Free Traffic with Natural Search Listings
As a guy who performs a lot of the Search Engine Optimization tasks for my business, I’ve become very knowledgeable since 1998, the year I started marketing my handmade sterling silver artisan jewelry online. I have quite a few internet jeweler friends, and many of them have recently started their own websites. Quite a few of them sell on the Etsy site; but are eager to put together their own e-commerce sites. Recently, a couple of them asked me for advice, and I’m going to share that advice with you today.
I think it is amazing that the two of these site owners made similar, very basic mistakes; what I find truly unbelievable is that one of these websites was built by a paid website designer. Designers are artists at heart, and appearance is the most important aspect to a designer. It really is a shame, but, the person that created the website simply never considered search engines at all while constructing the site, and is strongly resisting the changes I advised my acquaintance inquire about.
At first look, the site is clean, is easy to navigate and is simply gorgeous. The main page has lots of white space, a large photo of a bracelet made by my friend and only five links to inside pages along with a copyright announcement. Unfortunately that simply is not adequate.
At first glance, the primary problem is there isn’t any text. Not even one word. Even the copyright announcement is a graphic image. The links are even pictures. This tells me the designer has no idea the way search works at all; SE robots comprehend text, and can’t see graphics.
Behind the scenes, there was nothing that will assist search engine crawlers either. Simply a title tag … and a writer’s tag. After all, that is expected, but there are no Meta description or keyword Meta tags. And the page title isn’t good enough for SE advertising uses.
The second website was designed by my colleague’s husband; amazingly he actually did a better job than the professional designer. But, her husband made similar errors, starting with the title Meta tag. This is what’s wrong …
Both of them used the business name as the site title. This is a natural thing to do; but in most cases it is a major error. I’ll explain it here the same way I explained it to them:
When your business is established and an industry leader like Cartier, it is OK to title a website in this manner because most people already know those brands and they will go to their favorite search site to find your jewelry by typing in the business name. Unfortunately, we are not well known, and very few are going purposes to search for our online stores that way. No one is logging in to find my shop by entering Jewelry24Seven into a search engine; and if someone does they will find it even though the name is not mentioned in the site’s title. But shoppers DO look for what I offer for sale. This is how I wrote my title.
The title of my site is: Handmade Silver Jewelry – Silver Chains and Handcrafted Bali Jewelry. It isn’t our business name, Jewelry24Seven. We have pretty good search engine results for these search terms; and these are very competitive search terms. The main reason my site is highly ranked is the site title.
The home made web store does have a pretty good description; my friend’s husband was truly up to the task. The professionally built main page didn’t have a description tag at all. My friend asked the design pro about a description Meta tag and was told … OK, write one if you want me to. It should list as many of your related search terms as it can. I disagree … sort of, anyway. This isn’t a good place to put a list of search terms. It needs to be an actual description of what you do and the focus of your website. Of course, the tag must focus on the site’s vital target relevant phrases; but they must be within the context of sentences describing the site. It isn’t an alternative keywords Meta tag. The description Meta tag has to make sense. Here’s mine:
“Handmade silver jewelry and custom silver chains. Handcrafted sterling silver jewelry. Gemstone pendants and artisan rings. Hand made beaded earrings. 50 types of sterling chains by the inch. Bali bracelets, rings, earrings and barrettes.”
It has been separated out into phrases and used punctuation to form a basic structure. Of course, it is basically made up of search terms, but is not a list. When you read it, you can tell what my site is focused on. You’ll see that my first and most important terms are in both the title tag and description tag.
My friend is at odds with the web designer over the keywords Meta tag. The site designer told my friend to gather a list of keywords which included words with spelling errors like joolry. IMO, this is really ill advised for two reasons … primarily because it makes the site owner look uneducated and unprofessional. More important, it takes up valuable space in the keyword Meta tag.
Very few pages can be thoroughly optimized for more than two or three relevant keywords. The keywords at the front of the tag must be more meaningful and relevant. I think listing over_in excess of 15 or so really does no good, and after 15 it sort of lessens the importance of the relevant terms. The keywords tag also requires a juggling act of sorts; every word you include in the keywords Meta tag needs to appear on the web page in the body text. This may be hard to accomplish, in particular with purposely words containing spelling mistakes due to the fact that it can seem like the page is riddled with typographical errors. Lets take a look at our site’s keywords for example:
“handmade silver jewelry, silver chain, custom silver chains, sterling silver jewelry, bali jewelry, handcrafted, artisan jewelry, silver barrettes, custom made, bracelets, handmade earrings, silver ring, by the inch, pendant”
We have 14 search terms listed in the tag list shown above. They are all used in the site’s body text. The significant keywords are included before any of the others. These are included in the body text a few times; and are used in several ways. Heading 1 text, category or text, bold text and text links all serve a purpose in the way the site’s index page is constructed.
My friend’s web designer strongly objected over the index page’s body text. She doesn’t want any. My friend may not have the ability to have the web designer follow her instructions; she feels the site is done and I do see how text spoils the visual impact. However, without text, the site will not be included in search engine listings; the result is very few people will ever see it. This is the reason you need to be cautious when paying someone to create and maintain your website.
Of course I know and agree that Flash looks cool and it does have its place; so do graphic images and Java. However, if you need a site that is easily found on search engines, a static HTML page is the best way to reach that goal. Take full advantage of the Meta tags by mentioning your main search terms in the 3 meta tags – title, description and keywords. Be sure to mention every word you put in the keywords tag in your site’s body text. Describe the photos with “image alt” tags. Use text links to the inside pages of your site, not graphic or Javascript buttons. And write between 600 and 900 words in the body section in easy to see text that intelligibly describes what you do and products you sell on the site.
Work on acquiring as many pages as possible to link to your content with optimized hyperlinks that mention the same keywords and search terms you’ve included in the tags. There is no other way to get your website organic traffic on search engines; this is a major job; but this seriously is the one method you can employ to reach as many people as possible – consumers without investing a lots of cash for online advertising!
Robert Edwards is a jewelry designer and goldsmith in NYC with over 30 years experience in the jewelry trade. He is the webmaster of a popular retail website specializing in handmade silver jewelry and silver chains. This article may be copied and published on blogs and websites as content provided the entire article, all links and this author’s statement are included, Copyright 2010 Robert Edwards.
Posted in Marketing | 
Tags: hair accessories, natural traffic, search engine optimization, search engines, SEO, silver chains
