[intro]Before you begin this Guide, you should have opened up a blog for your EKM online shop and populated it with a handful of blog posts so anyone new who visits your blog has a decent amount of content to digest when they arrive. When you have finished this Guide, you will know how to best write your future blog posts with the aim of organically increasing your blog traffic. 

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Search engines love blogs as they give them exactly what they want - original, human-generated content presented in a natural, authentic way. Blogs, therefore, are an excellent way to increase the visibility of your EKM online shop within search engine results as they create backlinks to your content organically.  Blogs are an invaluable tool for your search engine optimisation campaign as when used correctly they allow you to rank higher in search engine results, increase organic traffic and create a deeper level of content. They’re also an excellent place for you to advertise your industry and product knowledge - blogs are a place where you’re encouraged to let the passion for your company shine through! It’s that enthusiasm which helps attract and grow a community of readers around your blog content.

Identify your keywords and answer questions

Websites like Answer Socrates and Answer The Public allow you to enter keywords relating to your products and see what questions users are asking search engines that include those keywords. For example, if you owned an EKM online shop that sold yoga mats, you could add this into the fields on Answer Socrates:

Then in the results, you can see examples of the questions users are asking about yoga mats:

From these results, you can then make a list of potential blog posts that answer some of those questions. As an example from the results I got above, you could use the following as blog topics:

  • Are yoga mats waterproof?
  • Are yoga mats good for camping?
  • Are yoga mats recyclable?
  • Which yoga mats are the best?
  • Which yoga mat should I buy?
  • Can yoga mats be washed?
  • Can yoga mats be reused?
  • Can yoga mats get mouldy?
  • How long do yoga mats last?

You could also combine several of the questions into a single blog post, using each of the questions as a header within the post, like this:

Title: Can yoga mats be washed? How to take care of your yoga mat

Header 1:  Can yoga mats get mouldy?

Header 2: Are yoga mats recyclable?

Header 3: How long do yoga mats last?

[tips] If you're also considering making TikToks or Reels - this same method can be used to help you formulate the subjects for short-form videos. [/tips]

Consider your Blog Post Title

The title of your blog post is relevant too, as on most, if not all blogging platforms, the title of the blog post becomes the name of the webpage that a single post is published. With that in mind, remember that the colon is your friend and incorporate those oh-so-vital keywords into titles where you can. 

For example, if I was writing a blog post about a new line of yoga mats for example, then instead of a generic blog post title like: 'New in! Yoga Mats', I’d use some of my keywords and set my blog post title as: 'Yoga for Beginners: Yoga Mats for your first asanas'. The second version is more descriptive and includes more keywords: 'Yoga for beginners', 'yoga mats' and 'asanas'. A blog post with this title would attract more traffic than 'New in! Yoga Mats'.

Create your content

If you’re a confident writer, then by all means, sit yourself down and write your blog post, incorporating the information you have decided upon in the above step. However, for those of you who are not big fans of writing or if you have a lot of content you want to create quickly, Chat GPT is very helpful here. 

1. Click here and log in (or sign up, if you’ve not used Chat GPT before). Then in the field, add something like:

‘I want to write an SEO-optimised blog post called ‘Yoga for Beginners: Yoga Mats for your first asanas. Don’t write it yet, but please confirm you understand’ and then press Enter:

2. Chat GPT will then confirm it understands your request. Now, dependent on the information garnered from the steps earlier in this Guide, you can either add in some of the headers/similar questions you collected or alternatively, open a new tab on your browser and go to Google. Run a search for the question relating to your blog post title:

3. Look at the ‘Questions related to your search’ section within the search engine results, and copy down those questions, before returning to the browser tab displaying Chat GPT. In the field provided, instruct Chat GPT: ‘In this blog post, you should answer the following questions. Please do not write anything yet, but confirm that you understand’ and below this, paste in the additional questions you’ve just copied from Google, and then press Enter:

4. Again, Chat GPT will confirm that it understands your request. Finally, you will need to provide Chat GPT with some product page URLs that it can link to within the text, so gather the product name and product URL, for each item you would like to be hyperlinked within your blog post. Then in the Chat GPT field, paste in the information like this, before pressing Enter:

‘I also want you to include already anchored hyperlinks within the text below. Do not write this yet, but please confirm that you understand.

