PlayAbly Podcast Episode 6: Boosting Paid Media with SEO: How Strategic Blogging Can Transform Your eCommerce ROI

In this episode of the PlayAbly podcast, we sit down with Gabi, the main point of contact for our major accounts, to explore how aligning your blog content with paid media strategies can significantly impact your eCommerce performance. Discover why relying solely on ad spend can limit your growth and how a strategic SEO approach using blog posts can give you the flexibility and conversions you need.

Gabi shares real-world examples of brands that shifted their focus to optimizing blog content, leveraging high-traffic but low-conversion keywords, and saw remarkable improvements in their user engagement and conversion rates. She also offers insights into the best practices for site migration and the SEO pitfalls to avoid when moving platforms like WooCommerce or WordPress to Shopify. Whether you're new to SEO or looking to refine your strategy, this episode provides actionable takeaways for any brand looking to enhance its digital presence.

Listen now to understand how SEO and blogging can supercharge your paid media efforts and help your brand stand out in a crowded market. 🎧

Explore more at PlayAbly.ai.

Welcome to the PlayAbly Podcast! This episode is brought to you by PlayAbly Ads, where we turn your marketing into an interactive, game-based experience that engages customers and boosts conversions. And here’s something special—mention this podcast when you book a free demo on our website, and you’ll get your first month free! Visit playably.ai to learn more and schedule your demo.

Thanks for tuning in to the PlayAbly Podcast! Ready to engage your customers like never before? PlayAbly turns your website into an interactive experience that drives results. Don’t forget, mention the podcast during your free demo, and get your first month free! Book now at playably.ai

Get Your First Month of PlayAbly free when you mention this Podcast during your free PlayAbly Demo - learn how gamification can improve your ecommerce shop at www.playably.ai

Transcript

PlayAbly Podcast Episode 6: Boosting Paid Media with SEO: How Strategic Blogging Can Transform Your eCommerce ROI

[00:00:00] 

Kajal: We have Gabi joining us today. Gabi, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself? 

Gabi: Hi thank you for having me today.

I am the main point of contact for our major accounts. Most have been with us for over six months and I enjoy being part of the strategy, not only the SEO strategy overall marketing strategy with a goal of growing the brand digitally.

Kajal: today we're talking about using blog posts to boost your paid media keyword strategy. Why is it important to align your blog content with paid media strategies? 

Gabi: the reason why supporting paid media efforts is important with SEO. is that. The number one goal for most brands is to increase conversions while either decreasing cost of acquisition or keeping that cost at a [00:01:00] healthy number. when you rely solely on paid media, we've seen with a lot of brands that their main strategy is to increase paid media ad spend, and what they're not doing is Improving their SEO strategy across the website they become a prisoner of paid media.

So it gets to a point where they can no longer bring new customers or increase their ROAS if they're not spending more when you optimize not just user experience, but the content on your website with SEO efforts. The long term effect is a more flexible marketing budget between channels.

not only will you avoid being a prisoner of paid media, but you'll also increase conversions by improving relevance and user experience. 

Kajal: Can you give an example from [00:02:00] brands you've worked with where you've seen this work well? 

Gabi: Sure, we work with the Sustainable household brand when we first started working with them, they did minor SEO tactics, ran everything in house, and wrote blog content. Maybe once every month, or two they weren't strategic about the keywords just writing. Whatever came to mind.

they found themselves unable to bring new customers without spending more on paid media. relying heavily on returning customers from their email platform or those who already knew the brand, it was costly to bring in new customers.

when we started working with them, it took us three months to set the base for SEO. We had all the technical pieces in place, and a strong keyword list From their paid media efforts. we extracted keywords they were paying for on Google ads. and [00:03:00] implemented those on weekly blogs.

We optimized not only the blog page, but also the product and collections pages. over six months, we saw an increase in conversion rates across the website of 11%. the new user versus returning user rate also increased by 25% by implementing those organic SEO tactics.

Kajal: did you use all of the keywords they were paying for in their paid media or is it certain keywords? how do you know what to focus on? 

Gabi: We did not use all of the keywords. we started with keywords that had the highest traffic, but the lowest conversion.

