Content & SEO
Where do you get blog ideas for an online store?
The short answer
From the questions your customers already ask. Every question that lands in your inbox, your DMs or on a sales call is a blog post, because for every person who asks, plenty more are typing the same thing into Google. Write about their problems instead of your brand, and let Search Console tell you which posts to write next.
Why are customer questions the best blog ideas?
Literally any question you get asked could be turned into a blog. The easiest blogs to write are just questions you get asked. You already know the answer. You know someone wants it. And the customer has handed you the exact words they’d search with.
If one customer is asking a question, there’s a hundred that basically don’t have the balls to look dumb and ask it. They don’t email you. They go to Google or YouTube and search it quietly.
If your post is the one that answers it, you’ve met a buyer at the exact moment they’re trying to make up their mind. If it isn’t, someone else’s post will be.
How do you capture the questions?
Keep one shared doc and make it everyone’s job to add to it. Whoever is on the sales calls, whoever answers the support inbox, whoever replies to emails: every question they hear goes at the bottom of the list.
A few rules make it work:
- Write the question in the customer’s words.
- Note who heard it, so whoever writes the post can go back to them for the detail.
- Don’t filter. The oddly specific ones that feel too niche are often exactly what someone is searching for.
Then work down the list. One question, one post. It’s the least glamorous content plan in the world, and it’s the one I’d start with every time.
Why shouldn’t your blog be about your brand?
Because your brand name only reaches people who already know you. Most small stores only get Google traffic for their own name. Open Search Console and most of the searches are your name, your name plus your product type, or some variation of it.
The growth comes from content about the problems your customers search for before they’ve heard of you. That might be a health issue your product helps with, a specific use case, or a “best X for Y” search. Group your posts into clusters around those problems so each one supports the others.
I watched this happen with one store we work with. Almost all of its Google traffic was people typing its name. Once it started publishing clusters of posts around the problems its customers actually had, the clicks climbed well past anything branded searches had ever brought in.
How do you know which posts are working?
Use the Pages report in Search Console. It shows which pages on your site are pulling clicks from Google and how many.
Check it once you’ve got a handful of posts live. Look at the ones getting traffic and work out what they have in common, whether that’s a type of question or a particular problem. Then write the next posts around the winners. Your customers’ questions tell you what to write, and Search Console tells you which of those to double down on.
Is a blog really worth the effort?
Yes, if you write about the right things. Every article that ranks keeps bringing people to your site long after you’ve written it. An ad stops the second you stop paying for it. A good post keeps working, and the next one adds to it.
That’s why I see it as genuine shareholder value. A library of posts that rank for your customers’ problems is an asset the business owns, and it gets more valuable with every question you answer.