What is SEO and why do I need to know about keywords?
SEO is short for Search Engine Optimisation, also known as getting my stuff to appear near the top in a google search! It is important to have a grasp of good SEO practice in order to increase the the number of visitors to your shop, and ultimately sell more items! It’s not just about bringing in the numbers, it’s about targeting the right people, those that will have a genuine interest in your products. You can find a useful tutorial in our Folksy support area about analysing who is visiting your Folksy shop using Google Analytics. Using these statistics will help you to understand when and who is visiting, which links they are coming to your shop from and the keywords they are using to find your items.
How to Write Good Titles for your Listings
Search engine results are compiled using various factors, some simple and some extremely complex. The text that you display in each listing is vital to whether or not that page is found in a search. Getting the title of the listing right is important as search engines, including Folksy’s internal search engine will prioritise this. Descriptions and labels are also crucial and we’ll be looking at these next week!
Formulating a Good Title for your Handmade Items
Using carefully selected keywords in the title will really help to bring your items up in the search rankings.
When writing a title it is important to consider what a potential buyer will be searching for. Write down a list of keywords that you think someone might use to describe your item. What is it? What Colour is it? How big is it? What is it made of? Imagine describing it to someone over the phone, use google and search for similar items – what comes up first? All of these words are the keywords for your item. The tricky part is to put these keywords into the order of importance as you cannot use them all in the title! 2 to 3 should be ample – the rest can be used for tags/labels and your description.
Top Tips!
- Overloading a title with key words will have the effect of diluting the importance of each keyword, lowering its position in the rankings – especially the internal search rankings.
- Long, clunky, keyword stuffed titles look awkward and may put a customer off clicking. Remember you are selling to human beings as well as the google bots (which are also very discerning!).
- In the gallery view of Folksy (the home, buying and category pages) only about 16 – 20 characters are visible – choose the first few words carefully so that it is clear what you are selling, to viewers browsing through these images.
- Be careful of using wonderfully descriptive words and naming items as they are rarely used to search for an item. If your new red leather handbag bag design is called ‘Va Va Voom’, it may be wise to consider using the name at the end of your title. Red Handbag ‘Va Va Voom’ rather than The Va Va Voom Bag. This prioritises the keywords, ‘Red Handbag’ but also allows the character of your listing to be seen. Some might argue it would be even more keyword savvy to use Handbag Red Leather ‘Va Va Voom’. Search Folksy to check how your listings compete, it is free and easy to edit your listings.
No matter how well constructed and search engine friendly your titles are, the quality of your image is what will ultimately make people view the item in more detail, see our Shop Front article “What makes you click?” for how to choose a great leading image.
We’ll be looking at descriptions and tags/labels next week – both of which also play a very important role in search engine ranking. Why not take a look through your own items and see if there are any improvements you could make to bring your listings up in the rankings.
All the images used in this article can be found on www.folksy.com along with lots more beautiful handmade items!
13 comments
Hmm, food for thought – might have to have a rethink of some of my titles. Thanks – look forward to the next instalment.
Great article a lof of the tips here are really practical thanks!
Great article and very useful!
I’ve read somewhere that the search engines don’t take much notice of the keywords we add to the box when we list (the bit where we can add up to 20) Maybe they are more important for the Folksy search?
Very interesting and informative article.
I have just re-written a lot my item titles after reading this. Looking forward to the next installment.
Interesting post, I thought I was doing ok on the title front but I think I’ll go throught them all and have a re-jig, thank you.
Thank u! I am learning lots about how to name. keyword, describe and picture my items. :)
I’ve done all this but still dont get any buyers on folksy
thought I was doing ok with my titles bracelets, crystals, but Still nothing! I do well selling locally but really want my online shops to take off what else can we do? If any one can help please email info on my shop beassgalore suzanne
If any1 can help with advertising your shops better please email me beadssgalore @ hotmail info on my shop as doesnt show here
Suzanne
[…] out which keywords you are trying to target and then apply some of the tips from this post about writing titles an descriptions to improve seo. There is huge competition for certain keywords so keyword phrases may be better to aim […]
Thank you for a straight forward introduction to googling, i find all this analytical stuff and optimising my chances of a sales really confusing. When you’re arty you just want people to like your stuff enough to buy it or at least say its nice and mean it.
Lesley
Thanks for that Lesley!
thank you for this, i think i must be like lesley, a bit arty i’v named some of my quilts its a quilters thing. but thats no good on those important searches. I will do better. : )
Comments are closed.