I love keeping things simple. There’s a sweetness to it and I always try to use that when writing about digital marketing. So in this post, I’ll be keeping things painless and providing a simple guide to SEO for handmade jewelry.
When I first started with keyword research and blogging, I fumbled around a lot and made many mistakes and SEO faux pas.
But hey, hindsight is 20/20, right?
So the major themes in this post address those early mistakes I made, so you can hopefully avoid them and rank faster for your content marketing jewelry goals!
Nowadays, I focus primarily on three foundations when implementing SEO, or search engine optimization:
- Audience & Keyword Research
- Topic & Content Ideation
- Optimized Content Creation
Of course, there are various other advanced strategies – such as backlinking, or image optimization – but I believe starting simple, and walking before running is the best way to grow sustainably with SEO.
Now enough small talk – let’s get it!
Outline
- It All Starts With Your Audience
- Keyword Research: Finding Your Sweet Spot
- Creating Content That Google & Your Audience Will Love
- How To SEO-ify Your Content: The Simple Way
- Conclusion
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It All Starts With Your Audience
It goes without saying, but everything from content to the product itself is guided by a deep understanding of one’s audience, their wants and desires, pain points and values.
In other words, without understanding our audiences deeply, any content created will likely be aimless shots in the dark – at best.
So before we implement a good SEO strategy, we should ensure the content will resonate with our audience – and of course coincide with our brand too.
This is where audience research is crucial, especially since this information evolves over time.
Audiences are dynamic and should be regularly audited as the market changes and buyer preferences evolve.
So one way to solidify the current understanding of our audience is with a customer avatar sheet.
Essentially, this will organize and lay out all core features of a target market, from their general interests and demographics to the platforms they use, the people they follow and their values.
This is extremely helpful and easily forgotten. I mean, having all the essential traits and insights about your customers organized and clearly laid out is fantastic, am I right?
But I admit, I frequently fail at this myself – both as a musician and a content creator.
Simply believing that we already know our audience without actually taking the time to do the research and look at the data has always plagued business.
So let’s be sure we don’t miss anything before we spend our valuable time and energy with the actual content creation itself.
Here’s a quick 3-step method for building out a customer avatar:
Step One
Who is your customer? What is their typical age and gender? How about their interests and location?
Step Two
Where does your customer spend time? Which social media platforms do they use and where do they shop?
Step Three
What are your customer’s values and challenges or pain points? Are they family-oriented, do they value sustainability?
Alright, sweet! Now we’ve got an updated customer avatar sheet, which will be super helpful moving forward – but not just helpful for content creation.
This information can also guide our other digital marketing efforts, for example helping with audience targeting, messaging and copy and new audience testing.
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Feeling stuck? Check out Facebook’s free Audience Insights tool to gain a deeper understanding of your audience and any potential markets you could be missing out on!
Keyword Research: Finding Your Sweet Spot
Perhaps equally important to understanding your audience is finding the right keyword to focus and create content for.
Keyword research can get pretty deep and pretty nuanced pretty quick.
But at the crux of it all, your keywords should check the two boxes below.
Phrases You Can Realistically Rank For
This means targeting keywords that are low competition and more niche.
Keywords You Can Actually Add Value To
We should write about topics that we’re knowledgeable in or actually interested in.
So let’s tackle that first point, finding low competition keywords that we can realistically rank for.
What does this mean exactly?
Well, let’s use my site as an example.
At the time of writing this post, my site is only a little over a year old and I really didn’t find my voice or niche until around 6 months later.
What’s more, I’ve been pretty hands off with my ranking efforts – relying heavily on passive growth.
For example, I have not been actively building any backlinking strategies. That is, trying to get sites with higher authority than mine to link back to my content, signaling to Google that my site is trustworthy.
This is something a lot of SEO experts will recommend.
But for me, I opted for a more laissez-faire approach, which although results in slower growth, is also a completely viable and effective option.
So I want to find keywords I can confidently write about (such as SEO for handmade jewelry) but also keywords that – when typed into the search engine – yield website results that I can realistically compete with.
I can’t compete with huge, well-established sites that have high domain authorities.
So let’s explore how to do this as a jewelry artist.
How to Find Keywords for SEO
One of the easiest place to start your keyword research is at the heart of it all: Google. Ah yes, Professor Google knows all!
But in all seriousness, Google provides incredibly insightful information for keyword research – both within the main search bar and the actual results pages.
So let’s look at how to use these to our advantage.
Step One
Start off with a simple Google search of a seed keyword. Basically, you start typing in your keyword idea into Google and see if Google autofills your phrase (or something similar).
Step Two
Hit enter for this initial seed keyword and check out other similar phrases in the people also ask section and the searches related to…(at the bottom of the page) feature.
