Google Hits: Four Tips for Getting Found!

It’s so frustrating! You’ve worked like a dog to get found in Google, yet when you search your shop name or your items, nothing seems to surface. What’s an Etsy shop owner to do?

According to Susan Newman of Susan Newman Design, Inc. in Jersey City, NJ, there are a few basic things you could change this very day that could alter your results dramatically. And all it takes is just a little time at the computer.

Newman’s tips come from her years of experience in web design, branding and social media, and the use of these ideas herself in her own business. Here’s what she suggests:

Susan Newman

Name your jpegs with keywords. (NOTE: Etsy renames your jpeg titles once they're uploaded. However, it's still a good practice to name your photos with keywords for when they appear in blogs or web sites.) Very often, we name our images with just numbers or our own internal coding system so that we can best find them quickly in our files. But Newman says this is a big no-no.  What you name your jpeg in your computer is what Google is going to search once it’s online.

 If you’re a jeweler, for example, and you’re selling a gold necklace with some colorful beads, you may want to name that photo “gold_necklace_purple_beads.jpg” so that the item will now come up in Google’s images search.

“The name you give that image is going to follow it wherever it goes on the web,” Newman says, “whether it’s on Etsy or Pinterest or Facebook. You want the image name to be the answer to someone’s query.”

One final tip: Be sure that there are no spaces in the jpeg name; use hyphens and underscores to divide words.

Create a blog…NOW.  Sure, everyone knows that blogging is a great way to draw customers to your shop, but the statistics on those who blog and those who don’t are staggering. And the numbers get even more astonishing depending upon how frequently you post.

According to marketing-software manufacturer Hotspot.com, people who blog daily are 90% more likely to generate a sale than those who blog monthly, who have just a 13% chance of a sale.  And the person who blogs multiple times per day actually has nearly a 100% shot at generating a sale. It doesn’t matter what the subject is…it’s getting your shop name out there on a regular basis that’s important.

“The more you blog, the more content you have streaming to the web,” says Newman, “and the more people you have coming to your site. Of course it has to be good content, but basically the more you blog, the more the return on investment becomes unreal.”

Newman stresses that a blog title needs to be rich with keywords. And if there is an area for a description, don’t overlook it as an opportunity for keyword exposure.

She also explains the importance of “long-tail keywords,” which more clearly refine and define your products. A web designer, for example, might use the keyword phrase “web design” to describe his or her business, but Newman said that would be of no use at all. In the case of her own company, if she used the keyword phrase “web design Jersey City,” she’d see more traffic to her site, but if she became even more specific, using the keyword phrase “custom Wordpress themes Jersey City,” her traffic would skyrocket, as would her placement in a Google search.

“With a phrase like that, I might now be on the first page,” she says, “and quite possibly even number one.”

So switch it up. If you blog just a few times a month, try posting twice a week and see what happens. It’s quite possible that you’ll double your sales.

Create a Facebook page.  Almost everyone has a personal page, but not all Etsy shops have a Facebook page, which are for businesses, organizations and brands to share their stories and connect with people. If a shop posts solely on their personal page, Google has no idea what they're doing. Why?

“If Etsy store owners just have a personal profile, none of what they say or write is searchable on Google, because that profile is private,  provided they chose that option in their settings,” Newman says. “But a Facebook page is public. That means that everything is searchable…your galleries, your image descriptions, your bio information, plus the images you upload.”

Like your jpeg images, when it comes to your Facebook page, think “keywords” in regards to just about anything you write. By drawing web surfers to your Facebook page, you're in turn drawing them to just about everything else you do, provided you've linked to all of your other social media...your web page, your LinkedIn page, your blog, and, of course, your Etsy shop.

Create a YouTube channel.  As YouTube is the second most searched site on the web (Facebook being number one and Google being number three), if an Etsy shop doesn’t have a YouTube presence, an enormous opportunity is being missed.  Creating video content might not be the first thing an Etsy owner would think of, but Newman says it makes sense.

There are any number of videos shop owners could create that would be of interest to their customers: tutorials, themselves at work in their studios, or a photo stream of their wares (using sites like Animoto, a free video-making site).

“In having a YouTube channel, you’re giving your audience another way to find you and your work,” Newman says. "As with your jpegs and Facebook, be sure to tag your videos properly with keywords and good descriptions, then cross-pollinate your platforms by putting that video link on your Facebook page and your blog. The more variety you have in the formats you give people, the more you’ll be opened up to new audiences.”

Click here for more information on Newman’s services.

Until next time!...
Mary Ann

maryannfarley.etsy.com

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