the HiP blog challenge – episode 3

Episode One – Crafting a Mission Statement to Guide Your Blog
Episode Two – Creating a Community Around Your Blog
Episode Three – SEO Can Help You Write Better Posts
Episode Four – coming April 24!

SEO can help you write better posts

“Werd” hand-bound book by Emily from Subu, Inc.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is the “art” of making your website easier for search engines easier to read. Which means… you get more random hits from people that are interested in your craft! SEO is a free and easy way to attract new customers – something that is normally difficult and expensive to do.

There are many technical ways to achieve this and I will discuss a few that I pretend to understand at the end of this post. Luckily there are also many effective techniques that require no technical knowledge and will actually improve your writing!

consider your keywords

Are your posts full of specific, descriptive words? Or do you use a lot of pronouns?

Avoid pronouns (he, she, it) and other non-descriptive words (piece, project, art, do, make) in favor keywords that really describe your work. Not only will this make your blog more attractive to search engines, it will make you write better! Writing better equals better content equals more [engaged] readers!

Describe your craft, your style, colors, techniques, etc… and do it often. Don’t just assume that your readers know what you do. Some might, many will forget, and hopefully you’re getting new readers daily.

And don’t forget that search engines will also bring you traffic to specific posts – a permalink. A permalink displays a single post on a single page. It will show any comments to that post & all of your usual formatting. But it won’t include the posts before or after so there won’t be any context for your readers if you don’t provide any.

now put your keywords where they’ll be noticed!

Maybe you’ve noticed that I like using headings, bold & italic formatting, anchor text for links, bullet lists. Each of these formatting options provides special clues to search engines. Words contained in this formatting have more value to search engines.

The good news is they also make your posts easier to read! When we read writing on the internet, we skim. We all do it – it’s okay. But the sites that we remember most, the ones we’ll come back to time & again, are those that make it easy to absorb the message while skimming. Putting your keywords in headings (<h1> <h2>, etc…) or bold text (<strong>) will alert your readers to key points in your writing and allow them to fully comprehend what you’re saying without reading word for word.

Using anchor text properly when inserting links will also help readers & search engines find out what your site is about. The anchor text is the words that you choose to make up your hyperlink. “Click here” has become so cliche…and it’s also bad SEO form. Tell people what you’re linking them to – and use those words to create your link.

give some link love! and get some in return

Another way to make your content more engaging and increase your SEO is to share link love. Don’t worry HiP isn’t going R-rated! Link love is simply linking to those sites you find useful, inspiring, and interesting and sharing them with your readers.

Sharing links to other sites – whether other Etsy sellers, helpful blogs, tutorials, etc… – will gain you credibility in your field. It will also endear you to those that you link to! Then, they’ll link back to you, which is the action that increases your standings with the search engines.

taking SEO to the next level

For more information on how to use social media & links to improve your SEO, check out this article from Handmade Marketing.org. Handmade Marketing.org also has a whole category of posts dedicated to SEO for both your shop & your blog.

Images have become a key way to increase search engine traffic, as well. Hopefully, you know a tiny bit of HTML for images. (No? Check out this resource on code for images) Because what you are trying to sell is image based, your posts should be full of bright, clear images that display your craft. Make sure that you are using descriptive, keyword-based “ALT” text – the text that appears if your image takes a while to load – for your images. ALT text is another clue for search engines!

If you don’t mind delving into your code a bit and you have a WordPress.org blog – which is what I recommend, by the way – check out this article on optimizing your blog for search engines. I would also suggest using the All-in-One SEO plug-in which will help you do many of the things in the aforementioned article without using code.

Homework Assignment

Write a review of a blog/post/shop you think your readers would appreciate. Make sure that sharing that site is in line with your mission statement and the purpose of your blog. Consider keywords that are relevant to your post. Make use of text formatting to let search engines know what’s important.

When you’ve finished your post, bring us the link and leave it in the comments on this post!

And I know this was a lot of information…if you have any questions that would be helpful to our community here, please post them and I’ll answer them for you right in the comments!