SEO basics to boost your Folksy shop

Wish you knew the basics of SEO? Lots of designer and makers are confused about what SEO is and what they need to do to get seen by search engines like Google. If that’s you, don’t panic because you’re not alone and we’re here to help! SEO is one of the skills you can learn that will help drive more people to your Folksy shop, and a little bit of knowledge really can go a long way. We asked freelance copywriter Martha Moger to give us a lesson in SEO basics and share some practical tips around keywords and how you can use them in your Folksy shop to boost your views and sales.

All embroidery hoops and embroidery patterns pictured by Ovo Bloom – click here to shop Ovo Bloom Embroideries

How to make Google work for your handmade business

You might be all about the making, but there’s no reason creative types can’t get to grips with some SEO basics. I promise you, it doesn’t have to be complicated – or boring! With a little bit of knowledge you can bring more visitors to your shop, get more eyeballs on what you do and hopefully make more sales in return. Personally, I can’t write a single line of code, but I have managed to get the SEO basics sorted and I know that you can too. So, if you’ve ever found yourself wondering what on earth SEO is and how to go about it, read on to find out how to make it work for your handmade business.

SEO Basics – What is SEO?

SEO stands for ‘search engine optimisation’. It’s a fancy way to describe how to get more people – and the right kind of people – to visit your website by getting it seen in search engine results pages (or SERPs). As far as search engines go, we know it’s the big guy that counts: Google.

If you sell online, one of the SEO basics is getting traffic of the right quality, and in quantity, to your site.

Like any bricks-and-mortar shop, your online shop needs visitors, usually referred to as ‘traffic’. If you sell online, one of the SEO basics is getting traffic of the right quality, and in quantity, to your site. Quality because you want to capture the right people. If you sell embroidery hoops and people looking for hula hoops are ending up on your page, those visitors aren’t likely to buy from you. They’re the wrong kind of traffic. It sounds obvious but you want to capture the kind of people who are genuinely interested in what you have to sell, not just anyone. As for quantity, well when it comes to showing people what you can make, the more the merrier, right?

Of course you can start using ads to promote your products and shop, but in this post we’ll be looking at the best way to try and use SEO basics for free.

The ‘O’ in SEO

If we’re clever about it, we can dress up the words we use to describe our products, our shop or our blog posts to help Google understand what’s on our page. This allows Google to connect our content to the people who will find it useful and interesting when they go searching.

If you start using the words and language that your customers are typing into search engines, then your chances of getting found by them are much greater.

This is the ‘optimisation’ and the ‘O’ in ‘SEO’. It’s us making our shop or products as effective as they can be for people looking online. If you want your content to become more useful, then the basic place to start is with SEO keywords.

What are SEO Keywords?

Keywords are basically the words that people are entering into search engines every day. The reason they’re so important is that they connect the searcher to whatever it is that searcher ends up finding on the internet.

If you start using the words and language that your customers are typing into search engines, then your chances of getting found by them are much greater.

The keyword ‘necklace’ might seem like a good idea because the volume of searches would be so high. But that’s actually a problem – there’s too much competition.

The best SEO keywords are ‘long-tail keywords’ because they show more precisely what’s being searched for. The keyword ‘necklace’ might seem like a good idea because the volume of searches would be so high. But that’s actually a problem – there’s too much competition and your result for ‘necklace’ probably won’t rank near the top of the results.

A long-tail keyword like ‘sterling silver pendant necklace’ might be much less searched for, but you can bet if that’s what you’re selling, and someone is searching on that kind of phrase, you have a chance for the kind of focused traffic you really want.

‘Sterling silver pendant necklace’ might be much less searched for, but if that’s what you’re selling and someone is searching on that phrase, you have a chance for the kind of focused traffic you really want.

How do I know what SEO keywords to use for my product?

The keywords you’re after are the ones your customers use. Don’t try to guess – after all you might guess wrong and end up using phrases and words that are totally irrelevant to your real customers. There’s no universal way to do keyword research that guarantees results, but here are some steps you could follow:

1. Brainstorm. Say, for example, that your shop is ‘Embroidery Kit Emporium’. Keywords that people might search for around your product might be…
   – Buy embroidery kits online
   – Beginner embroidery kits
   – Easy embroidery patterns
2.  Next, look for clues about what the searcher was really looking for. You can find clues at the bottom of most Google searches and from there, start to draw conclusions about what the searcher really wants. For example, here’s what Google returned when I searched for ‘embroidery kits online’. I scrolled to the bottom of the page and saw this:
   
   Can you see how ‘beginners’ and ‘starter’ comes up in two different places? I’m taking this as a clue that the true reason people are searching on this phrase is that they want to get started with embroidery. Maybe then, I should start to focus my keywords around ‘beginner embroidery’ or ‘embroidery starter kits’ and add these keywords to my brainstorm list.
3. Now use a keyword tool to hone your brainstorm. There are lots of different keyword tools available, at all levels of sophistication, some paid and some free.

