It's well known that the search engines are suckers for fresh content. Sites that are updated regularly fare better than those that remain static over long periods of time. This has always posed a problem for us store owners, because simply adding a few new products each month just isn't going to suffice in competitive markets. Nor is shuffling the featured products around on our home pages every now and again!

Thankfully blogging goes a long way toward solving this dilemma. Get into the habit of making frequent, regular posts to a blog and sites soon take on that fresh, organic quality the search engines love.

Of course, as well as helping rankings, blogs are also great way of interacting with clients. Sharing views and news with visitors and allowing them to comment on posts creates a sense of community around a store. This does wonders for conversion rates.

So blogs and ecommerce are a healthy combination but what about the writing itself? It's vital that a blog is kept ticking over but posting fresh material every few days can soon become taxing! So here a few tips and ideas for when you run out of inspiration.

1.Product news.

The arrival of new product lines should always be announced on your blog. If nothing else it provides an ideal opportunity to get keywords into action, so use them in the titles of your posts as well as the body. Similarly you can also use your blog to inform customers when a particular item is back in stock.

2.Additional product reviews

Not everyone likes long copy and you may prefer to keep your actual store's product descriptions short and to the point. But your blog provides an ideal opportunity to pull out all the stops for the more obsessive customer. Add extra photos, tell anecdotes use all that extra space to your advantage. With a little care and attention you can nail plenty of keyword variations.

3.Apologies

Whenever there's a problem with your store or something goes wrong, address in it your blog. Say sorry if necessary. Customers will appreciate your honesty!

4.The future

Good websites are always a work in progress and you should keep your customers informed of any changes on the horizon. So if you are planning on offering another payment method in a few months, talk about it. Say why you're doing it and when it will happen.

5.We're great!

Create a a blog category exclusively for your customer testimonials. Then whenever you receive a complimentary email, ask the customer if you can post it. You should be able to collect a nice backlog of such comments for days when you don't have any news. Then you can just post a testimonial to keep the spiders happy! Of course, this tactic also serves a double purpose in that you'll soon have a fully functioning testimonial page which you can link to from the main site.

6.Sales and promotions.

Offering any discounts this week? Don't just tell your newsletter subscribers, post it.

7.Happy holidays!

There are countless different festivals, holy days and holidays celebrated at different times throughout the year. Mention them. Your customers may be of various nationalities and religious persuasions so don't limit yourself to Happy Christmas and Happy Halloween!

8.News close to home.

You should never approach your store's blog as a personal diary. After all your customers don't want to hear about what you had for breakfast. But that doesn't mean that you can't mention momentous or life changing events. Maybe a member of your staff is getting married or expecting a baby, for example. Depending on the overall personality of your store this may not be something that you'd like to do, but in the right circumstances mentioning this kind of news can endear you to your customers very effectively. Everybody likes to be reassured that they are dealing with 3 dimensional people, not just a faceless money making machine. Just don't overdo it.

9.Current bestsellers.

If a particular product is really popular, it's worth mentioning for two reasons. Firstly it can create a sense of urgency in your customers if they think that stocks may be getting low. Secondly, if a lot of people are buying a certain product there are probably a lot of people searching for it as well. When you've got a hot keyword, pepper a post with it and then feed it to the spiders!