Have you ever wished for your online store to earn more profit?

Well, while your store’s profit can be affected by a lot of factors, growing its traffic is the first thing you should do to see a significant change.

There are various ways of increasing traffic, that being said, blogging is definitely one of the best ways to do it.

In this post, I’d like to share some of the best practices you can employ to grow your store’s traffic through a blog.

The Importance of Traffic for Your Business

Traffic is measured by the number of people who visit your website (or in this case, your online store). It is arguably the core of every website, including eCommerce.

Traffic can come from many different sources, including social media post, search engine result page (SERP), external and internal links, ads, emails, and many others.

For online stores, traffic is a critical aspect that will lead a business towards success or failure. Regardless of business scale, getting organic traffic should be the utmost priority.

With bigger traffic, you will have more chances to convert visitors into paying customers.

To put it into perspective, the global conversion rate of online stores in 2018 ranges from 2.86% to 4.31% on average.

It means that out of 100 visitors, there are roughly 3 – 5 individuals who will purchase a product from your store.

These numbers will automatically get higher if you manage to get more and more traffic!

Why Blogging is Effective to Boost Your Online Store’s Traffic

Creating a blog for your online store is one of the best methods to promote products and grow sales. A blog allows you to present a lot more information and encourage visitors to become paying customers.

In addition, a blog helps potential customers understand what makes your products better than the competitors. It can also be used to build a business reputation or a specific image of your company.

On a specific note, since the blog will also be used to build a business reputation, it is important to set the blog’s domain address with a similar – if not the same – name as your online store.

However, if the domain address has already been used by others, you can use a domain name generator to find the one that suits your needs.

Blogs can also help increase website traffic effectively by allowing you to analyze the sources of traffic that you’re getting. By knowing the biggest source from where potential customers come, you can determine the best way to reach them.

I personally recommend using Google Analytics to monitor your traffic, but if you already have another tracking software, it should be okay.

5 Tactics to Grow Your Store’s Traffic through Blogging

Now that you know why blogging is effective for boosting traffic, it is time to try some tactics to grow your audience.

From my experience, there are five practices that are quite effective:

1. Optimize Your Content

Content is king. Before you start hoping to get valuable organic traffic, take a close look at your content: Is it original? Is it interesting? Is it easy enough to read? Does it contain the necessary information? Or is it too wordy?

Make sure that you always prioritize quality over quantity is key. Put all your knowledge and creativity into producing high-quality content.

Moreover, if you want to bring your content to another level, you may want to enrich it by using your other skills such as photography, photo editing, video editing, and sound mixing.

1. Stick to Your Niche

Since a blog aims to boost your online store’s traffic, its content must relate to your products or services. In other words, you need to stick to your store’s “niche.”

For example, if your store focuses on selling used cars and second-hand auto-parts, it will only make sense if the blog covers automotive news, car modification, or auto-part tweaks.

It may be a bit weird if you write about other vehicles or anything outside the automotive industry.

However, there is nothing wrong with putting a bit of creativity into your content. For instance, you can write about the old cars used in the Fast and Furious movies, then try selling the same type of car that is available on your store.

1. Speed Up Your Blog

Slow loading pages are one of the most popular reasons why people leave a site. In fact, 40% of internet users in 2018 choose to abandon a website that loads more than 3 seconds!

This fact is undeniable proof that page load speed is key to your success. Nonetheless, it is important to note that boosting a site’s speed can get a bit technical. Luckily, I have some easy tips for speeding up your blog instantly:

• Do not use Flash
• Use a good hosting provider
• Remove unnecessary plugins
• Compress your images (if you use WordPress, try using Smush Image)
• Use a simple theme

Lastly, you should know that upgrading a hosting package is one the easiest ways to speed up your website (VPS or Cloud hosting should make a significant impact!). If you want to learn more about web hosting, I suggest checking out HostingWiki.

However, this method requires you to spend some cash, so make sure that it is still within your budget.

1. Monitor Your Links

A large amount of traffic coming to your blog is practically useless if you can’t convert it. For this purpose, you should carefully place links to your products/services in the content.

However, make it as subtle as possible. Your blog’s visitors should enjoy your content without thinking that they are being forced into buying something (use these soft selling methods for a better result!)

You also need to constantly monitor all of your links. For each broken link on your site, you are risking it, potentially resulting in damaging your business reputation and profit.

Try using link monitoring software or a plugin for monitoring your blog, such as Link Log (if you use WordPress).

1. Optimize Your SEO

Optimizing your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is arguably the best tactic to get more traffic. With good SEO quality, your blog will rank higher in the search engine (such as Google), thus making it easier to be found by millions of internet users out there.

Improving SEO quality is indeed not easy, there are a lot of competitors out there who are actively seeking to dominate the search engine result pages. However, there are some basic SEO strategies that you can apply right away, such as:

• Installing an SEO plugin for guidelines
• Enriching your content with relatable keywords (you may need some research!)
• Making sure that your blog is mobile-friendly
• Creating longer content on relevant topics
• Using internal linking to match related content on your blog

These strategies will significantly impact your SEO. Nonetheless, note that SEO strategies are actively changing. You need to keep learning about how the best practices shift and what are the factors that massively affect the SERP positions.

Finally, I think the key to growing your store’s traffic is constant effort and creativity. Do not hesitate to apply different methods and strategies over time. Even a mistake can be a valuable lesson!

In addition, you can also try using Matcha’s content-powered popups to help you convert that growing traffic into paying customers. Good luck.