These were very competitive keywords that cost a lot per click. But weren't converting well. we began with these keywords, including those used by their biggest competitors created blog posts using not just the keyword itself, but the actual query associated with that [00:04:00] keyword.

for example. with The keyword paper towel, we included queries like how to use a paper towel. and What is the difference between a certain paper towel and a regular paper towel? we started with that and then optimized the keyword list every 3 months based on the paid media results.

Kajal: I know that SEO can take a while to get a hold of and start ranking for certain key terms and some people get frustrated and abandon it. What are other big mistakes that you've seen clients make when it comes to SEO? 

Gabi: People don't have the patience to wait to see. The results of SEO, it takes a while, but once you start seeing it, it's a long term effect, a blog post you write today might bring you traffic five years from now, just by having that on your website, A common mistake, is having a website migration [00:05:00] without thinking about the SEO technical pieces that need to be in place Most brands are just thinking about how good their new website will look? They aren't reallyconsidering how it will affect conversions or site performance.

Once I have images videos and assets weighing my site down is we often see site performance crash right after a Migration or an update, even when you update a Shopify theme, we see that happen too. 

Kajal: what are the best practices for, site migration to Shopify, what should somebody do? 

Gabi: I would say make sure you have an SEO module included in that site migration. Have an SEO specialist sit with you and go through. a checklist of things that need to be in place.

Make new images or assets are not going to slow down the speed of the website. [00:06:00] Ensure you're carrying over pages bringing traffic to your website, even if it's not product pages or high converting pages. Make sure all of the URLs work and you're not getting a bunch of 404 errors.

Testing offline with an SEO specialist before going live. is crucial. Ensure all internal links on the new website are working. For example, if a blog post with a thousand daily visitors links to a bestseller product page.

a broken link could mean losing those visitors 

Kajal: and going back to, blogs and writing them with the keywords in mind, does it matter, like what are the best types of formats?

What performs best? Have you seen? 

Gabi: What performs best as far as blog posts go? 

Kajal: What kind of blog posts should we be writing? does it matter, are lists better or is answering questions better? What type of content should we be putting out? 

Gabi: That's going to depend on the goal you have in mind.

[00:07:00] let's say that your goal is introducing a new product. In that case, you want to write a blog post with specific keywords we discussed include frequently asked questions reviews from real customers, and any social proof This will help SEO, but it depends on the brand's goal For a launch, use a blog post with product features, how other people are using, it, and include videos and images to help people understand how product functions and to the website. So top of the funnel traffic, a blog post about something trending, but that it relates to your brand. So in the case of the sustainable household brand, let's say it's April it's earth month, we want to bring as many people to the website as possible. We can write a blog post about earth month and the things that you can do to help increase awareness.

During earth month. 

Kajal: how do you [00:08:00] know that a blog post is working? What metrics should you be looking at to see if it's successful 

Gabi: A variety of metrics. number one, how much traffic is that blog post bringing. are people actually landing on that blog post? Is that the first page they land on when they come to your site? Monitoring the keywords you used or the queries within that blog post on a platform such as Google search console and understanding how many new visitors you brought this month with these specific keywords then you can optimize based on the results.

If the results are not as expected. you can replace the keywords. or optimize the content and continue to monitor. 

Kajal: how often should I be posting? 

Gabi: you should be posting as often as I would say if you have the bandwidth to post every week, the more content you have the better organic traffic you're going to attract to your [00:09:00] website.

it's not just blog posts that you should be posting. You should also be optimizing your collections pages, for example, and optimizing the. Description of these collections pages, product pages. the content strategy should include other pages, other than blogs.

It shouldn't just be blog posts ideally once a week, if you can't manage that, once a month would be helpful. 

Kajal: Any other tips or tricks that you have? 

Gabi: a good way of boosting or improving your paid media efforts with SEO and writing blogs with specific keywords and queries This supports the paid media efforts, helps decrease how much you're paying per click.

And helps you be on the first page, for organic and paid media results. 

Kajal: Definitely appreciate it. And we look forward to having you back next time. Thank you for having me Can't wait to be back here.