Content is king. And almost every eCommerce site out there has a blog. You’re reading one right now! As matter of fact, even you, as an eCommerce store owner might have a blog without even realizing it. Did you know that Shopify and Bigcommerce stores already come with an empty blog? Generally, it has just a few placeholder pages, such as an article (with “lorem ipsum” text) and a few tab pages. The only thing left for you to do is to start filling it with content.

I’m sure you’ve seen the YouTube videos of generic brand Gary V lookalikes telling you that you should be constantly releasing new content, as much as you can, as consistently as possible. Of course, this is much easier said than done, and not all content is created equal. Instead of simply writing whatever comes to your mind, consider writing content that provides value to your site visitors… that’s something those generic brand “marketing guru’s” may have left out.

Google Search Console

Where do you go to get ideas on what to write about? If you’re a copywriter, they come to you easily, but if writing content is not your strong suit, a good place to start is Google Search Console. In order to use it effectively, you need to get your site verified. Every time someone searches for a keyword and your site appears in Google’s search results, Google will save the searched keyword in one of its reports.

To see all those keywords go to Performance > Queries:

This report shows all queries that generate your site’s visibility through organic Google search.

In case you aren’t too familiar with this interface, there are 3 basic types of search queries:

Informational - searches performed to answer questions or learn something (eg “how to remove stains on denim”) Navigational - searches performed to locate a specific website (Denim Jeans Co) Transactional - searches performed to buy something (eg “Levi jeans sale”)

I believe that the best keywords to get ideas for your blog would be those with the informational intent. These queries tell a story rather than offer an answer. When people search a question they are willing to read some information about it. Since we know that these questions have returned your website before, it makes sense for you to lean into the traffic that is already coming to you, and give people the content that you know they are already looking for.

Here is an easy way to locate these informational queries in the “Performance Report” of your “Search Console” property. Search for one of the words below using the built-in filter:

• How
• Why
• Where
• When
• What

Doing so will get you the question keywords people searched on Google that are likely to be related to your website (otherwise why would your site show up for them). These can be used as articles names on their own or as more of a springboard for your own blog content.

Keyword Magic Tool by SEMRush

Another great tool to use to search for question keywords is SEMRush; specifically its Keyword Magic Tool (it is a software you have to pay for):

Once you search for “jeans” click on the “Questions” tab to see just a list of question keywords to get to those golden informational queries.

Google Keyword Planner

Google's Keyword Planner is a free keyword research tool handy for finding new keywords. Check out our How to Use Keyword Planner guide to learn more.

That’s just a few of the many ways to generate content ideas for your blog once you decide to start one. Another idea, once you land on what you want to blog about, is to consider linking to your product and categories pages as well. If you are giving people an entrance point into your website and brand that isn’t a place where a transaction could be made, it would seem the best thing to do is add some links to pages where that is possible. After all, the main idea is to use your blog articles to drive traffic to your shop pages, and not the other way; as such linking to pages that might generate a conversion is crucial if you want to translate those blogs into cash.