How To: SEO and Your Artist Shop
Putting your designs out there without solid SEO can be like fishing without bait – it may be harder to get a bite. You could have the best content, but if you don’t know how to use SEO to help people and search engines find it? It might just sit and gather pixel dust.
WHAT IS SEO?
The job of search engines like Google and Bing is to provide people with answers. To do that, engines seek out the most relevant and popular pages. That’s where SEO comes into play: it affects the relevance and popularity of those pages. In short, SEO can help get you from the 35th search page to ranking on the first page (if done right). And there are three big ways of boosting your SEO: keywords, fresh content, and time spent on site.
TAGGING GUIDELINES
- Relevance- Tags should accurately reflect the subject matter, style, and/or theme of the design. Make sure that tags relate to the content of your design.
- Specific - Make sure that the tags you are using on your designs are specific rather than general tags. For example, a tag like "tee shirt art" is general and does not add SEO value to your products.
- No Spam - You shouldn't use excessive, incorrect, or irrelevant tagging. This will have a negative impact on your shop's and products SEO.
KEYWORDS
When you search “cat videos” or “succulent wall art print”, those words and phrases help search engines find you the best dang cat vids/succulent prints out there. Keywords aren’t the only thing search engines look for, but they are influential. And coming up with the right keywords requires knowing your target market and what they’re looking for to get to your design.
An important part of the overall SEO strategy of a page is to have what is called keyword density or keyword frequency. This idea is that the more times the target keyword or phrase is found in copy on the page, the relevancy of that keyword and the overall page ranking will increase. This means if your page content mentions: “illustrated floral prints” multiple times – and in different contexts – the likelihood that the content on the page is actually an illustration of a floral print goes up.
Using specific keywords can weed out people who are just casually browsing (ex. People searching ‘art prints’) and focusing in on people searching for something specific they want to buy (ex. People searching for ‘succulent and cactus prints’) It’s best to choose one keyword for a page and stick to it rather than trying to rank for too many or ones that are too broad. Use a keyword people might search for when looking for a design like yours in your design title (then it’s in your link, too), and write a product description for the design containing that keyword one or two times. Include an “About” page where you can write about yourself, your designs, and fit in some keywords as well.
FRESH CONTENT
Not only will a stagnant shop keep people from wanting to come back – you’ll be less interesting to search engines too if you’re not producing fresh content regularly. That means posting new, or reimagining existing designs on a fairly regular basis. We recommend uploading new content 2 to 3 times a month. While it may be easier to upload a bunch of new designs at once, spreading your new content out over the month keeps your content fresh and updated and gives you more opportunities to share on social.
TIME SPENT ON SITE
Maximizing your shop's merchandising is one of the best ways to increase the amount of time shoppers are spending on your site. Utilizing a variety of product options encourages customer to keep browsing your site to see what is available. Managed Product Selection is a great feature that helps support your merchandising efforts in your shop, and other features like Homepage Collections and Collections are some additional features available for merchandising your designs and products and encouraging more and longer browsing for your shop's visitors.
LINKS & TRAFFIC
Getting people to link to your content is extremely important when it comes to SEO, because it tells search engines to pay attention. Social media shares are taken into account too, but other links also have impact. For example, when you are mentioned in a blog post on a popular blog in your niche, for example, that’s huge. Here are some different ways to do this:
- Tag Threadless on Social Let us know when you share your shop on social, including Instagram, TikTok, etc. Not only is that free promotion for your shop, but if it is shared across those channels, it’s even more free publicity for your designs and Artist Shop.
- Manual Outreach: Emailing bloggers for links, submitting sites to directories, paying for listings, etc.
- Collaboration This is where you have to get a little creative, and where social media comes into play even more. If you have a photographer taking your lifestyle photos, for example, or models in your photos, have them share the photos and links to your shop across their social media too. Reach out to bloggers and influencers you think might be interested in sharing one of your designs (or wearing one of your designs) or any creative content you’ve put together. Or if you’re making creative and shareable content that links to your Shop and designs, tweet out the link to your post and tag whoever you mention in that post. It takes a little work and extra creative muscle, but there are lots of ways you can give shoutouts to people who would be willing to share your links.
