More content, more traffic, more sales

I browse a lot of social groups and perhaps the most common question I see is how to get more traffic to their store.

Increasing traffic to your store, which can lead to more sales, takes a lot of work. But most of the time I see stores doing this all wrong.

The guidance from many Shopify gurus is to use ads. Ads get you traffic today which may be what you want. But turn off those ads and your marketing comes to a hault.

And nothing says that traffic is quality. You can get thousands of people to visit your store, but if you're attracting the wrong people, ad performance will suffer.

Instead, I recommend focusing on building out content on your site for the long term. Answering questions people search for in Google gives you a good chance of attracting pre-qualified customers.

When they land on your site from the content you've created, it's a signal to them you know what you're talking about. They then trust you more because you are the expert answering their question.

Content can be text, videos, and images, allowing your potential customers to understand more about the products you offer.

Google likes to see a fair amount of unique content on every page. That usually means 300 - 500 words. I've found Shopify stores can make do with less but the more content the better and faster results.

I'd recommend adding unique content to your product descriptions. Aim for at least 200 - 300 words or a handful of paragraphs.

The same goes for your collection descriptions, one of the most neglected pages on most Shopify stores. Except with collection descriptions, you can target 50-75 words. Enough for your customers (and Google) to know what the collection is about and the products they are about to see.

On a blog post, make the blog content as many words as it makes sense. I still try to keep it above 200 words if you can. The blog content should provide value, not just another sales pitch.

There is no hard and fast rule for the number of words that should appear on a page. These numbers are a guide for you if you're struggling to create content.

I mentioned a lot about the text on a page, but what about other forms of content like video and images?

I can't stress the importance of video and images enough. Though people will read, sometimes visuals help to convey important information in a more concise format. In many cases, the text you write out can be in an image and vice versa. Not either/or. Both!

The most common example I can think of that works for both image and text is a size chart. Most size charts that I see are images, but they should be both text and images.

You might also find that this extra content helps your SEO ranking too, which is a nice extra benefit.

If you struggle to add content to a page beyond a few paragraphs for your product description, here are a few things to consider:

• How to guide.
• FAQ items.
• Common objections customers have.
• Complementary products and why they are compliments to this product.
• Images with captions or alt text describing the image.
• Technical or product specifications.

Don't forget to add structured data to your videos, FAQs, and HowTo guides. JSON-LD for SEO can add all the structured data you need to help your content shine in search with Google's Rich Results program.