Wp and Shopify Blog

[annalr]

Hello,

 My question is refers to blogging. I have a free standing WP blog and there is a blogging platform on my Shopify store. It is hard to manage both due to time. My thought was to copy my WP content into my Shopify blog. Is this a good idea to simply copy my Wp content manually into my Shopify blog? Does it impede SEO to have two identical blog posts out there in google land? Or does it help? I cant manage the work of two blogs but care about SEO. Any advice?

[Julie]

Hey, @annalr!

Julie here from the Shopify Support team. 

You’re totally right - managing a website and a blog can be quite time-consuming! Luckily, there are a few options here. 

Like you suggested, you can choose to copy your blog posts over to the Shopify blog. How many blog posts do you have? How much traffic is your current blog seeing? If you have a ton of blog posts, copying everything over can be time-consuming in itself. If you have a lot of traffic coming to your current blog, then it might be worth keeping it as-is to maintain your SEO and loyal audience. 

If this is the case and you end up sticking with Wordpress, it’s always a good idea to add a link to your external blog on your Shopify store, and a link to your Shopify store on your Wordpress blog. Not only will this improve SEO with backlinks, but it will also make it easier for customers to access both your store and your blog. If you haven’t already done so, I recommend adding a link to your blog in the main menu of your Shopify store as well. We have a help doc with some instructions on how to do so here.

You can also use an app called BlogFeeder to import your posts directly from Wordpress into Shopify. Once your posts are imported, new posts will automatically sync. This would allow you to continue managing your blog through Wordpress, but keep in mind there is an additional monthly fee for using their service.

If instead, you decide to manage your blog solely on Shopify, this would simplify your workload at the end of the day, giving you the ability to manage both your blog and online store in the same place. You can learn more about Shopify’s built-in blog engine and its features here. 

As you continue on your blogging journey, you might also be interested in checking out our own blog post, 8 Brilliant Blogs Run by Ecommerce Stores (And What You Can Learn From Them). Let me know if you have any further questions!

[annalr]

Thank you for the information. So do I understand correctly then that you agree that copying blog posts to my shopify will delute my SEO on my established Wordpress blog?

[Julie]

Thanks for the followup, @annalr!

Migrating your posts from Wordpress to Shopify will not affect your SEO on your current Wordpress blog. However, it will increase your SEO on your Shopify website. At the end of the day, it’s likely that your goal is to increase conversions and sales. If your blog is hosted on Shopify, your SEO will improve, bringing in more traffic and, hopefully, more conversions.

Having your blog hosted on Shopify also means that the blog will be hosted on the same domain (for example, myonlinestore.com/blog), which is beneficial for SEO. The more traffic on one domain, the better.

Other ways to boost SEO on your blog would be to add imagery and use consistent keywords in your posts. We have a great help doc on adding keywords for SEO you can check out here. As you continue writing new blog posts, I also recommend taking a look at “4 Ecommerce Blog Post Templates To Build Traffic For Your Store”. Here, you’ll be able to download 4 free templates to use in your future posts.

Not only does blogging on Shopify make it easier for you to manage, but it also gives your blog and online store more consistent branding, with the same look and feel, making it easier for your customers as well.

My recommendation would be to use the BlogFeeder app to import your existing posts to Shopify. Once that’s done, you can continue posting new blogs directly through Shopify without needing to use Wordpress at all. 

Do you have a lot of traffic with your Wordpress blog? If so, you can always set up a URL redirect to have traffic automatically direct your readers from Wordpress to your new blog hosted on Shopify. There’s an app called Easy Redirects by ESC that will allow you to do this! 

I hope this clears things up! Let me know if you have any further questions.

[annalr]

Thank you for the additional information. My Wordpress does have a lot of
traffic that I do not want to himpede. Nor do I want to move my WP to a
shopify blog. I did want to take advantage of the shopify blogging platform
and since I write for my Wordpress all the time, it seemed an easy task to
copy the post to the shopify blog. But such a lazy task, hoped I wouldnt by
killing my rankings.

Love the link you provided for post templates as I am not in love with the
shopify platform, I will look for an improved template.

Thanks!