SEO IN YOUR ARTIST SHOP
Your Artist Shop SEO Checklist
- Your Shop Metadata Description
- Your Shop About Page
- Design Tagging
- Product Meta Description
- Product Description
Your Artist Shop takes every step to set you up for success right out of the gate, but there are of course ways in which you can contribute and enhance the value and effectiveness of your SEO. There are several fields available that allow you to provide descriptive and keyword rich copy. Thoughtfully adding copy to these fields will allow your product pages to stand out by using both the generated copy, and the custom copy to talk about both the product: a Women’s Triblend T-shirt; but also the design itself.
PRODUCT META DESCRIPTION
The product meta description is the content that will most often be used as the copy displayed in search results.
When thinking about this copy, there are a few things to keep in mind:
- Keep it up to 155 characters There isn’t a perfect length for the meta description, but you want to aim to convey your message in no more than 155 characters.
- Use an active voice and encourage action by the viewer When thinking about how to structure your meta description you want to grab your audience’s attention and encourage them to click the link. Use an active voice, and include a call to action.
- Incorporate your focus keyword The meta description provides an excellent opportunity to use your keyword or phrase which will in turn help build your keyword density value and contribute to a higher page rank.
- Repeat Keywords but not copy While it is important to echo your keywords you want to ensure the context changes. Remember the purpose of the meta description and align your copy to that purpose: 1) 155 characters 2) Active voice that includes a call to action and 3) Eye catching copy that uses your keywords to stand out in a page or search results.
PRODUCT DESCRIPTION
The product description is a great place to really increase your keyword density. Because this is a free form text field without any imposed limit you can really tell the story of your design. Echoing your keywords, describing the imagery, the motivation behind your design, and talking about who this product could be for are great ways to add serious SEO value to your product pages.
Focus on the Design
Remember that the product description is static so unless you're only offering a single stock item for sale (e.g. only selling one type of t-shirt) don’t dwell or focus on a single item but instead talk about the design itself. You can and should mention different high selling or popular items in your description: e.g. if a particular design sells really well on mugs, you can mention that in the description, but also include other styles as well.
Let's see how this works, starting with an example description. The description below is good, and starts to get at the heart of what we want to aim for.
Introverts already know that there's no place like home. It's the perfect space to chill out and have some fun. Get cozy and enjoy more your time indoors with this cute product. This is the perfect gift for bookworms, cat lovers, and plant lovers.
Introverts already know that there's no place like home. It's the perfect space to chill out and have some fun. Get cozy and enjoy your time indoors with this cute product available on a wide range of home goods and apparel styles including t-shirt, mugs, wall art and bedding. This is the perfect gift for bookworms, cat parents, and plant lovers.
To wrap it all up, here's a quick overview overview of some best practices in your Artist Shop:
- Design your site for the people looking at it, not the search engines. In other words, present your stuff honestly. Don’t include keywords that aren’t relevant to your product just because they might improve your ranking in a search engine. That will come back to bite you when the search engine catches on.
- Make your site information-rich, clear, accurate, and useful. So provide helpful, clear product descriptions and titles. Make your site as easy to engage with and helpful.
- Make sure your content is packed with keywords that relate to what users might be searching for to find your site.
- Make fresh content regularly to keep your site fresh and worthy of people returning to it often (for you shop owners, this means adding new products!).
- Utilize Tagging every time you add a new design.
Interested in more deep dives into SEO? Check out the following Creative Resources and Help articles below.
What is SEO and How Do Your Use It?
REMEMBER! SEO doesn’t make your audience spike overnight, but it can really help you build your audience long term when used right. Go and try it out for your Artist Shop now!