How to build a conversion-focused blog strategy for e-commerce sites?

Targeting conversion as a target KPI for a blog strategy may sound difficult. However, it really isn’t impossible in a
long-term blog strategy. We can summarize it in 4 different stages as follows.

Step 1: Identify Buyer Personas

To create a conversion-focused blogging strategy, you need to have a good understanding of your buyer personas. You need multiple data and insights to make sense of your target audience. To convert your audience into a buyer persona, you may first need Google Analytics. For this, make the following Google Analytics reports a part of your strategy:

• Examine the Overview, Age and Gender tabs in Analytics by selecting the last one-year date range.
• Examine the fields under the Interest tab. (Overview, Affinity Categories, In-Market Segments, Other Categories)
• Evaluate the outputs in the Geo tab of Analytics while determining the location and language of your target
  audience.

Analytics data are often considered insufficient to identify buyer personas. The CRM data of an e-commerce site can
provide more specific insight. In addition, several third-party tools can result in impressively identifying buyer
personas.

To create buyer personas, it will be effective to follow the criteria below:

• Age range
• Gender ratio
• Monthly income
• Habits
• Goals
• Level of education

Step 2: Define KPIs

Although our primary KPI is conversion, previous steps are crucial too. We can consider this as a user flow.

Holistic blog strategy is considered as a long-term process. But it depends on the project and sectoral and seasonal
differences of it. This situation does not create major differences in terms of KPI determination. Besides, it is
possible to talk about running different processes for KPIs such as user loyalty or just brand awareness.

Step 3: Using Case Methodology

The success of a blog strategy depends on the long-term methodology. Let’s consider a scenario where our target KPI is
conversion. It may be possible for this scenario works better with a funnel.

The first stage of the methodology: Keyword Research

At this point, we can talk about two different keyword research approaches. One of them is directly related to Google’s
semantic search algorithm which we are familiar with.

The BERT algorithm, which was launched by Google in 2019, is an important turning point in terms of search. Let’s go
through an example of how to successfully trigger the semantic algorithm and get good rankings.

E.g, “8 Best Writing Desks 2022”. Let’s evaluate the content title. Semantic keywords for the content with
this title may include the following:

• Worktable
• Writing Table
• Study Table
• Office Furniture
• Workspace
• Office Equipment

Including semantic words in this kind of blog content will be effective to indicate the algorithm. Also, we may not be
able to access these keywords by using “Writing Desks” as a focus keyword with any keyword research tool. Therefore, it
can differ for each digital marketer to spend time monitoring and understanding the algorithm.

Another keyword research technique is automation which provides us with sufficient outputs to extract the hierarchy of
the blog content. However, it is necessary to separate all these keywords in terms of user-intent. We can summarize
these keywords as follows:

• Small Writing Desk
• Wood Writing Desk
• Modern Writing Desk
• Old Writing Desk

The second stage of the methodology: User-intent

It may be a standard approach to prioritize two different user-intent types in a conversion-focused blog strategy.
Commercial and especially transactional are primary user intents and can be targeted in such a strategy. But this kind
of blogging strategy requires a broader approach, especially in scenarios where SEO and CRO use together.

In order to interact with the buyer personas, giving the right signals to the target audience can be a primary step. As you know, in digital marketing, we call this as “awareness”.

Blog content that encourages the user to buy directly might not work effectively.Therefore, it would be a better
choice to divide it into stages and then reach the “buyer personas”.

We can present three different blog titles that exemplify the awareness, interest and conversion stage:

1. Awareness Stage Content Title: Featured Writing Desk Types of 2022
2. Interest Stage Content Title: Writing Desks You’ll Love in 2022
3. Conversion Stage Content Title: The Best Writing Desks for Remote Workers to Buy

The third stage of the methodology: SERP Features

There are many SERP Features that e-commerce sites can target easily with their blog content. Thanks to SERP Features,
brands will be able to get more space in search results which provides a wide range of opportunities for them. It also
promising in terms of brand visibility which is one of our previous KPIs as we mentioned before on user flow above.

Let’s take look at a few of these SERP Features:

• Instant Answer
• People Also Ask
• Product Reviews
• Featured Snippet
• Blog FAQ

A. Instant Answer

Instant Answer is one of SERP features. The searches that are made by users considered as a question pattern and SERP
reflect the answers as you can see below.

B. People Also Ask

We can consider it as a rich result where the specific questions of the users are matched in the SERP and displayed as a
Q&A.

C. Product Reviews

Evaluation content, which also can be an expert opinion on products, is called product reviews. In the screenshot below,
we see that the content is prepared by “Camryn Rabideau”.

Product reviews allow users to understand the quality of products evaluated by an author. This is a SERP Feature
applicable to both affiliate and e-commerce sites. It provides a capacity to directly influence the purchasing behavior
of users.

D. Featured Snippet

User queries with featured snippets are answered at the top of the SERP as items.
This SERP view, especially triggered by “information-intent”, can also be targeted with blog pages of e-commerce sites.
This also promises e-commerce sites a good CTR (click-through rate).

E. Blog FAQ

It can be defined as reflecting the question-answer snippets in blog content to the SERP using JSON-LD.

The fourth stage of the methodology: BlogPosting – Schema Type

Each blog’s content can be enriched by using JSON-LD in accordance with the schema guidelines, and provides a better
view on the SERP. In order for JSON-LD to be implemented successfully, users should have an option to comment and rate
on blog pages. In addition, the inclusion of an author profile in the blog content will also provide an effective
appearance in the SERP.

Below you can view how this blog content was prepared with JSON-LD for the blogposting schema.

Step 4: Measuring  Results’ Effectiveness

A sustainable and viable blogging strategy should be considered as a long-term process in terms of organic traffic and
conversions.

One of the most effective measurements that we can implement here is to define a goal with Google Analytics. When we measure every user who lands product URLs from blog URLs, we will be able to measure the success of the strategy.

You can do this through “Goal Flow” under the “Conversions” tab of Google Analytics.

If your blog URLs contain the /blog/ path, you can easily measure performance with a dynamic Data Studio report
consisting of Google Analytics and Search Console metrics.

A 6-9 month process can provide you effective results in terms of organic conversion rate. The blog strategy can also
create a jump in user loyalty over time.

Thank you to my teammate Sena Özkan for designs!