Content might be the most innocuous word on the internet today, even more so within SEO.
It seemingly has no definition; it's everything.
We all know we need it, most folks are confused about what it actually is — and it's even harder to create the elusive, but more desired variation of "great content."
With all that said, crafting content to serve all the different needs of an ecommerce website might be the most difficult.
Since we work with ecommerce sites of all sizes, in a wide variety of niches, on all sorts of platforms, we see an amazing level of variability in content production.
The good news is this puts me in a unique position to share some specific, actionable insights with you when it comes to creating content for ecommerce.
My aim for this post is to run through all of the types of content you should be creating to leverage SEO for driving traffic and sales.
A Note on Creating Content for Ecommerce
The content examples contained in this post are going to represent content to support:
- Your product architecture (and converting visitors into customers)
- Naturally attracting links without outreach
- Earning links with outreach
- Identifying the best opportunities to scale link building at an efficient cost per link
- Attract shares on social media and organic press mentions
So let's get started first with number 1 — the most important content on your ecommerce website:
Category Content
Category content is what enables you to rank for the highest volume keywords with commercial intent outside of your information architecture and URL-level link profile.
These pages are often built to target 2 and 3 word keywords that represent search intent at the beginning of the customer journey.
The baseline requirements for these pages has evolved significantly since the advent of the mobile-first index, and subsequently RankBrain's ability to better match user intent at the query level to the most ideal experience. For these reasons, the former category page best practices like:
- Having a keyword-optimized H1
- Displaying a short, contextually focused textual description
- Including a contextually relevant image
- Containing links only to SubCategory pages (versus mixing links to SubCats and Featured Products)
...are no longer table-stakes, and instead we're seeing high performing pages breaking all of these rules, and continuing to dominate.
So keep these points in mind as you browse high performing SEO category pages. Examples include CCS Skate Shoes, Best Buy Appliances, and Men's Warehouse Sport Coats — each with strong link profiles and broad keyword footprints.
SubCategory Content
SubCat content is the first born child of its parent: category content. Ranking SubCategories is almost as important as Categories in that the search volume opportunities are likely less, but the commercial intent will be greater.
Strong examples include Costco King Mattresses and Antique Furniture on eBay — both demonstrate how subcategory pages can capture highly specific, purchase-ready queries.
Product Content
Product content is critical in a different way; it needs to build confidence and trust while also selling your target audience on the value of the product.
For the purposes of this post, we're going to focus on product page experiences where the content is designed and integrated in a way that drives organic rankings for product-related keywords.
High-performing examples include the Home Depot Whirlpool French Door Refrigerator page, Walmart's Sceptre TV listing, and Beats by Dre product pages — all of which combine strong content with targeted keyword integration.
Content-Based Resources
Content-based resources may sound a bit redundant, but I needed a way to represent that these kinds of resources contain more than just lists of stats or historical timeline type stuff — they're more representative of higher-end production, both in terms of research and aesthetics.
For the purposes of content for ecommerce, there are 2 flavors:
Content-Based Resources for Outreach
Content-based resources for outreach are those that are unlikely to rank on their own — think infographics and big interactive web experiences. The nuance here is these kinds of resources exist to build links, but those links must be built by pitching and promoting the underlying asset.
Examples that have driven significant link results include in-depth impact reports on plastic use, IoT security research, and educational guides for sports coaching — all built to earn placements through active outreach.
Content-Based Resources for SEO
Content-based resources for SEO are pages built to acquire traffic (and links) organically — they don't require outreach to begin performing in search engines or acquiring links.
The best way to think about this style of ecommerce content is to think about how many people do research for resources and use Google to find references to cite and link to (to back up their claims).
Examples that perform well organically include paintball safety guides, comprehensive dog crate sizing guides, and BAC calculators — all of which earn citations naturally because they answer specific, high-intent questions definitively.
Solution-Focused Blog Posts
Solution-focused posts deliver recommendations or provide answers to common problems or frustrations within your niche. These are the true definition of "funnel content" as they often represent keyword targeting at a specific stage in the funnel.
What's important to remember here is that your customers' problems can arise at any stage in the conversion funnel: top (no commercial consideration), middle (awareness and decision phase), and the bottom (price shopping and ready to purchase).
When this type of content is being designed, the focus should be on blowing out your on-page SEO to get these pages to rank for as many relevant and related terms as possible.
Strong examples in the wild: GoDaddy's WordPress-to-mobile-app plugin guide, Lowe's window air conditioner installation guide, and Ties.com's how-to-tie-a-tie content — all ranking for significant long-tail query clusters.
Trending News Topics
Trending news is not something you usually think about when it comes to creating strategic content for your ecommerce website. However, it can be a great source of short term rankings and traffic and lead to a significant bump in links if syndicated or mentioned in press outlets piggybacking off your research.
AWS's IoT explainer content, Materialise's 3D printing trends coverage, and ViaR360's future of VR infographic all demonstrate how ecommerce-adjacent brands can leverage trending topics for both traffic and authority-building links.
Scholarship-Based Resources
Scholarships are a popular way to get high trust .EDU links. Scholarship link building is not what it once was — and we have even seen some Google Search Console warnings for "unnatural links" for sites going too hard with their .EDU link building campaigns — but if your brand is big enough, this can still be a great way to land links from the thousands of pages on the internet that link to scholarship offers.
Discover's scholarship page and Chegg Student Scholarships both demonstrate the link profile potential of well-executed scholarship pages.
Topical Guest Posts
After Google publicly slammed guest posting via Matt Cutts in January of 2014, many SEOs abandoned the practice immediately.
To offer some insight from real world, in the trenches experience: it's not dead — thin, craptastic guest posting is dead.
Guest posting — publishing posts on 3rd party websites — when done using hyper-relevant content for hyper-focused audiences, not only is still a wonderfully effective way of building links, but of acquiring qualified traffic.
Strong examples include shipping strategy content on A Better Lemonade Stand, Mashable coverage of the SF Motors launch, and Forbes YEC contributor content on cybercrime costs. All demonstrate the value of putting in the time to write relevant content for a publisher's actual audience.
A special thank you to our smart ec Kurtis Nysmith for providing much of the research for this post.