Simply Shiny Life

In a previous post , I talked about my process thus far of taking a good hard look at all the items in my Artfire shop, and performing a bit of renovation to their titles, descriptions and photos. If you haven’t already checked them out, I’d recommend reading the information contained in Artfire’s Seller Workshops

As I mentioned, I’m working my way through my shop, with an eye toward revamping everything. Today’s example is the rework of my shiny silver adjustable toe ring.

Remember, you want to use as many of your available 70 characters in the item title as you can, and at least 250 words in your item description. Make sure you use key words in both your title AND your description that potential buyers might include in their search.

Original Title – 34 characters : Artisan Shiny Silver Curl Toe Ring

New Title- 55 characters : Adjustable bright sterling silver unique swirl toe ring

Old description – 226 words
New description – Over 300 words

Is it perfect? Well, no. Obviously the new title has more characters than the old one, but it is still shy of the magic 70 character number. However, I did switch out the word artisan for adjustable, based on the results of Google’s key word generator. That was a good tip as I wasn’t getting may key word hits on the word artisan, but have seen some for the word adjustable.

How are you coming along with your rewrites? Making progress?

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Shop: ShinyAdornments handmade jewelry

I’ve spent considerable time over the last month or so reviewing each and every handmade jewelry piece in my Artfire shop.

Why you ask?

I’ve been re-working titles, descriptions and photos. I want Google to like me.  And to that extent, I’ve been diligently revamping both my item titles to make better use of key words and really revamping my descriptions, to both include more relevant text overall as well as take advantage of key words suggested by Google’s key word generator.

You can find really good tips and examples in the Seller Workshops in the Artfire forums. Two threads to definitely read are:

The Copywriting Workshop

And

Keyword Testing Workshop

It was good timing, coinciding with Artfire’s new shop look and feel. Have you seen it yet? Quite a difference from the previous version. See?

Old ShinyAdornments on Artfire Item page look and feel:

New ShinyAdornments on Artfire item page look and feel:

Quite a change, isn’t it? (FYI – the item photos are exactly the same size in the new shop as the old. The carnelian earrings photo in the updated shop only looks smaller because of the way I’ve cropped the photo)

Today, I thought I’d share an example of title and description changes from a handmade bracelet I’ve listed. What are two big things I’ve learned?  Use the Google Key word generator tool to find appropriate key words for your handmade items, and use a LOT of the available real estate. For instance, you want to use ALL 70 characters allotted in your item title, but don’t gunk it up with words that potential buyers aren’t going to use in their searches. Also, Google favors blog-like posts… so try to make your descriptions, well, more descriptive. Use 250 words at least. Use words your potential buyer might use when searching for similar items.

Here is an example of the changes I made to a handmade bracelet listed in my shop:

Original Title – 52 characters : Jennifer – Handmade wire wrapped green boro bracelet

New Title- 62 characters : Boho blue green sterling silver & lampwork glass bead bracelet

Old description – 99 words

New description – Over 580 words, and includes information about lampwork beads and the definition of Mobius.

All these changes haven’t happened overnight. As I’ve said, I’ve been working on them for about a month now, and I still have items that need a revamp. As I was working through the re-writes, I also took the opportunity to edit and re-shoot some of the photos that I’d been using.

Will it help? Honestly, I don’t know yet. I have seen small uptick in traffic though, including search results for some of the new terms I’ve included that didn’t exist before. That little fact is encouraging. At a minimum, I’ll be able to say that I’ve done my best to ensure that my SEO is ready for the holiday shopping season.

Is yours?

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Shop: ShinyAdornments handmade jewelry

Heather from the Humble beads blog made a nice, detailed post about Pinterest.  With lots of gorgeous photos, including her wonderful beads. Natch.

Pinterest Inspiration

If you have a Pinterest account, check it out. If you haven’t created one yet, then definitely check out her post.

And here is my Pinterest page: pinterest.com/kristylsmith/

Happy pinning,

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Shop: ShinyAdornments handmade jewelry

Have you created a quick response code yet? I’ve got two created so far, one for the Shinyadornments Artfire shop and one for my facebook page.

