I’ve been reworking my e-commerce store, which has around 150 listings. I’ve been focusing on keywords, good titles, descriptions, and image names. Is it realistic to rank high for low-competition keywords without blogging or backlinks? My store has been making $40-50k a year for the past four years, all without organic traffic, and I just recently started doing any SEO.
Yes, you can still rank without a blog if you focus on programmatic SEO, strengthen your internal linking, and build some high-quality authority backlinks.
Why do you need blogs?
Blogs typically attract traffic through less transactional search terms. While they are beneficial for driving traffic and improving overall rankings, they are less critical for direct sales, which usually come from your product and collection pages.
However, achieving success is entirely possible with the right strategy.
Easy peasy—ranked a store in just one month by optimizing products!
I’ve worked with Levi’s and other major retailers, where content and blogs are typically a low priority. For these brands, the focus is less on content and more on leveraging their established brand for backlinks, unlike smaller sites. The key to success was always in implementing scaled tech solutions to create, optimize, and deploy category pages that cover various filters and facet combinations.
This involved meticulous attention to site architecture, URL management, handling duplication issues, and managing out-of-stock processes. Additionally, the proper implementation of schema and utilizing the Merchant Center were vital components of the strategy.
You must have a blog to share more details about the product with the customer.
It can be challenging but achievable. Focus on targeting low-competition keywords, and ensure that your titles, descriptions, and images are well-optimized. Additionally, having a well-structured, user-friendly site will significantly contribute to your success.
E-commerce stores don’t necessarily require a blog. Most people use blogging to attract informational traffic, which can sometimes lead to increased sales. Ultimately, it’s up to you to decide whether or not to incorporate a blog into your strategy.
Ensure that your Google Merchant account catalog is set up correctly. This will have a far greater impact on your success than any blog you might create.
You’re absolutely right. Most e-commerce brands allocate budgets for Google Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads, social media, and SEO, enabling them to dominate the top of Google and achieve sustained growth. Relying solely on SEO makes it much more challenging to rank at the top and demands several months of consistent, hard work.
I successfully handled SEO for a client with a small website and no brand presence, helping them rank for a high-volume product category keyword (30k searches) from position 0 to 3 within nine months. This was achieved without using a blog—by focusing solely on optimizing product and category pages, and with no budget for ads but a budget for building mass links.
So, while it’s still possible to rank at the top, it’s undoubtedly very challenging. If you have a budget for ads to build your brand, the process becomes significantly easier.
Mass links? Do you mean a link farm?
Why don’t you want blogs on your site?
Ranking an e-commerce website is very competitive. If your website has low trust, it will be hard to rank, even if you have a blog.