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How to Get Your Jewelry Business Seen in the Search Engines

Jewelry Business Insider:
Rena’s Exclusive Interviews with the Experts

Interview with Yuwanda Black by Rena Klingenberg

 

RENA: What is search engine optimization (SEO), and how can it help an online handmade jewelry business?

 

YUWANDA: In plain English, search engine optimization is all about understanding how people search for stuff online in order to optimize website performance.

You see, once webmasters know why and how people search for products and services online, they can then parse that data and do some concrete things to their sites/blogs to drive more traffic to it.

“Just what are some of these things,” you may be thinking. Well, whole books have been written about it, but it all starts with keywords.

Keywords are simply the actual words (and phrases) web surfers type in to find stuff online.

To use jewelry as an example, let’s say you were thinking about buying your mom a silver turquoise ring for Mother’s Day.

So, you hit the web to do some research on price, quality of stone, etc.

What are some likely words you’d type in when you log onto your favorite search engine (eg, Google, Yahoo!, Bing)?

Following are a few:

Examples of Keyword Phrases

Women’s turquoise rings

Women’s turquoise jewelry

Women’s turquoise silver rings

All of these are keyword phrases. Once you typed them in, then you’d hit the enter button and start your research. This brings us to . . . .

How SEO Can Help an Online Handmade Jewelry Business

If you owned an online store that sold this type of jewelry, you’d want your site to pop up in search results, right?

Conventional internet marketing wisdom is that web surfers rarely click past the third page of results; so ideally, you want to “SEO” your site so that it pops up on the first three pages of results that are returned by search engines.

One of the easiest ways to do this is to write informative content containing the keywords that users type in when they conduct searches for the type of product/service you’re promoting.

This brings us to the second question, which is . . .

 

RENA: What kinds of content should a jewelry artist consider creating for SEO purposes – is it enough to have just product descriptions and photos?

 

YUWANDA: Google (which is the leading search engine by far) likes “informative” content.

Now, while this can be very subjective, you can take it to mean that it DOESN’T want spammy, keyword-stuffed content.

So, produce content that helps your potential buyers make a decision.

Using the silver turquoise ring example, you might explain what turquoise (or silver) is, how it gets its color, where it originates from, what types of skin tones it looks best on, what cultures are known for using turquoise, why it’s such a popular fashion stone, etc.

The topics are endless – especially as it’s fashion. Keep in mind when producing copy that you want to push the customer along the sales funnel (ie, to make a purchase).

BUT . . . not at the expense of the customer. Sometimes, saying something “negative” (eg, telling the truth about a product/service) can work in your favor. How?

Well, it instills trust.

So, for example, if you found out that turquoise has been proven to cause breakouts in those with Type A blood, then you’d want to warn your customers about that.

See what I mean? When customers trust you, they are much more likely to buy from you.

The trap that many shopping sites fall into is not having enough content. So no, it’s not just enough to have product descriptions and photos.

In my opinion, a site always needs content over and beyond this. Proof?

Last spring, I had a client – a large gift card retailer – contact my firm. Their site mostly consisted of product descriptions and photos.

He consulted with my SEO writing company, wanting us to “beef up their content,” which included rewriting their product descriptions so that they read more like short blog posts (eg, were at least 250 words).

This is because they lost rank after one of Google’s algorithmic updates (Google Panda).

So, keep this in mind.

 

RENA: If you were a jewelry artist, what specific action steps would you take right now to get your jewelry products and / or business found in the search engines?

 

YUWANDA:

a) Pay attention to product descriptions: Beef them up, as discussed just above.

b) Rename photos: Many sites name photos like photo1.jpg, photo2.jpg, photo3.jpg, etc.

This tells search engines nothing about what the photo (and your site) is about.

So, DESCRIPTIVELY name photos. For example, if it’s a woman’s silver ring with a turquoise stone, then name the photo something like silver-turquoise-ring-woman.jpg.

c) Blog: Why? Years ago, I used to do some modeling. One of my instructors always alluded to the fact that most people have the fashion sense of a gnat.

The lesson: You have to lead prospects to the fashion waters, so to speak, because most don’t have a clue as to how to put stuff together.

So, tell them what looks good with what, why, what’s in season, what works for certain skin tones, when to wear what piece, how to mix and match certain jewelry pieces, etc.

All of this is great fodder for blog content.

A blog feeds search engines content – and search engines love fresh, informative content.

Don’t forget to write for humans, but use SEO writing rules and guidelines at all times.

FYI, I advise blogging at least once a week for it to be effective.

d) Start a Newsletter: This way, you can start to build a loyal clientele you can market to directly, eg, by sending special deals, new arrivals, holiday discounts, etc.

Final Tip

Learn SEO!

If you do business online, knowing the fundamentals of search engine optimization is no longer an option; it’s a must.

A good way to start is simply by doing some industry reading on technology sites like WebProNews.com and SearchEngineWatch.com.

BTW, if the industry phrases used in this article (eg, keyword stuffing, Google Panda) are confusing to you, use your favorite search engine (or head on over to SeoWritingJobs.com) to locate – and read up on them.

Hope this insight into how search engine optimization (SEO) can help online handmade jewelry businesses succeed online has been informative for you.

And, good luck marketing online!

About Yuwanda Black

Yuwanda Black heads New Media Words (NewMediaWords.biz), an SEO writing company. She’s the author of numerous ebooks on the subject, eg, her downloadable How to Write SEO Copy That Sells as well as the creator of one of the leading SEO copywriter training courses online. The course teaches everything you need to know about not only how to write SEO copy, but how to make money in four different ways from this skill as well.