Now, how to use them? How are you using yours?

I’m thinking I want to add the FB image to my Artfire page, and the Artfire QR to my business cards.

Hmmmm… where else?

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Shop: ShinyAdornments handmade jewelry

I ran across this post last week, and thought it was worth sharing. If you have a fan page on facebook, and have posted a link to your page, with a photo, in a short period of time, (guilty) this may affect you.

Facebook rules: Blocking spam and shutting down pages

Pay close attention to the bit about giveaways too. (Exactly why I held mine here on my blog….)

Good reading.

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Shop: ShinyAdornments handmade jewelry

Good post about a scam from Domain Registry of America. If your domain is registered, don’t fall for this. They are trying to poach your registration dollars.

Don’t fall for Domain Registry of America’s scam

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Shop: ShinyAdornments handmade jewelry

I’ve been adding a few new pieces of handmade jewelry to the shop this week. I’m on a quest to have at least 100 pieces listed prior to the holiday shopping season. We’ll see if that goal gets met or not.

In addition to spending a bit of time at the bench, I’ve also been spending a considerable amount of time revamping my jewelry item descriptions and titles, in hopes that they will make a bigger SEO statement. Time will tell on that exercise as well. I should probably write a whole separate post about what I’ve changed and edited in that regard. Stay tuned.

I was in the mood for some seriously long earrings, and these two pair fit that bill nicely.

Long blue sodalite bead bright sterling silver chain dangle earrings

Long rainbow fancy jasper bead sterling silver chain dangle earrings

Happy shopping

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Shop: ShinyAdornments handmade jewelry

I ran across this blog post today, and thought it was worth sharing.

Why does handmade cost so much?

Enjoy!

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Shop: ShinyAdornments handmade jewelry

I had a goal of reaching 1000 fans on my ShinyAdornments Facebook page.  I was thrilled to actually reach 1020! Wow!

As promised, once I reached that goal, I announced a big earring giveaway for all my facebook fans. The winner would get to choose any pair of earrings he/she would like from my shop. (You can see some of the ones the winner picked from in the collection from my shop below).  Aaaaaaaaannnnnnnd, we have a winner of my giant earring giveaway! I used Random.org to pick a winner, commenter #14. It’s Gretchen, from Lobster on a String!  Congratulations to you Gretchen.

You can find more handmade earrings in my Artfire shop at shinyadornments.artfire.com. You can find me at www.facebook.com/shinyadornments :

ShinyAdornments

Thank you very much to all my facebook fans for participating, tweeting and posting my link to facebook. I appreciate it very much.

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Each first Tuesday of each month, I’ll add a new blog post called Totally Giveaway Tuesday.

I love giveaways, and I thought it might be nice to share some real estate for some blog-o-sphere giveaways with my readers. I’d like to profile Artfire and other artisan giveaways, but feel free to list any great giveaways you have to share. Each link will contain the name of the giveaway linked to the entry instruction page. Enter as many as you would like

Got a blog giveaway you’d like to advertise? Hosting an artisan jewelry giveaway? Have a handmade soap giveaway? Announcing a felted animal giveaway? Have a guild giveaway you’d like to list? Want to announce your team’s giveaway to the world? Please use the widget below to list your announcement. In the Your Name Field: enter the item you are giving away, and the date the giveaway expires In the Your URL Field: enter the website address of the page to find instructions about how to enter.

Giveaways for July 2011:

Note: I can’t be responsible for outcomes of giveaways hosted by anyone but me. Outcomes of giveaways hosted elsewhere are the responsibility of the giveaway owner. Please read each giveaway’s entry instructions carefully and only enter if it isn’t going to get you into any trouble in your location. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!!

Visit again next Month for a whole new list!

and don’t forget to tweet and share with your friends using the widgets below

(For those of you receiving this via RSS, you have to visit my real live blog to see the list of shops with sales. Not sure why, but looks like the Readers eat the linky code. sorry. )

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