Lessons

Lesson Info

A Guide to Discovery Online & the Real World

So the question, if we go back tio, we're going to go through each of these one by one so let's first, talk about searching and figure out how to optimize your site for searching. You really only need to ask one question and that's, what would someone search for if they wanted to find exactly this? So I want to find exactly a bridal crown for bohemian and the love struck and free. What are the terms of search for before I know that they're called bridal crowns? What l their word? Maybe veils, maybe bridal veils, whatever the thing is that you're buyer is going to think of not necessarily what you call it, but what she's going to think of when she's searching for it and this takes some time and some effort, but there is a questionnaire for you on page twenty eight. Oh, and we're going to start by just thinking about your name and your business. Maybe somebody heard about you today on this, and they want to search for you, so they're most likely search by your name and business, and then...

we're going to go into all of the different. Things that people would search for to find it so start filling out page twenty eight and I'll tell you a little bit more about optimizing for search didn't say this seo search engine optimization is like this massive thing you can fall so far down the rabbit hole of optimizing absolutely everything for search, but I want you to optimize this for where you are right now and not spend too much time thinking on it. You do not need to become an expert and ceo in order to have a successful craft business. You only need to make it easy for people to find you in the way that you can. So don't worry too much about everything that's out there about this. We're going to cover just the highlights, just a few things you khun dio to make this a little better and a little easier and make you a little more findable because that's, all most of us need is on on that customer path. If, right now only five people find you from search and that leads to a one sale that imagine what that would do it. Fifty people found you from sir church, right? That would increase your sales by ten percent or ten so toe optimized for search um, first, you need to discover what words people are searching for. The answer to that question? I just asked, what are the exact words? And you're going to come up with those words for your business on page twenty eight? We can go through some examples once you've come up with some ideas, but, you know, start with all the permutations of your name, your business name, any name people might call your product so it might be hand spun you're on. It might be hand idea, it might be yarn, maybe bulkier, thin yarn, every description they might use for it. Ah, bohemian bridal floral veil you're gonna look at your location, especially if you do local things if you sell in the local shops or you do local craft shows and you know we talked about the problem it solves or the need it answers. You want to look for those things, too, like I'm quick or custom and what else people search for and then questions customer asks you. And then on the end of the page, I ask you to just focus on two or three words or phrases find just a few things you want to focus on now, because if you try to optimize for everything you optimize for nothing, so I wanted to speak two or three words that someone would search for in order to find what you d'oh everybody's writing furiously are there questions about this in the trap because this could be a big subject well, the people in the chat are typing well now a lot of people are just sharing some of their ideas and how they've been optimizing their their businesses and their websites so people are just sharing opinions with each other we love to see people helping one another out in the chat that's always a great resource to keep that going and if you have questions let us know when the questions to have as well absolutely so the ones ones you discover some words and I know this is going to be a process but there's lots of other parts of people discovering you we've got to get teo so once you discover your words you're gonna use those words and phrases in a few places and this will optimize your website your etc shop for people too fund you so you're gonna put them in your product your block post your page titles you and this just show up in the title that's why I said you're only gonna pick two or three words because you sound like a robot if you try to fit ten key words in a title what I mean by this one of the examples isn't a blogger post I ask you what are the questions customers ask you the exact question if you take that exact question you put it in a block post title and then write a border post answering that question that's going to come up when people search for uh like that question I shared with you earlier that somebody emailed me how do I get my product out into the world how I get my craft product out into the world if I used that so many people search for that if I use that in a blonde post title someone who's searching for that would then find me and what I do so if you can think about when you were bride what you were searching for to find what you were looking for if you use that exact word or phrase and a block post or product title people will search for it it will come up they will find you darling I look at my site analytics and and it tells me what people search for is that telling me what yes where it's I should yes I mean and you'll see actually we talked about analytics you will see that people use like your name a lot so you just want to make sure that your name is I mean your business is your name that you mention it regularly and that but they they're like specific things that bill yeah for like had in it a shawl on yeah forty dollars or so and so when I see that that's coming up is that like yes? Yes, that is something that well, so so when you see in your own side analytics and actually I realize there's a section in the resource guide where talked more about analytics so you can find your own you can actually see what your customer path is that's kind of deepen end ups to get into but yes, what people what that's showing up is that people have searched for that and they found so that's what you kind of already optimizing for whether you know it or not. So if you want more of those people who are searching for that thing to find you, I would absolutely right about post about it, but often what your analytics will show you is what you already done a really good job of doing, you know, but thatch so the other thing to do with these phrases and words is to use them in your u r l structure and what I mean by that is you know how you can change least inward press you can change the actual link of a block post, they'll give you an automatic one, but you can change the words in there that's what I'm talking about here. Another