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SEO Say What?
By Donna aka Glassandwiregems
How do you help the customer find your products? You take advantage of a process called search engine optimization or SEO.
Caleb, ArtFire’s Director of Search Engine Optimization stated that their main goal “is to inform and teach our members about SEO, encourage them to be proactive and test different methods of listings, and give them as much freedom as possible so that they can have an impact on their own SEO.” With that goal in mind, ArtFire has written a number of guides to help their studio owners take advantage of all options available to increase their rankings in the search.
Before you can use SEO effectively, you have to know what is involved. A customer searching for a product uses a search engine, i.e. Google, Bing, etc., to search for the product they want to purchase using what is called a keyword. These search engines then use a multitude of factors in determining which pages are appropriate or relevant and what order to rank them in. Basically, search engines check a page’s content looking for the keywords together which what that page links to. The pages are indexed and follow more links to find new pages. This process is repeated again and again. The search engine uses the data it has acquired to build an index. That index is used to display the results. This result is a SERP or search engine results page.
You can influence your ranking in two different ways. These are called off-site optimization and on-site optimization. Off-site optimization essentially acquires links to your website from other sources, i.e. if one site has 1,000s of people linking to it, that site would be viewed as a better resource than the one that only has a few. Therefore, it is important for studio site to create content that is unique so that others want to link to it.
On-site optimization involves creating good keyword content. Strong meta tags, titles and descriptions are needed to optimize your page. One example of this process is a customer searching for a “custom opal bracelet.” If your web page has those words in its title and product description, you can be fairly sure that your page will come up higher in the rankings than one that says “opal jewelry.”
When you are writing your titles, meta tags and content, consider how someone would search for your product. If you have described what you are selling accurately, you have enhanced your use of SEO.
ArtFire considers their listing page as the most important page on the entire site. The members are given as much control as possible over their items page. The items page has been created in such a way that the information a member provides is optimized for their item. ArtFire stays up-to-date on any changes and news regarding SEO and plans accordingly. They are on top of current trends, i.e. The Alice in Wonderland blog blitz. They take SEO very seriously because they have “found it to be the best way to drive, new, interested buyers directly into our members studios.”
If you want your product to noticed, you should too!
Picture courtesy of Mod3artdesigns
Tags: artfire, bling, content, google, meta tags, online crafting business, search engine optimization, seo, shop, studio, titles
March 16th, 2010 at 7:54 am
Nice article, I have always wonder how they ranked the websites, thought maybe by date. Now I know to be more specific.