Many of the paid options will give you a free trial, including my two favourites, which are KWFinder and Long Tail Pro. I also want to tell you about a free tool you can use called Ubersuggest and in the next part of the post I’ll walk you through how to use it.

How to Use Ubersuggest to find keywords

Ubersuggest is tool that you can use to find keywords that are relevant to your Folksy shop, website and products – and it’s totally free! This is what it looks like and it’s dead easy to use.

Again, there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to keyword research and SEO basics, but a decent plan of attack is probably to go for keywords that are the most relevant to your product and have the lowest competition.

Here’s what to do:

1. Go to Ubersuggest. Pick a keyword or phrase from your brainstorm and enter it into Ubersuggest. Choose the ‘web’ option and choice of country (UK is probably best if that’s where most of your customers are based). Now hit ‘look up’.
2. Ubersuggest will bring up your results. Here are the results I got when I entered the phrase ‘free embroidery patterns online’ – 686 new ideas for related keywords.
3. Next, you might want to add filters. You can enter a word you don’t want to see in the ‘negative keywords’ box. Or you can filter by a particular phrase like ‘beginner’. I decided I didn’t want to know about any keywords to do with machine embroidery, only hand embroidery, so entered ‘machine’ in the negative box and then ‘save’.
4. The results filtered out anything with the word ‘machine’ and reduced to 507 suggestions. That’s great – I’m getting an answer with more focus on hand embroidery. But what do all those results mean and how do I know if they’re good keywords or not? The kind of result I’m looking for to make a good keyword will have:
   – High search volume
   – Low competition (0.01-0.40)
   – Good CPC (‘CPC’ stands for ‘cost per click’ – but that’s a conversation for another day!)
   – A good relevance to my buyer
5. To make the above easy to spot, I went to the competition title and clicked on it to put my keywords in order of least to most competitive. The competition score is based on information from Google Adwords and you’re really looking for a low score of between 0.01-0.4. I can spot that the keyword phrase ‘easy embroidery patterns’ has very low competition but quite high monthly search volume. The phrase ‘embroidery for beginners free patterns’ looks like a decent one too. These might make great blog post ideas (which I could then link through to my Folksy shop from) or key terms to work into product titles, descriptions and tags on Folksy.

Do you get the idea? Ubersuggest is a very easy way to show you all kinds of keywords around your product that people are actually searching for. Then you just have to start to use them!

Where to use Keywords on Folksy

Keywords are so handy for getting found. On Folksy use these ‘long-tail keywords’ in your product titles, descriptions and tags, collection titles, shop name, shop strapline and in the About Me section which people can read at the bottom of your shop.

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Read more about how to use tags here  > New Clickable Tags and Tag Pages on Folksy – what they are and how to use them

Learn how to fill in your About section here >  New improved About Me section – and how set up yours

Read how to write a great product description here > Selling Craft Online: How to Write Good Product Descriptions

Learn how to write listings that get found on Folksy here >  How search works – how to write a listing that gets seen in search results

More SEO advice here > Top 5 SEO Dos and Don’ts for Craft Sellers

And don’t miss this article on how to sell craft online > A beginner’s guide to selling craft online

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Work your keywords naturally into your about page and base blog posts on your own site around them too. If you can do this consistently over time with interesting, valuable posts that people want to read, Google will start to recognise people are landing on your site, hanging around and boost you up its rankings automatically.

When you upload images to your blog you can also rename these with a keyword. It’s got to be relevant, so even if you know ‘fancy cat collar’ is a great keyword, don’t use it to rename, say, an embroidered cushion. Google can’t read images (yet) but it can read what your image is called to find out what it’s about. Make sure you add a link from your blog post to your Folksy shop and related products to help drive traffic and turn those extra views into sales!

See how easy SEO basics can be? With the summer holidays just around the corner, when sales might be a bit slower, this could be the ideal time to have a tinker with your site and see what happens.

We’d love to know how you feel about your shop and SEO. Let us know in the comments if this post helps you to feel more confident about having a go at some SEO basics.

Martha Moger specialises in freelance copywriting for independent brands and creative makers. When she’s not playing Star Wars Lego with her kids or tinkering in the garden, you’ll find her at www.thestitchwriter.com and on Instagram @thestitchwriter.