place to keep this in mind is when you're creating a page for your website if you're creating your page all about how to order custom bridal bails, you actually put that in the if you were giving your customers instructions on the process, make that part of the earl structure because google ranks that they love that if you don't know how to do that, do not worry about it. You will still be fine tags when you tagged your product on etsy when you tagged your block post used these words that you know people are searching for in your tags along with anything else that relates to that specific product also use it in your description or your content in a way that's very natural so he know that people are searching for the word veils but you call them endorsement used the word veil make sure that you're always using those words kind of interchangeably and mentioning them both if you if you sell, you know sweater designed you and make sure that you use the word sweater and not just pull over a card again because I might be looking for sweater when what I really wanted to pull over. So you want to use both the specific words and the more general topic court because a pullover is both a pullover end a sweater ah and in your photos when you, uh and I've included a link in the resource guide that will actually teach you step by step how to do this with your photos but if you know howto edit the title that shows up for your photo put the words in there don't want stuff it full so that it looks bad but use that word so if you have a picture of a bride in a custom veil you know you might call it the bohemian bride whatever but use the words that they would search for so change that title tio custom veil for bride maybe the word bohemian something sense like the title of the title okay yes each of my at least most of them like my crowns I give them a specific name exactly like the give meaning like the everly floral crown and then I could write the description like a short description like blush fuller role crown but I give them a name because it's easier to like refer to yes um that's good you should definitely because that's part of your branding is that name yeah, but in the photo description or the photo title and in your tags and even maybe in your titles you also want to mention what it really is because it's so it's really a floral custom bridal veil you know so I would use all those words if those words are dirty in your title does that make sense? Yes so yeah so definitely still refer to it but then change your photo titles toe have those keyboards in it ok? Because nobody is probably going to search the everly no thing but that's why I add the extra description like ivory and pink floral crown or some things like with it yeah so but is that ok to keep the everly floral crown and the title description yeah yeah that's fine the other words aaron there and again this is like you're going to just do this in in in tiny steps and this isn't something that if this is totally overwhelming the technology side of it you don't need to dio this is if you want more people to find you by searching these are some things to do so definitely yeah what you just described that she had both is perfect tara we do have some people who are still a little bit confused about that concept and and how to map out these words maybe would be good if we could just use the white board here and kind of map out an example to help you okay sure yeah I'm just somebody one of you my guinea pig uh nobody here maybe you could just use the words that you've used down business okay let's talk about yard, yard and the people in the audience who are also involved with yarns that right yeah so it depends on what type of urine you make so if you uh answer one of the questions on page twenty eight about every description that people might use for it so we're going to pick a specific one of your products, we're going to just think of the words for one of it. So let's say I have bulky hands by yarn. Okay, so the words people might search for are both e and hand spun they also another word for bulky is thick um, chunky and its hand died, but instead of just saying, hand died, which isn't that description descriptive people are often looking for a urine in a specific color, so I'm going to say it's hot pink now I could use the word a fuchsia, magenta, whatever, but I think most people are going to search for pink above a fusion magenta um now, if I had a local here in store, I would use the location everywhere I can I would use the word of my town in the towns nearby I would have ah, you know, a page about how to find us and I would say we're close to jonesboro johnson city, bristol king sport so when people are looking for the urine stores in bristol, they will find myron story that's in johnson city. Does that make sense? And most of you guys don't have local businesses, but if you do want to do things locally, you want to make sure and optimize for that place local what if it's somewhere else in the states what I could still like if you have your items in a retail store there somewhere else, you so put that in your I would make a page that says, like, find our products or shops and list the shops where it is and when you list the shops don't just put their name also, but their city and state, and then link to their web site so that people can go right to the web site buy because I often do that with my favorite products. When I travel, I go to their site and I see where are they sold in the shop near me? Because my town does not have any shops that sell really unique products. So I will often that also gives me a good idea if they carry this thing I like that's, probably shop I want a hit to find some other things. So by listing that on your website, you make it so much easier for me as a big fan of you to find yourself elsewhere. So, um, so also questions customer asks me, for example, people were always saying, what can I do with this yarn? Can it? Oh, my just writing is getting worse and worse with ah hands bun, so I made a block post. Titled what you can knit with bulky, hand spun yarn, and then I did a whole list of links, not my patterns, but other people's patterns, and I actually linked to them and I said, why it would work? This is great because it's a hat this yarn is really warm it's going to be a really warm hat, so you don't want to get like a summer shawl out of it, but you do want in it ah hat or things to say cozy, I told them, and then they're somewhere keyword there, right? I said, cozy, warm well, these are all things other people haven't search for. You know the point with all of this, though, is that your content is useful to your right person do not create content for search engines because search engines change their minds all the time. Such incidents are looking for different things and they don't care about you. You're right person is actually reading your blawg hopefully again and