GUIDE TO SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

HOW TO OPTIMISE YOUR DAWANDA SHOP - SEO, SOCIAL AND LINKBUILDING

Martina Carucci Guide to Search Engine Optimisation

GUIDE TO SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

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DAWANDA SEO GUIDEThe aim of this is to help DaWanda sellers achieve an understanding of general SEO techniques and provide, at the same time, a step-by-step guide on how to optimise their shops and improve their rankings on search engine. We will take you through the following points:

• How search engines operates and why SEO is necessary to gain higher

rankings;

• How to choose the right keywords for your shop home page and product

pages;

• How to optimise your shop name and shop description, product names

and descriptions, and your shop profile page with keywords.

HOW SEARCH ENGINES OPERATESA web search engine, such as Google, is a software system that is designed to search for and organise information on the World Wide Web. Its intent is to:

• Crawl and index the documents accessible on the Web;

• Provides answers, by showing lists of results with content which is relevant

to the search query.

• But how does Google work?

Think of the World Wide Web as an archipelago composed of a huge amount of little islands (web pages or files) all connected between each other by bridges (links).

Google has a car, called a spider or Googlebot, with which it can visit all the islands by crossing over each bridge in order to store information about each island (web page).

When you look for something on Google, this starts to search trillions of pages for the information you’re looking for, and based on its algorithms it decides which are the most relevant answers for your query.

Relevance means finding a page containing the words used in the search query – but this isn’t the end of it: Google takes into account other factors when deciding a specific web page rank on the result page, such as the quality of the content and the number of other websites linking to that page.

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SEO’s aim is to find out what these factors are and to find the best way to optimise them in order to gain the top positions in the Google result page for each given query.

OPTIMISING YOUR DAWANDA SHOPOptimising your DaWanda shop from a SEO prospective will help you better your rankings on Google and bring more potential buyers to your shop. We already know that some relevant on-page factors for Google are:

• Keyword presence in the title, URL, headings and body text;

• Keyword position in those elements.

But which keyword/search query has the highest potential for you to turn a searcher into a customer?

In order to answer this question, Keyword research must be performed: before you optimise your pages, you should first do keyword research to identify what terms you want to target.

HOW TO DO KEYWORD RESEARCHWhen you do your keyword research, first try to identify the keywords that suit the kind of products you sell on DaWanda. Ask yourself if users will find what they are looking for in your shop when using those keywords. To help you with this, you can also ask your friends how they would look for a specific product on Google.

Once you have identified a list of potential keywords, check their search volume: if they have a reasonable amount of monthly searches, it’s a done deal: you have the right keyword for your DaWanda shop.

Let’s look at an example:

Say you sell various kinds of handmade dresses in your DaWanda shop. You can use Google Keyword Planner in order to estimate the monthly searches for a given keyword, and to also get some other suggested keyword ideas, that are more appropriate for your shop category.

To get access to the Google keyword planner you’ll need to create a Google Adwords account. Once you have done this, login and select Tools and Analysis from the menu, and then Keyword planner.

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Select the option Search for keyword and adgroup ideas: the following screen will be displayed.

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First, you’ll need to write in the keyword you want to research. If you want to look for more than one keyword, separate them with a comma. Then set your regional target (country, language), and lastly click the button Get Ideas. The following screen will be displayed:

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Google has already grouped the keywords into ad group ideas because you can also use this tool in order to set a paid AdWords campaign, which you won’t need at this time. So we’re going to skip the ad group ideas and click on keyword ideas. At the top you will find all the keywords you specifically typed in and at the bottom some ideas that Google suggests for you.

In the column Average monthly searches you can check the average monthly search data for the keywords and the country you selected at the beginning. Now, let’s take a closer look at this chart: you can see that the handmade dresses keyword has 320 monthly searches in the UK. One question you might ask your-self is, why not use the keyword dresses, that shows 246,000 monthly searches?

Of course, you can, but you will find some obstacles in your way, because you need to take into account:

• Competition. Take a look at the Google search results page for “dresses”: you

will find out there are a lot of paid advertisements for this keyword, which

means that it is a high value keyword. In addition to this, if big brands take

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the top 10 results and you‘re just starting to work on that keyword, it will be

hard for you to rank in the top positions!

• Conversion. A person searching for “dresses” is probably only browsing, and

less likely to buy than someone that is searching for “handmade dresses”; in turn,

this customer is less likely to buy than one who is searching for “handmade

wedding dress with polka dots”.

That’s why, when comparing two or more keywords in the Google planner, you should

• Compare the search volume: try different versions of the same keyword

(plural, synonyms);

• Keep in mind you are not alone in the Google arena: can you compete with

big websites?

• Ask yourself if you can provide a relevant content to that specific keyword/

query.

Now, if a term has a reasonable volume and competition, this will definitely be appropriate for your shop page keywords. After that, you can use more spe-cific keywords for the individual product pages, such as handmade petticoat dresses or handmade maxi dresses.

Using different keywords for the shop homepage and the product pages will help you answer to even more specific requests from potential buyers. Let’s see how through the “Long tail of keywords”.

High volume search terms are important; but actually they represent less than 30% of the total searches on the web. The remaining 70%, which are commonly known as the long tail, contain thousands of unique searches, which in total re-present the majority of the search demand, as you can see from the picture below.

