Google Adwords.

[Lucie]

Hi everyone,

Do any of you guys with websites have any experience with Google Adwords? I have a lot of Keyword Ideas, but am unsure of a sensible budget.

Any advice at all would be very welcome as I'm currently banging my head against a brick wall trying to make sense of the Adwords website!

Thanks very much in advance. x

[medusa]

I used adwords for a bit, but to be honest, it didn't do much to help sales, but then I'm pretty specialised and I come up on the first page anyway for most people searching for my stuff.

What I did find is that it helps to sort out what words your competitors are using and try to avoid those, also the more common words cost a lot more if you want front page ranking. Try and find at least a couple of words which are as specific as possible to your product and go from there.

There are also a few websites other than google which give you some good pointers on using adwords and SEO. I did have them bookmarked, but that was on the now dead laptop so I can't link I'm afraid.

[Lucie]

Hi Medusa, Thank you very much for getting back to me about this. I think i'm going to try to phone the adwords people tomorrow as they're only there Monday to Friday.
There are a few unique things about my site that I think I can probably use - I really do need to find out about how to boost my site without - just having trouble knowing where to start not being very technically minded!

The site took a couple of years to string together and so far it's languishing somewhere on page 3 - even if I type in the actual name of the business - very frustrating :(

Thanks again :)

[medusa]

you're welcome :)

what's the website address? I don't mind having a look-see and maybe coming up with some words which might help. Another thing with SEO which really really helped boost my site was making sure all the images had alt tags. This means that rather than a picture of say a spider-web charm being called img0005683, it's actually called 'sterling silver spider web charm'. Same goes for page headings. Get those all important keywords into the title of the page and that helps no end.

you might find it useful looking out for some of DiS's posts on here. She used to do website stuff and there's a thread somewhere with some really useful info on it.

[Lucie]

Hi Medusa, Sorry for the delay in responding - I've been working a lot over the past few days and havn't logged on.
I'm still plugging my way through the site, adding in page titles - I found a google SEO guide and hadn't realised I hadn't titled my pages properly :(

You're the first person to really view the site (very nervous) - Please be kind!! I'm not a website designer in any way. I'm a home carer for the elderly and a full time mum. I've been making jewellery on the side for about 10 years, but not "properly". The site has taken me about 2 years to put together after a series of disasters with casters and a rather unscrupulous website designer / photograher who disappeared with m budget.
You'll have to excuse the photos. They were all taken on my Kodak inside an up-turned bathroom bin (thanks to a very helpful blog I found here).

Here's the address: www.sophia-alexander.com If you find links are not working, it's because i'm tinkering with it again :)

Thank you for your opinions :) Can I ask; Do you have a site I can have a looky at?

[medusa]

Hi Lucie,

I think the site looks good overall, although it's a bit, sprawling and too much flickering graphics for my taste. I'd go for a clear menu from which you can get to everything from every page. Maybe I'm impatient, but having to click a link to have to click another link to see what I want to see is annoying. Also the photography is a bit... well, you already know! Fingerprint jewellery is huge and so you need to be trying to find a way to make it really stand out, using gold and platinum should be a good way to highlight that, as well as the fact they are on sterling, not PMC. Looking on google image search for gold fingerprint jewellery, even the really awful stuff would stand out more than yours because it has better pictures.

Given you seem to be hand engraving the prints, I'd really get some good photos taken to show that difference from PMC as well. I'd get alt tags on ALL the images and for the rings, I'd market them as wedding rings so this image: http://www.sophia-alexander.com/wpimages/wp89af0d3c_1a.png would show up as "fingerprint wedding rings" for example.

It is an enormously competitive market but what is in your favour, i think, is that the things you are putting the prints on are not lumps of PMC with a splodge in the middle. They have a much better look and finish to them, so if you can get much better pictures and alt tags on all the pictures, that will help enormously on google. I'd also really push the "gold/platinum fingerprint wedding rings" angle on as many pages as you can, because looking at the sites on the first page of google for "sterling silver fingerprint jewellery", which is chock-full of splodges, that's where your USP is.

[Lucie]

Hi Medusa. Thank you ever so much for taking a look. Where would you suggest I have the menu? Do you think it would be ok to add the links to all the pages at the bottom where the other links are at present? (ie: the about us / how to order / jewellery faq's links banner at the bottom of each page)?
I know exactly what you mean about the photography, but my budget is pretty much non-existent, so for now it's all I can manage :(

I'm currently working through the site trying to emphasize the gold and platinum aspects - the fingerprints are cast directly into the metal, there's only a few items (like the rings and lockets) that are engraved, so in that way it's something unique & something that's taken years to perfect! I know i've got to capitalise on this as like you said, there's a huge amount of competition from some really big franchises.



The wedding rings idea is a great one & something I hadn't thought of - thank you :)
Can I ask - what do you mean by alt tags? Just trying to do anything & everything I can to make the site rank anywhere half visible at the moment.

Many thanks again

[MeadMoon]

Hi Lucie,

If you look at the HTML code, an alt tag would look like this in the specification for an image:

<img src="blah,gif" alt="picture of a stunningly beautiful item">

If the image is not downloaded, the alt text would show up instead.

