Changes in the business environment have fostered and accelerated digital marketing and pushed small businesses, including craft artists and studios, to adopt digital marketing for their companies. This adoption has helped countless artists extend their online reach, improve their online presence and increase their sales revenue. To help our beloved small businesses in B.C. such as craft businesses and artists, leverage the prolific digital tools and platforms to promote their businesses online and gain more visibility and sales in 2022, I have highlighted five SEO tips you can use to improve your website’s search ranking on search results.
1. name each image using relevant keywords
Google uses keywords in image file names to gain textual understanding of a webpage. For example, if your image file contains the keywords “handmade-coffee-mug-12oz.jpg”, Google will use these keywords to understand that image is related to “handmade coffee mug 12oz”. This improved understanding lets Google display the image on Google Images to relevant search queries. Moreover, Google will better understand the webpage that the image is on. For example, if you embed the “handmade-coffee-mug-12oz.jpg” image on a webpage, Google will understand that the webpage is likely related to ““handmade coffee mug 12oz”. This understanding will increase the webpage’s chance of appearing on search results for search queries related to “handmade coffee mugs” or “coffee mugs”.
2. optimize each category page
Create category pages and include relevant keywords such as “Christmas craft” or “glass painting” to rank for generic product or service-based search queries. Oftentimes, consumers do not have in mind a product or service they want to buy. Instead, they have a general idea of what they want to purchase or they want to search online for gift ideas. During this stage of the search, shoppers’ search queries are generic and you want to appear on search results for these search terms so they can visit your website and ideally purchase from you!
3. include product category in product titles
Product categories such as “glass blowing” or “wood crafts” are common product category searches Canadian shoppers search for. To help your product pages increase their chances of appearing on search results for these types of searches, make sure you have the product category such as “quilling art” in the product title.
4. compress image sizes to under 100kb
The smaller your image file size, the lighter it is for the browser, such as Google Chrome, to load the image. This efficiency helps improve your website’s pagespeed, which ultimately increases your site’s search ranking. The reason is that website pagespeed influences a website’s user-experience (UX) and Google takes UX under consideration when ranking a website. If you currently have images on your website that are over 100KB, I would recommend re-uploading them at smaller sizes. You can use Photoshop to compress image files or you can use online tools such as TingPNG or Optimizilla.
5. use a quality website hosting company
In addition to small image sizes, the quality of your web hosting also affects your website pagespeed. If you are using a low-quality shared hosting, it is likely that your website will be slow. Some of the recommended web hosting companies on PCMag include HostGator, BlueHost, and A2 Hosting. You can contact them, ask their prices and explore some online forums about their experiences with using some of these popular web hosting companies. In my experience, these popular, major web hosting companies provide stable web hosting, good customer service and easy-to-use user interface in the account.
6. minimize animation on your website
Website animations require more loading from the browser which increases the website pagespeed. To optimize your website pagespeed, minimize the amount of animation on your website as much as possible. If you want to add animation for some web elements, fade-in text or buttons to add some interactivity or flare to the website, you can do so, but keep in mind the SEO impact of the animation.
The wide adoption of digital marketing has created immense opportunities for small businesses, including craft artists, to gain more online visibility, expand their reach and increase sales. By using the five SEO tips above, craft artists can optimize their websites to increase their search rankings and gain more website traffic from online searches and thus generate more sales!
Ray Wang is the owner of RW Digital, a Vancouver digital marketing agency. RW Digital specializes in Google Analytics consulting, Google Ads marketing, SEO, WordPress website development for consumer brands and hospitality, real estate, self storage, and social-impact industries and startups.