again. So you want to answer the questions she has it's not only is this good for search engine optimization, this is also good for people sharing your work. Um ah, knitwear designer might say, you know, I hear the question, what do people need with hand spun you're in all the time this year in maker answered that question go here and read this she's going to share that check her twitter following she might write a block post about it I just read this post over tara site she linked to my pattern go there to find other patterns that you can use with your hands barnyard so see that becomes a piece of company that's really easy to share because I answered a question that many people ask so many people are going to type that into their search engine and I'm gonna come right up many people are going tio ask their friends and they're going to remember and I'm going to come right up so is really the key with looking for the search terms is that it's not it's not because you're trying to game google you're trying to be useful so you're going to do whatever is useful and not just whatever will get you found more and again do not stress about this this's on ly one way that people can find you and if you don't feel very comfortable with your website or with technology, do not focus on this and instead focus on your person and connections it's just one thing I wanted to hit because we know it's out there you guys have any questions about the search terms you're going to use? We had a few more questions yeah, I'm here so michelle hill wants to know specifically maybe you could clarify where exactly are you putting these words now once you brainstorm all these when you've written them down where they're going to go yes they're going to go in your product descriptions and titles in if you have a block post in your block post title and content these are just words you just going to use naturally you just want toe make a list of them so that you can remember to use them naturally because I think it's really easy I mean so many crafters who've come up with something clever like the everly floral crown and they just use it that everywhere well nobody knows what that iss you have to be specific not just for search engines but for me you were just a human being to know what do you mean and if you're just using words with no pictures I know even less so if you tweet the everly floral crown is here I don't know to click on that have used a bride's a new custom floral crown was just finished it's called the everly then I know to click on that so one of the big key points and listing all of these out in page twenty eight is that you're going to start using them yourself you're going to know tease him it's going to give you basically synonyms to use and block posts and descriptions and tag it's definitely wanna tag things on your website and on etc because that's something that search engines air looking for okay, so we had a question asking if you should be including misspellings but I think that that kind of answer to so if you're going to be doing these on your site in your block post you want them to be spelled correct absolutely yes now if you are on the back end of your website code which most diverse or not you might include misspellings there but in general no like I don't need to be optimized for tara swinger even though that's how a lot of people type it because I can tell you that if you searched our swinger I am one of the first people who pop up anyhow so like I don't have to do anything google's kind of smart and figuring out misspellings and if you think about it when you search often it'll say did you mean this so view mistyped cochet they'll say no you meant crow shea oh yeah, not crotchety any more questions about search terms before we move on to the next way people confined you well uh jean eva in the chat room wants to know if you don't like to block if you don't have a regular block, where else could these words be used? Could you have these somewhere else on your product pages around definitely definitely put them in your product descriptions and in your product titles so you might have your fancy title like the everly floral crown but then you'll put in the word you know bridal hand sewn floral crown so you will definitely use them when you're selling something and use them in your description and in your tags and in your titles but you have a block or not there's lots of places you're talking about your work when you give a description to something like a craft show or a shop for them to write about your work use these words there because it's not just for search engines for humans to go oh I know what that isthe ok that makes sense to me you know people might not know what hand spun urine is but they know it bulky arness or bulky might not make us much sense to them is chunky so by using the different synonyms when I talk about it I make it more clear to everyone what it isthe all right so then the neck this question or the next way you can get people to hello it's to let them discover you in the real world there's a few different ways of this happening and actually want you guys to turn to page twenty nine and start filling out how people confined you in the real world and there's a few different options here or this is how to optimize yourself for being found in the real world. First of all, you want to think about where people will find you shops, galleries, craft shows there for friends. If you make something that people wear on their body, their friends are going to want to find out about where they got it. This doesn't include online chops. We're talking well, you mean shops that are entirely online without a brick and mortar storefront. So I was answering the asking the first question already, findable in the real world. Yes, well, I'm just asking here, where is your stuff already showing no offline. Okay, yeah. Um, well, this isn't the same question that's in your workbook. This is a point. I'm gonna make it affect e um, so I'm asking you where you already are in the row board to start to think about how you can make it easier for people of there to share your work. So so I asked a few questions there. I'll let you fill that out, because what you want to do is make it easy for anyone who finds you in the offline world. And I couldn't figure out to say this in the real world and the like, meet space, how they can find you online. Most of us have the online businesses, so if I love the shoes you're wearing, but they're only sold online. The seller needs to make it easy for you to tell me where I can find those shoes. So you want to just be thinking about how can I make this easy for people to share it, especially if it's something that people where they hang in their house? Those are public kind of spaces where your customer is going to be best sales person. Also, if your work is an animal offline, chop a bricks and mortar shop, you need to make sure that