Step Three
Click around, try different keyword combinations by typing the phrase and the beginning of next words to see what Google’s autofill feature recommends.
Step Four
Once you find a good keyword, audit the first page rankings for that keyword.
Step Five
If the currently ranking articles are older posts, short posts, low-quality posts or posts from low-authority sites, then this is a good sign that you could realistically compete and rank for that phrase.
Using Google and its autofilling feature is one of my favorite keyword research methods. It’s fast, simple and since Google autofills the phrases, this essentially means people are indeed searching for that exact phrase.
In fact, it’s still one of my go-to strategies to come up with new ideas and identify competitive keyword opportunities.
But if you want to take it up a notch, you can use an actual keyword research tool, such as Google keyword planner.
Google does require that you have an account and for it be in expert mode.
So if you want to try out a simple and free keyword tool (that requires no setting up or account changes), definitely check out Ubersuggest by Neil Patel.
It’s a powerful, incredibly insightful tool – which is surprising considering it’s completely free (although there are upgrade options available also).
And if you’re looking for inspiration, head over to Answer the Public. It’s a free, visual keyword planner that yields amazing results.
But that’s pretty much it as far as introductory keyword research goes.
So as long as you’re focusing on finding and creating something that your audience will find valuable, you’ll be set.
Creating Content That Google & Your Audience Will Love
So once you find a collection of keywords that are in your sweet spot, it’s time to start crafting that content – woo!
This is the fun part and is kind of an ongoing thing. I mean, I’m always revising, changing and updating old content.
But it’s a process and keeps things fresh, which is the perfect segue to my first point: content freshness.
Let’s be honest, when searching for answers and solutions, preference is definitely given to more recent posts.
When it comes to deciding between an article that’s a few years old versus one that’s fresh, the choice is obvious.
This can also help in keyword research by choosing phrases whose ranking articles are older.
And while some niches can get away with older posts more easily (such as how to grow tomatoes), fresh content is especially important for fashion-related topics, which go through frequent trends and seasonal changes.
So for that reason, new, fresh content can be a competitive edge. In fact, I often use this detail when researching competitive keywords.
For example, if a lot of the current results for a potential keyword yield posts that are 5+ years old, I see this as an opportunity.
So continuing to not only pump out new content but keeping old content frequently updated is key.
Next, let’s talk about content length. So how much should you write? Is there an optimum page length when it comes to SEO and blogging?
Well, when it comes to blogging and content marketing, a lot of research suggests that longer is posts outperform shorter ones in ranking.
How long Should Articles Be?
According to Wealthy Affiliate, at least 1,000 words is an ideal word length.
And research by Backlinko found the average word length for page 1 articles on Google was 1,447 words.
Still yet, HubSpot recommends blogs to be between 2,100-2,400 words for 2021.
I try to aim for at least 1,000 words, but I tend to write content between 1,500 and 2,000 words – or more!
Another point to consider is how blog length can be part of your keyword planning strategy.
Basically, this means you’re looking at currently ranking content for your chosen keyword and auditing how long those posts are.
I use a word counter extension (like this one) to make it easy.
By looking at the word length (and quality) of ranking articles, you’re able to clearly plan out how you can simply write a better, longer, more in-depth article.
This is actually called the skyscraper technique and can give you a serious edge – especially for new blogs.
Below are some more tips for making content that both Google and your audience will absolutely love.
- Always create content that is value-adding
- Don’t always push for selling first, build a relationship with trust and authority
- Make content that is simple, clear and user-friendly
- People that click on a page but quickly bounce is a negative signal for the Google algorithm
- Notice how my post is easily scannable and avoids too many big blocks of text.
- Aim for content that is engaging
- For example, using video or interactive features and inviting the reader to leave a comment
- Match content to the user’s mindset and expectations
- This is based on their particular search query
- Think about where the reader is in the buyer’s journey by employing a sales funnel mindset
- Link to other relevant posts when relevant
- This is called internal linking and is very helps Google establish a site map for your site
- Use visuals
- Images, graphs and other creatives go a long way
- Match your content writing to the reader’s mindset
- For example, people searching for “what is resin jewelry” are not likely in a buyer’s mindset
- But people searching for “is cheap resin jewelry good” are more likely in a buyer’s mindset
- Write organically, be consistent and respond to comments
- At the end of the day, a positive user experience and making content that’s actually helpful is your best strategy
Recommended Read: Blogging As An Artist & Secrets to Success
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Outgrow is an awesome platform that lets you create engaging quizzes, surveys, polls and more.
Research shows that interactive content creates a more memorable experience for people.
These tools can also boost engagement and on-site time, leading to better ranking and a more active audience.