Thick Yoga Mat https://www.evestestshop.com/thick-yoga-mat...

Core Balance Yoga Mat https://www.evestestshop.com/core-balance-yoga-mat...

Slim Yoga Mat https://www.evestestshop.com/slim-yoga-mat...'

5. Finally, you need to let Chat GPT know how long you would like your blog post to be, so complete the field as shown below, and then press Enter:

6. Chat GPT will then generate your blog post for you:

7. Now it’s time for the most important step - editing the content. Whilst, in theory, you can publish the content unedited, to the trained human eye AI-generated text is often easy to recognise. Copy the text from the response onto a Notepad file (or TextEditor if you’re using a Mac) and read through the text, adding extra sentences as you go. As you have a good knowledge of the products that you sell on your EKM online shop, be sure to demonstrate this in any extra content that you add to your AI blog post, making it both a) sound more ‘human’ and b) adding quality knowledge and experience to the text. 

When you have finished editing your text, your next step is to select some images for your blog post. Ideally, you should use your own Product and Design Images within the text and hyperlink these to the relevant pages within your EKM online shop.  Finally, add the text and the images to your chosen blogging platform and your content is ready to be scheduled or published.  

Publish and Share

When you’ve finished your blog post and published it, you then need to share it on social media for your EKM online shop. Ensure that each post which links to your new blog post has an accompanying image and if need be, recycle the post more than once to ensure the greatest amount of exposure.

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  • Write your posts for human visitors, and not specifically for search engines. It’s essential that they’re legible, on-topic and above all, interesting to read.
  • Don’t be tempted to stuff keywords into blog posts without rhyme or reason; keywords should be used when the content can still be read comfortably and above all, naturally. 
  • The search engines are smart and realise when articles have been created to manipulate them. Avoid this by creating quality content written for humans by editing any AI-generated content.
  • The main goal of your blog posts is for readers to link to and share your articles across their own network of social media, thus creating a wealth of backlinks which point to your content. The higher quality posts you create, the better your chance of this happening. 
  • Include images and if possible, video content to some of your blog posts to add interest.
  • When linking to different pages of your EKM online shop within blog post content, try not to link to the same page across several posts and aim to link one page of your shop to one specific blog post if you can. This will encourage organic traffic to your EKM online shop.
  • You can encourage traffic from blogs that share an interest with your target customer demographic by simply popping by to leave comments on their existing posts as and when you can. This will increase your exposure further and allow you to create new relationships with others in your industry or interested in your products.
  • Equally, if you see a post on another blog that you feel your followers and potential customers may be interested in, feel free to share it - this can encourage other bloggers to share your posts too. 
  • Don’t underestimate relevance! Keep your blog post content rich and relevant to your business to ensure that each post attracts inbound links. Don’t forget that Google’s goal is to provide users with useful and highly relevant search results - the more quality content you can provide, the more traffic you will attract. 

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Ultimately, the more high-quality blog posts that you create and publish, the more search engines will recognise your blog as being relevant to your EKM online shop, and additionally, they can perceive you to be an expert in your industry. 

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[contact]If you need our help with your EKM online shop, contact your Ecommerce Expert, Account Manager, or the Customer Support Team, who can point you in the right direction. Our opening hours are 9 am - 5.30 pm Monday to Friday, for telephone calls, live chats, and emails. Over the weekends, we're open from 9 am - 5.30 pm, both Saturday and Sunday, to answer emails and live chat, which you can access from the Dashboard of your EKM online shop. Outside these hours, you can leave a message for us in the live chat window or email [email protected], and we will answer as soon as possible.

If you'd like to suggest a feature or an upgrade on any of the EKM platforms, please let us know on the EKM Suggestions Board. If you have a non-account-specific question to ask the EKM Team, join us in the EKM Community. [/contact]