content, so break up your text with images, videos, bulleted lists, bolded text, tables, and more.
Just as Shopify landing pages need great design to guide readers’ eyes expertly through the page, so do blog posts. Shopify has great blog themes that can be a good starting point, but real design customization can be hard.
For this, you need a page builder that makes it easy to customize page structure and add smart design elements that make readers happy.
I might know of a specific page builder…
Search engines aren’t everything. For some brands, it isn’t even the main focus.
Social media, email newsletters, and paid ads can be great sources of high-intent traffic. If you focus on getting the right people to your blog posts, your conversion rates will get a boost.
Content marketing is an integrative strategy that includes all the channels where your customers like to hang out. Be there, and your blog will grow.
The most successful brands understand how great blogging is for growing their Shopify store.
They use smart content marketing strategies in a variety of ways to get their perfect audience onto their site and aware of their offerings.
At Shogun, we see the coolest brands leveraging Page Builder to create their blogs. Let’s look at some of those brands to see how they’ve used their blogs for growth.
Nuun sells electrolyte tablets designed for convenient and tasty hydration. And their blog is a great fit for anyone interested in staying hydrated.
The topics range from hiking and exercise to nutrition and self-improvement.
Their Shogun-built blog posts are visually engaging, with content scrolling over vibrant background images, distinctive blocks of content to break up sections, and interactive FAQs that deliver valuable information.
Instead of merely writing a great post about prebiotics, they make it visually exciting, interactive, and easy to read.
Some awesome content they’ve made to answer the internet’s questions:
What we love about this blog:
Le Col is serious about cycling, and it shows on their blog, which has many types of posts—from seasonal lookbooks and race highlights to interviews and training tips.
Selling performance cycling apparel, they have a niche customer base—amateur and pro cyclists.
Their blog isn’t built for driving organic traffic via SEO, but rather to give their existing audience and customers “The Latest in Cycling.”
It’s beautifully designed, with a dark theme and an emphasis on visual imagery.
Reminiscent of the old days of niche blogging, it’s a welcome sight for a specific type of reader, one who would often find themselves in the market for new cycling kits and accessories.
What we love about this blog:
Rumpl makes puffy blankets for camping, home, and everywhere. It’s like if you made a sleeping bag into an actual blanket.
One of the things that sets them apart from others (aside from the lightweight material) is the incredible designs their products come in.
By partnering with micro and macro artists and organizations, they have built a constantly shifting variety of uniquely designed blankets for every type of shopper.
Their blog is largely built on features of their RAD (Rumpl Art Division) Artists, with interviews that highlight them and their work.
Other blog posts showcase their products in use, demonstrating the gorgeous places one could use them once they pull the trigger and make the purchase.
What we love about this blog:
This furniture and home goods DTC brand builds a totally unique experience on their Stay Floyd blog.
Instead of doubling down on driving SEO traffic like most brands, they bridge the gap between online and IRL by showcasing real Airbnb spaces that are totally decked out with Floyd Home products.
By partnering with the owners of these Airbnbs and furnishing them, they are able to have intimate showroom experiences with every person that stays the weekend.
All without needing actual showrooms.
What we love about this blog:
Dēpology is a science-based skincare brand that sells patented micro dart patches and serums.
Their blog endeavors to answer the big skincare questions their target audience likes to ask Google.
Luckily, the most popular questions have product-led answers, like ‘how to wear under eye patches,’ for which they get the top spot in search results.
The post that answers that question (screenshot below) is the fourth most popular page on their entire site, helping to drive high-intent traffic to their brand and product pages.
They quickly give the answers readers need and follow up with contextual product recommendations for what they need.
What we love about this blog:
Ella Baché is another skincare brand that has a lot to say about what they do, but not to drive clicks from Google.
The Australian franchise instead uses their blog to feature BOLD women—a theme on the blog—and detail the ingredients that comprise their products.
For their ingredient glossary posts, they use the same design and duplicate it to build each new post. This makes writing new posts quick and easy.
The women they feature can be students from the brand’s beauty program, models for their campaigns, and those they collaborate with.
This supports their efforts to highlight their online brand, drive applications to their school, and create interest in starting your own franchise.
Their blog shows that you can do a lot without relying on SEO traffic, instead focusing on your social media and email marketing channels.
What we love about this blog:
The aptly named Snug Sofa is a UK-based brand whose central offering is a sofa in a box. Even better, their sofas are modular and built to grow with you.