How To SEO-ify Your Content: The Simple Way
OK, now to the mechanics of content creation and content marketing: actually optimizing it for Google ranking! I’ll admit, this concept seemed intimidating for me personally. But it’s actually not too bad!
So let’s look at how to optimize content for the search engines in the simplest ways possible.
In the Title
First things first, it’s recommended (for apparent reasons) to include your keyword in the title itself.
Although some research has even showed no correlation between ranking and putting a keyword in the title, my personal experience, ongoing research and success still says it’s an important part of SEO.
Besides, users are specifically searching for your keyword, doesn’t it make sense to at least include it in your title?
So, in addition to using the actual target keyword in a title tag, is there anything else we can do to optimize it?
Definitely!
Notably, one major thing we can do – which has a more indirect impact on SEO – deals with copy writing and crafting a title that is click-worthy (not click-baity).
Beside SEO, writing compelling and click-worthy titles is important for turning impressions into clicks and getting traffic to your site.
It’s related to SEO for the simple reason that the more people that click on your post (because of an enticing title), the more your post will be recognized by Google as being interesting and relevant for the reader.
This, combined with creating content that’s user-friendly, engaging and actually helpful, all ensure that your ranking position grows and remains stable.
In the Intro
After the title, where should the keyword pop up next?
This is an important topic and it’s crucial that we don’t end up keyword-stuffing, but we also need to include our keyword and related phrases when and where appropriate.
In addition to your title tag, including your keyword within the first couple sentences of your post will help boost your SEO rankings (Optinmonster)
I always spend time writing an organic and clear intro for my posts, ensuring that I use my keyword somewhere in the first paragraph.
Aside from this, I generally pay no attention to anywhere else my target keyword is or should be.
In the Body
Many SEO experts say that as long as you include your keyword in the title and first paragraph (or couple sentences), then you will be good to go.
But others also recommend using keywords in subheadings and throughout your writing.
Aside from intentional keyword placement, the key to good content is to focus on quality for the end user.
Write what feels organic and natural.
We definitely don’t want to “keyword stuff”, which is basically what it sounds like: including the target keyword too often to where it’s unnatural and popping up in a forced way.
So while I don’t stress about getting my keyword into every single subheading (obviously), I do sometimes add them to my subheadings, if it flows naturally and sits nicely in my content.
Still, if you prefer to have a more concrete strategy with this, a safe bet would be ensuring your keyword pops up every 500 words or so.
Other than that, your keyword or close variations will likely come up naturally in your content, without too much thought given.
Other SEO Tips
- Optimize your images using ALT tags
- Optimize your URL by placing your target keyword in it
- Write compelling meta descriptions, including your keyword
- Explore advanced ranking strategies, like backlinking
Conclusion
This post has covered some critical SEO points for ranking new content. Although SEO can quickly become advanced and technical, the focus on this post was on simplicity.
We highlighted audience insights, keyword research, and how to optimize a post for ranking. Specifically, we talked about where to put a keyword within the content itself to optimize it fully while discussing other topics for ranking, such as word length, creating engaging posts and the importance of adding value.
Overall, it’s most important to focus on the end reader and solving their problems or pain points. Providing value will always be a winning strategy.
Add in a few SEO strategies and you’ll be setting yourself up for some steady, organic success.
Thanks so much for reading today! Let me know in the comments, what’s something that still confuses you about SEO and content marketing or blogging?
4 Comments
Eminejomo · April 15, 2021 at 3:21 pm
Wow. This has so much useful info! I have saved to refer to it periodically. Thank you Jeff!
Jeffrey Quinn · April 16, 2021 at 2:12 am
Thanks Eminejomo! I’m happy to hear 🙂
I know it’s a bit long, but hopefully it’s helpful for understanding SEO and using blogging for handmade products!
Thanks again for reading and commenting!!
Furqan Shahji · February 17, 2022 at 3:54 pm
Hi Jeffrey, furqan is here to tell you something about your blog, last night I was searching about jewelry SEO, then I found your blog, I read your entire blog, your blog has given very good information in it, very good tips in the blog which has helped me a lot, I am thankful to you. but when I was looking through the blog of jewelry SEO I noticed that the descriptive word is also very important for SEO. then I found this ( https://imzuber.com/descriptive-words-jewelry/ ) blog which may be useful to you, I want you to tell me how is this blog for jewelry SEO. if you tell me I will be very grateful to you.
Jeffrey Quinn · February 21, 2022 at 2:30 am
Thank you Furqan! I’m happy to hear you found value 🙂
Yes, using the right descriptive words that create emotion and distinction can definitely be helpful (as the link you shared notes) — this coupled with focused SEO keywords can be a powerful strategy, indeed!
I hope your jewelry SEO goals are going well for you!