SEO best practices are still best practices. If you have a product company (digital or physical) don’t just rely on your product pages. You need a blog.
It’s tempting to think blog posts are so 2013. Although with companies relying upon ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI agents to write quick overviews and summary posts for (virtually) free, it’s surprising that product companies still don’t get it.
TL;DR: People searching for knowledge are sent to blog posts. People searching for action are sent to product pages.
Blogs Versus Short Video Dopamine Hits
Physical products like fashion and beauty heavily rely on influencers and affiliate marketing. Tech companies rely on affiliate marketing, too. Why? Other people market for you which means a lower cost for marketing and lower Customer Aquisiton Cost (CAC).
Relying on other people to do the work can be a good thing. Until TikTok shuts down and you have no content on your own website.
Snapchat introduced the short vertical video and TikTok capitalized on them – thanks to the pandemic. Short, vertical videos are now the new podcast. My Gen Z niece listens to TikTok videos with her earbuds for hours.
“Are you watching them?” I asked.
“Sometimes. I mostly listen when I vacuum and clean the apartment. Of course, you have to stop to swipe to see the next video.” (I’m surprised TikTok hasn’t changed that yet.)
Against biology (our eyes are made to scan right to left, left to right), every platform has this vertical, dopamine-inducing binge watch. Even LinkedIn has vertical video feeds now. (But that’s another rant.)
Relying upon third-party platforms for your marketing is a scary place to be.
If Amazon’s bid to buy TikTok is accepted, it’s going to become the modern Home Shopping Network. How’s that going to change the user experience? Want to binge on commercials? Unlikely. TikTok will become as annoying as over GIF-ed, loud MySpace pages.
Do Blogs Still Work for Sales?
Yes. SEO best practices work as a whole to drive sales. Now, if your product pages aren’t optimized for PPC keywords, and you’re not running PPC ads, and you don’t have email marketing, and you don’t have blog posts to explain the why behind your products, then you have bigger problems.
This is a good time to say that unless you’re tracking your leads, you really don’t know how to attribute those leads. And, first-click leads? Those don’t exist.
“Google is still sending the lion’s share of traffic… but even when they — or most of the platforms, for that matter — do, we can’t even see that traffic because of the flaws in attribution.” Amanda Natividad
The Internet Runs on Words
Here’s another thing I say a lot: the internet is blind. Videos may have captions (or craptions if you don’t edit them) and photos may be beautiful, but search works from words.
You still need customers. And how do you get customers to find the thing you just built if they don’t even know it exists? There’s no keyword research for terms people aren’t using. Keyword research is mostly for PPC anyway.
I say this a lot on Twitter/X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and in videos. No one will search for you if they don’t know you exist. If you built a product no one knows exists yet (like the product by my new client Green Link), no one is searching for a baseboard for a chain-link fence. It just got patented, and the website went live in January 2025.
Do Blogs Still Work For Tech & SaaS Companies?
Yes, blogs still work for tech and SaaS companies. Now, if you’re a product company, you may be ignoring your blog in favor of product development, writing their pages and documentation. (I know you’re behind on documentation.)
You’re super excited about this new tool or feature you built. That’s awesome. Do you hear us saying, “but why” when we read your tweet? What use case does this apply to? What problem does this solve? Why do I want a project management tool inside of WordPress? But Why?
Well-written blog posts translate product pages into sales copy that answers the why. You can’t just post on X that you created a new tool with the link to the product page and expect sales (with or without lifetime deals).
Blog Posts:
- Establish authority (author bylines matter)
- Stay fresh with regular updates (keep publishing)
- Align with search intent (know or do?)
- Get backlinks and mentions across the web (the hardest part)
ChatGPT Backs Up Long-Standing SEO Best Practices
In a (not surprising) recent study analyzing which pages ChatGPT recommends (by AN Digital in German), blogs and editorial content were cited as top choices for informational queries.
The study by AN Digital found that if someone is looking for the best running shoes, they’ll be shown blog posts. If they’re looking for the best Nike running shoes, they’ll be shown a product page. What happens with Google also happens with ChatGPT.
SEO best practices haven’t changed. Modern SEO – being found in an AI search tool like ChatGPT – means you need to feed the machine. ChatGPT recommends real content by real experts. If you want to show up in AI-generated answers, an expertly-written blog post beats a static brochure site with product pages any day.
“Because ChatGPT relies both on pre-trained data and real-time web access, SEO becomes critical in ensuring a company’s content is visible and usable by the AI.” AN Digital
Get Marketing That Works
I’m a marketing specialist in the SaaS space. That means easy onboarding for you. Let’s translate the features and specs of your product into compelling marketing copy for your blog.
There are limited spots for my SaaS Marketing Plan.
I’m always open for a quick sales call to discuss your goals or get you on the waiting list.
Sources
- Thanks to Warren Laine-Naida and Joerg Geissler for bringing this German Study by AN Digital to my attention.
- AN Digital: Strategies to Optimize the Likelihood of Shops and Products Being Recommended by ChatGPT
- Special thanks to ChatGPT for the translation.