They serve the European market and their blog—The Comfort Zone—aims to answer the sofa-related questions their audience has, such as “how to get a sofa through your door?” and “how do sofa beds in a box work?”
And their SEO-driven work is being rewarded in the UK with steadily increasing organic traffic.
The posts aren’t just a play for traffic, though—it is product-led content that attracts only the highest-intent audience when they are in their research phase.
The posts are simply designed for easy reading, using a single-column layout with visual elements like videos and photos that draw the eyes down the page.
Along with that, they use big colorful buttons throughout with CTAs like ‘Order Free Samples’ and ‘Shop Sofa Beds’ to drive conversions.
What we love about this blog:
Branch sells office furniture, a vertical that has seen a huge shift in audience in the last few years with the uptick in remote working.
Understanding the assignment, they built a blog starting at the beginning of the pandemic that centered on the new decision-makers at many companies—the employee.
As companies rushed to outfit their teams with home offices, they provided stipends and empowered employees to make the purchase. The posts on Branch’s Turn Key blog reflect that.
The biggest hits are posts that deep dive into the most ergonomic setups for desks, chairs, monitors, and more. Like the post below about ergonomic desk heights.
Readers can learn exactly how to set up their sit-stand desk for their particular height with the easy-to-read table they include in the post (courtesy of Shogun’s table element).
And their SEO strategy has worked wonders over the last few years, with a solid up-and-to-the-right increase in traffic.
By writing about the topics their audience was searching for and building posts with stellar design, their growth was a no-brainer.
What we love about this blog:
Alchemy Fine Home sells all the things to elevate your home, from furniture and lighting to bath, bed, and outdoor gear. So, they are all about home design.
Alchemy Fine Home doesn’t just have a blog because that’s what everyone does. Their blog plays an integral role in the ecommerce experience.
Each post is set up like a high-gloss magazine article, highlighting design trends, layout ideas, style guides, lookbooks, and more that their fans love.
Below, you can see how well they’ve used the design tools in the Shogun app, adding a variety of elements that make reading it more pleasurable.
The Z-pattern design and full-width content works so well, no wonder they made it a template for infinite reuse.
What we love about this blog:
Using Shogun Page Builder to create your blog posts is super easy. Let’s go through it step by step.
When you add a new page, you can either choose a template to start from or use a blank canvas to start designing.
Add your page name and URL slug here (these can be edited later). If you have more than one blog in Shopify, you can choose which you want to post on.
You can do this any time while you edit, but it’s great to have this ready to roll. Just click the icon in the top corner and find Page Settings.
There, you’ll be able to edit things like author, publication date, meta title, meta description, featured image, and so much more to ensure your page is fully optimized for search and social.
If you started from a template, you can start writing in the existing heading and text sections. If you started from scratch, you can drag and drop your text elements in to get your post moving.
Beyond text and headings, you can add so much more. Here are some elements you might want to include in your blog posts:
And that’s just a few. Use your creativity to design a killer blog template you can use over and over again.
When you are happy, save your progress and hit publish.
If you love the design of your first post, you can always duplicate it to build your next or just save it as a template for easy access.
In addition to Shogun Page Builder, we also offer another app called Shogun A/B Testing that you can use to improve the blog section of your Shopify store.
With Shogun A/B Testing, you can publish different versions of a page, template, or even your entire theme at the same time. Then, you can track how these different versions perform against each other (in terms of total sales, bounce rate, etc.) to see which one is worth sticking with in the long run.
For example, let’s say there’s a new Shopify theme you want to try out because you love its blog design. In that case, you could run a theme test to see how customers respond to this new theme compared to the original one.
If the new theme performs better, you’ll know that you should go ahead and fully implement it. And if the new theme does not perform better, you can just revert back to the original.
Overall, Shogun A/B Testing will guide you in the right direction and help ensure that every change you make to your store is truly for the best.
It’s easy to see why so many Shopify sites start a blog to help grow their traffic and sales. As you can see from the above examples, there isn’t just one way to go about it.
For some brands, it makes sense to go the SEO route to find their ideal customers in the sea of searchers. For others, building content for niche audiences and their existing customer base is the right way.
For many, a mix of the two is a great way to go.
As you audit your brand and target audience, you’ll be able to identify the perfect way to leverage blog marketing to get results.
Don’t forget about great design and thoughtful in-content merchandising when getting started.
For that, you can’t go wrong with an intuitive page builder like Shogun. All the brands we covered used it to great effect.
#cta-visual-pb#