[Lucie]

Hi Elaine,

Thanks for the reply. That's a great idea!! Think i'm going to have to hit the books to work out how i'm going to apply it though :)
Did you have a little look at the site? Did you have any ideas onhow it could be improved, or how I can stop it sitting sadly out there somewhere in cyber space? :)

[medusa]

heh, where to put the menu? well I think it's OK where it is, but when you click on a menu item, you go to the page and then you have another choice of items to click on but you aren't really sure what you are clicking on, so maybe a picture above the link or have the picture as an actual link (with instructions to click on the picture!) if a more detailed drop-down menu isn't an option. I think the info on the bottom links is good where it is.

for the things which have the fingerprints cast rather than engraved, you could make this a feature. I think what helps with selling handmade stuff is a description about the process so people can feel that they are getting something individually handmade by you (for some of the stuff which you don't do personally, like the engraving and stone setting, let people know that whoever does it is part of YOUR team and you work closely with them, it makes it more personal, I think).

About the photography, it IS difficult photographing jewellery, but if you get a tripod and some kind of light cube (I use an old ice cream tub with a hole cut out of the top and the side) and either small halogen spots or natural light, you will get much better results. Use the largest file size the camera will take and take your time with it. Once you get it right the first time, it becomes much easier. You need to show people the detail and fabulous workmanship which makes your stuff better than the rest. I'm really rubbish at photography (despite being married to a tog!) but there are others on here who I know get good results with fairly basic equipment.

If you are doing the website yourself, then usually there is a box to put in alt tags (I use a really cheap and crappy web programme which is why my site looks less than professional, but it has that function) as per meadmoon's instructions. If someone else is doing it for you, tell them to do it. You could also make the page titles more keyword heavy, either with your name on them all or a more thorough description, so when I click on the cufflinks page, there is a page which says "Sophie Alexander sterling silver fingerprint cufflinks" rather than just "engraved fingerprint jewellery collection" which is a bit non-specific (C Parry has really good examples of how to do this on his site). I suppose it's about covering all the possible bases for what people might be searching for; at the moment using the search term "gold fingerprint ring" you come nowhere on google, but that could be because you are using the word "print" and not "fingerprint" in the main text. So I'd suggest changing everything from 'print' to 'fingerprint, handprint or footprint' so you have that on each and every page at least once. after the first time, you could switch back to just 'print' so it reads better.

And yeah, push those wedding bands, I'm sure they look amazing in the flesh as it were, but on the site they look like CAD images. I think you need to be looking at people like Chris Parry, Andrew English and Brent & Jess for comparison. You need your images to be as good as theirs. I'd also get your name or logo on the images somewhere, if possible.

Are there no prices as yet because you aren't quite up and running? If not, then I think if people have some idea of how much they are looking at paying, it helps as well. Finally, when you are ready to go all out, try to get your site linked from other sites, even if you just have a youtube channel or vimeo account which shows people how to take good prints or shows some of the work that goes into making their special bit of jewellery.

You have good products, you just need to show them at their best!

ETA: If I were doing wedding rings, I'd make sure that any gay people looking for rings for a civil ceremony would know they were more than welcome as well ;)

[Lucie]

Thank you for going to so much effort of looking at this for me. You have made some really great suggestions.
The prices will go on as soon as i've worked out all the gremlins. I'm doing the website myself (rather painfully), so it'll take a little while to work everything through.

Links from other sites are definitely something I need to address - just got to think of where to start with that one :)

Thanks again. I really appreciate the help - may be one day I can give up the night job (I can dream lol). x

[medusa]

I totally understand why people charge so much for web design. It takes forever and is soooo difficult! I just kept mine basic and simple, but then I'm in a pretty niche market, so for me it's just about making sure the pictures are accurate and look as good as possible. I have a friend who is a web designer and he keeps promising to re-do my 'vile' website, but no joy yet.

To get linked, when you are up and running, you could try contacting some of those wedding blogs, they might do a bit of an article on you and give you a link. And ask any friends as well who might have blogs.

I'm gritting my teeth for two more years and then I might make the leap and go half or full time on the jewellery. It drives me nuts not having the time to spend on it. Which reminds me, back to the grindstone...

[Lucie]

Completely understand where you're coming from with the website design - i'm starting to dread looking at it! Thanks for the tips about the wedding blogs - I might approach a few magazines too just in case.
At the moment i'm fighting to fit everthing in between working every night & looking after 3 little ones during the day - sometimes i'm amazed I have any hair left ;)
Good luck tonight! I'm just off to work .....

[ShinyLauren]

Hi Lucie,

I would agree with basically everything Medusa (Liz?) has said. My old website required clicking through several different pages to get to where you could actually buy the item, and it ended up annoying me, so I dread to think what potential customers would have thought! Since redesigning my site (new one with Wordrpress, old one with Moonfruit) so the menu is visible on every page and things are searchable by category or collection, I've had an increase in traffic and orders from my site.

Definitely agree with the point about civil ceremony rings as well. It's still (weirdly) something that not a lot of jewellers who do wedding rings mention, so keywords and alt tags regarding this would be good.

Regarding the photography, I've been taking pictures of my jewellery for years and have had an ongoing learning curve with it! In the past year or so I've finally got myself a proper camera and fancy macro lens and it's really made a difference. I'm currently only an amateur photographer, but do have a look at my blog on my site (and older stuff on www.weloveshinythings.blogspot.com) for stuff that might help you with photography. I'm a bit swamped with work at the moment, but if you haven't had any photography joy in the next few months, email me and I'd be happy to shoot some pictures for you (no charge obvs.)