While calling suppliers, adding their products, and growing your e-commerce store should be the primary focus during the first six months of your store, I realize that some of us might have time to diversify our activities and look for additional ways to grow and optimize your store. 

I put together five action steps you could work on simultaneously to build your store and attract free and organic traffic.

1. Continue to add products:

Growing your list of suppliers and the number of products listed is the core principle that will make success possible. All future strategies rely on an extensive catalog and strong supplier relationships.

As your catalog grows, your presence on Google expands, helping you gain authority. You can focus on niche-related products to give you the desired edge, expanding to a broader variety of products related to wines specifically.  

There is no magic number of products that are ideal. The general combination of the store's age, the number of products showing on Google, and traffic will create the perfect time to start more aggressive paid strategies. In general, this happens with about 500 products and six months from launch. It takes Google time to "learn" your store, even with paid traffic. This is why we like to wait and build before starting these strategies.  

2. Add content: 

Blog: 

Create informative, helpful, quality content. Content is any informational materials you can add to your store's "blog" area. I call them blog posts sometimes, but these are "how-tos," "best of," reviews, recipes, and guides. You can create a handy "resource center" for your store. 

Great content should answer a question really well. Once you have several blog posts, you can display them on your home page. modernblaze.com does a great job portraying its shopping guides on the home page. You can do something similar on your home page. That can really enhance the home page experience, but you will need to create a variety of content first. 

Here are some suggestions on how to get the best ideas on what to write about: 

1. https://answerthepublic.com: This is a fantastic free tool for understanding how to answer the best questions people are asking. Not to mention, it's fun to visualize answers - informative and addictive. 
2. https://chat.openai.com: Ask ChatGPT for topic ideas. Ensure you give ChatGPT a lot of context: your website, what you sell, how you want to be found, your ethos, mission, etc. And then tell Chat GPT you will ask for suggested blog post topics. Here is an example of how you can prompt ChatGPT to give you topic ideas: 

"{MY STORE NAME} is an e-commerce platform specializing in {CORE PRODUCTS, SECONDARY PRODUCTS, and ANY ADDITIONAL PRODUCTS}. Our website is www.MYSTORENAME.com. Our goal is to establish ourselves as a leading authority in the {NICHE} industry while continuing to drive sales for our {CORE PRODUCTS}. As an SEO expert focused on enhancing our organic reach, I am looking for fresh content ideas that align with current SEO and digital marketing trends. Please suggest five engaging blog post topics to engage our audience and boost search visibility​."

3. SurferSEO is a powerful software tool designed to help you optimize your blog posts for higher rankings on Google. It provides data-driven recommendations by analyzing your content and comparing it with top-performing pages in your niche. SurferSEO offers actionable insights to enhance your website’s visibility and attract more organic traffic. By following their strategies, I created a viral Pin that links to my most-visited page on one of my stores. This software’s effectiveness in boosting online engagement is nothing short of fantastic.

Collection Pages: 

In addition to adding content to your blog, you can optimize the SEO of your collection pages with a few easy steps. 

Here is a ChatGPT prompt to help you create a short text for your collection page.

"{MY STORE NAME} is an online store specializing in {CORE PRODUCTS, SECONDARY PRODUCTS}. The URL is www.MYSTORENAME.com. I'm focusing on improving the SEO for our collection pages to enhance visibility and drive more targeted traffic. I want to optimize the specific collection page: {LINK TO COLLECTION PAGE}. Please analyze the URL provided and suggest an SEO-optimized title and description that accurately reflects the content and appeal of this collection. Based on the products featured in this collection, provide a short introductory text that can be added to the top of the collection page to improve its SEO. This text should be engaging and informative and include relevant keywords that will help boost the page's search engine ranking. The goal is to make this collection page not only more searchable but also more appealing to visitors, thereby increasing both traffic and conversion rates. Please keep in mind our brand's tone, which is {DESCRIBE BRAND TONE, e.g., professional, friendly, informative}, and align all suggestions accordingly."

3. Pinterest: 

I spent more than a year learning and focusing on Pinterest marketing. Even though I stopped pinning for three years, one of my stores still has 15% of traffic from Pinterest. 

I use the Tailwind App to create and schedule Pins. The app has evolved and will do a lot of the work. It makes being on social media "easy" because you don't have to spend any time there. You can use the app with or without any training other than what they will suggest. 

Embracing Pinterest can be a great way to promote the content you will create. Pinterest can help you attract sustained, valuable traffic. The Pinterest advantage is that its traffic is evergreen. Successful pins live forever there. Pinterest will also list your products to enhance traffic possibilities even more. 

In addition to beneficial traffic, Pinterest will also display your whole catalog for free once your website is nine months old. All you have to do is create a business account, let it age, add meaningful content, and apply as a verified merchant. 

Here is an article about all the reasons why I Love Pinterest. 

4. Instagram: 

You can start your Instagram account with only a few posts: blog posts, collections, brands, and products can be simple Instagram posts.

You should follow relevant players in your niche, including your competitors and suppliers, both current and future. Research the best hashtags for your niche, and follow a few. From there, you can use a very simple strategy with software called https://dollareighty.com. Here is a YouTube video of one of my favorite marketing strategists, Rachel Pedersen, explaining how to use it: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ECyZpoRZqo

Learn more about Social Media for E-Commerce!

5. Competition research: 

Spy on your competitors! Monitor five of your close competitors and develop new ideas based on what you notice they are doing. Are they making changes in pricing? Promotions? Do they have a new brand? Note any signals. Find your favorite competitor and watch them like a hawk.  

Here are additional questions to answer about your suppliers: 

• What are their suppliers?
• What do their collection pages look like? 
• Are they on socials? 
• What content do they post? 

Reminders: 

Just remember that all organic growth strategies take time to show results. I think of them as planting seeds in your first six months to a year. And I also want you to remember that your focus is still on selling products! So keep adding them. The point of traffic is to give you more sales.

Consistency is key. Taking small weekly steps and building as you go consistently will be beneficial. You plant seeds and water them every week. With time, things get a little easier, and you will keep getting more ideas. 

You can keep using these strategies in the long term. Make them part of your routine. 

Strategy implementation: 

If I were to start one store from scratch today and only had one store to manage, I would create a routine that works a little like this:

Monday: Content writing.

1. Come up with five blog ideas at a time.
2. Write and post one quality blog post per week. 

Tuesday: Social Media.

1. Pin and post about a blog post I created.
2. Pin and post about one collection page or product. 
3. Re-post or re-pin three to five items from other creators that suit my aesthetic. 
4. Comment on ten Instagram posts of others using dollar-eighty.

Wednesday: Bookkeeping and administrative tasks. 

1. Review VA's product uploads. 
2. Organize future product upload tasks for VAs.
3. Deal with bookkeeping and issues with accounts, banks, etc.

Thursday: Competitor research and strategy.

1. Spy on competitors and develop new ideas based on competitors' and suppliers' actions.
2. Call suppliers and follow up with previous conversations. 
3. Expand the list of suppliers to contact.
4. Look to see if my website needs any tweaks.

Friday: Analytics.

1. Tie up any loose ends from the week.
2. Go into Pinterest Analytics, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console to see how people find my store. This practice can inform ideas for blog posts, pages to improve, and additional insight into your demographic. This practice can help you find patterns and opportunities and understand user behavior to inform your other strategies.