the shop owner knows how to do. Talk about your work. It's what we were doing with jill, where jill needs tio educate the urine trump owner to be able to sell her work. You can't just hope that people know how to talk about you. You have to give them basically that message we developed in session one. Give them that peace in every format possible so that they can talk about you. We also want to do this with your real life customers that air just walking around, wearing your shoes, telling people I got these shoes here, you know, make it easy for them to like, remember your name, remember where they got it? And they did that by giving them that information when they purchase it whether it's on a hang tag or a card you include or a segment on your website like where you say tell your friends about us and get x percent off there's a bunch of boys to make it easy for people to share your work had to be incentivized to do that oh and that's actually the second point is to make it easy for anyone who finds you in the offline world to find you online and also make it easy for these people to talk about you for them to know what to say for them to know where to tell people to go and you want to do that by actually giving them the information giving them what they would use to say I've even seen people include cards in my online order that says tell your friends about us uh tell them we're uh and then they're like give me a description you know or do you have a friend that needs more thank you cards in their life tell them to go see yes because what you're looking for is like a trigger so when I have a friend that says I really am looking for cute thank you cards I can say oh, I know a place where you can get those cute thank you cards because they've um empowered me to talk about their work does that make sense and especially when you do something with people who are like brides that's just the perfect example because other women are going to be at that wedding her about to get married and say where did you get that crown? You want it them to know your name where they got it the website send people tio so you want to include something you know, maybe even a couple cards and say let your bridal friends know about us, you know, so that they can help spread the word and again, this is just about making this a better and easier but don't get overwhelmed by it because like I said in the beginning we're gonna have so many ideas of things you could optimize we're going to choose the actions that are best for the business you want to create we're just generating ideas at this stage are there questions about discovery in the real world? So you shouldn't be too overwhelmed and sad if your name is impossible to predict exactly exactly well and you know you might want to play on that and like on your card have the the how to say it in the frenetic exactly that would help a lot, but also I mean, people will say I was just telling somebody that I went to a restaurant last night and I don't know how to say the street and so I was like it's diverse is darrow like I struggled over it because now I know what you're talking about so if I said you know I can't say it but I could probably spell it for you if you want to know where I got this doesn't make sense like it's so it's okay you don't be don't worry too much I mean I always get called terra but people still type it right? So that's all that matters any more questions about discovery in the real world I think people are good right now, okay good because this is really it's just about educating where you are the people who already get yourself in the real world making it easier and easier for them and some people are already doing this and others will find like wow, I've been sending my stuff to shops but they don't even know what to say about me so I especially if you're selling in shops going to give them as much information as possible to talk about you very clearly and openly so the next thing the next way you could be found people can get tow hello is tio have other people linked to you and this is one of the things that is just very kind of well here that people should be linked to us we want people the link to us, you're asking me about getting more press like getting people to talk about us but it's kind of tricky to figure out how to first do it, so I have a little system that we can use to make this a tidbit easier. The first thing is to empower your fans the people who already want to hear about you are people who already love you want to talk about you you're going to make it as easy as possible for them to talk about you and what I what I mean by this is you are and we talked about the offline world, but this is in the online world gonna have buttons share buttons on everything so people can tweet it they can share it on facebook, they can pin it on pinterest, they can talk about your work, you're gonna empower them just by making it as simple as possible and the other way that people will link to you is it to show up on other people's platforms you will write a guest post they will feature your work and editorial like your scarf and one of the three ways to look great. Those people already have platforms and if they will talk about your work to their audience, you can completely forget about your own platform now building your platform on any social media tool takes a long time and it takes a lot of connections and it takes a lot of work but I want to forget about your platform at this stage because you might not have won. Most people start with zero, and how you're going to get people to find out about your work is to get your work on other people's platforms, because the most powerful way you can use social media is actually not through your own platform. But by having other people share it with there's. So you want to make it easy by having share buttons, and we're gonna try to make it more terrible in a minute and make it easy by asking people to do it. I want to just make it easy for them to share it, because the combined platforms of all of your fans, even if we only have the five customers or readers, is going to be much bigger than a platform you would build on your own. So your customers and vans maybe have been on twitter long er, they've been instagramming longer. They have more facebook friends there, just a more popular person. But even if you had five, super unpopular customers, their combined platform is going to be bigger than one that you're going to make. And when you spend your time focusing on your platform, you're not spending your time focused on selling your work. Your goal is to get people to buy your stuff, not to follow you on twitter. So by focusing on other people's platforms, you will have a much bigger reach. And you can spend your time on your work. So there are two points to that. That was to make your work, cheryl, and to get on other platforms. So we're going to break each of those down.