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This also means that concentrating on making lots of pages providing answers for niche queries will help you gain more quality traffic, which will lead to more conversions than with one-word keywords.

Remember: it is also important for you to find and use synonymous of your key-words. This will help you set up a more natural, user-friendly shop page and still communicate to Google what your webpage is about.

Some tools online help you find synonyms, such as http://thesaurus.com. I searched for synonyms of handmade and clothing. These are the results:

Handmade Clothing

Homemade Clothes Handcrafted Apparel Hand-painted Outfits Hand printed Vestment Homespun Gear

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HOW TO OPTIMISE YOUR SHOP HOME PAGEThe Username, Shop name, shop profile and shop description are some elements you can modify to boost the SEO of your shop homepage.

UsernameWhen you set up a shop on DaWanda, be sure to use your brand as your username, as username is used both for the URL and the title tag. Let’s see where these elements are on DaWanda and how they are displayed by Google on the search results page:

The Title tag is one of the most important on-page elements, which needs to be optimised from a SEO perspective.

The Title tag format is

“<Username> - <# of products> unique products from <lowest price> on DaWanda”

As you do not have unlimited space in titles, it is better to include the most important keyword at the beginning of your <Username> and to focus on the unique value of your shop.

Example of a good Username:

“tins-handmade-clothing”

URL becomes: http://en.dawanda.com/shop/tins-handmade-clothing

Tag title becomes: Tins handmade clothing - 1 unique product from € 1 on DaWanda

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Shop nameThe Shop name is used for the H1 tag, which is useful for users and for on-page keyword targeting. You should use your Username/Brand name plus a short description that appropriately describes your shop.

H1 tag on the shop page:

An example of a good Shop Name would be:

Tins Handmade Clothing - Original clothes for everyday life

Remember not to use special characters when setting your username. So, as an example, DO NOT CHOOSE this kind of username/brand name for your shop:

TiNS handmade CLoThing

It could catch the eye of the user, but search engines such as Google won’t index it correctly.

Shop WindowThe Shop Window is another on-page element that we can use to add details about our shop, and to give Google more information about our webpage. The Shop Windows is used as an H2 heading.

So, an example of a good Shop Window would be:

Check out our original handcrafted outfits!

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Shop ProfileThe first 160 characters of the Shop profile are used as the Meta description. This tag gives you the chance to describe what your page is about to search engines, but also to advertise your shop to users. The Meta description tag is not as important to Google as the tag title, but it is extremely useful, because providing a short summary of your shop allows users to decide if it is exactly what they are looking for, and whether to click on it or not.

This is how the Meta description is showed by Google in the result page:

Be sure to include your shop keywords at the beginning of the text and a call to action. How? As an example, invite the user to click and discover your shop.

A good example of Shop Profile would be:

In my shop you’ll find handmade clothing for everyday life - dresses, trousers, shoes - handcrafted and unique. Check it out and do not miss the seasonal sales!

Shop DescriptionThe shop description will be the body text in your shop, as you can see from the picture below:

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Write at least 200 words describing your shop, and remember to include your shop keywords and their synonyms 6-10 times. You can also use bold formatting for your keywords in order to highlight them further. Remember to quote your shop categories too. Here you can find an example:

Are you looking for original handmade clothing? Are you sick of wearing mass-produced clothes off the high street? Do you want to look unique and origi-

nal? Or maybe you just want to find a unique and personalised gift for a special occasion? Tins‘ Handmade Clothing shop has exactly what are you looking for! We offer comfortable, practical natural-fiber handmade clothes made by talented fashion designers based in Rome. Fill up your wardrobe with one-off and limited edition handcrafted leather shoes, original hand-sewn cotton dresses, unconventional hand-painted t-shirts and many more handmade

outfits. Browse the categories on the left and find your favourite piece! There are handmade clothes for every type of occasion – from work wear to weekend casuals. Feel free to contact us for every request: we can provide customised

items for special gifts or even use your own design. Remember: everything you find in our shop is handcrafted, and either one of a kind or very limited-edition,

so whichever piece you choose, it will be as unique as you are! The shop description is used also as an Open Graph description, which means this short text will be also displayed as a preview when your content or products are shared on social networks such as Facebook. Let’s take a look at an example below:

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How to optimise Product pagesThe Product Page is where you need to use more specific keywords. Every product page is focused on one product– and should be optimised for one specific keyword.

Now it is time to exploit the long tail!

We are going to see how to optimise the product name and description.

Product Name

The Product Name is used for the URL, tag title and H1 tag. You should not use special characters in the product name and you should detail the product specifications. An example of a good product name is the following:

Studded leather ankle boots in grey

or

Long sleeve red polka dot dress

Also in this case, don’t compete with DaWanda’s categories: this means you shouldn’t use “mini dress” or “raincoat” or “camera case” alone as product names, but instead add detailed information about material, colours and patterns.

Product Description

The product description – together with the product name – is used for the meta description and body text. In this case, write 100-200 words and be sure to optimise the first 160 characters and to include the main keyword – which is your product name - otherwise Google won’t be able to determine what your page is about. Here you have an example of a good product description:

“This long sleeve red polka dot cotton dress is hand-sewn using organic cotton and it is coloured red naturally. It features a v-neckline, long sleeves and a hidden back zipper. The skirt is emphasised with a short petticoat. The red polka dot pattern makes this dress perfect for everyday work, university, school, special occasions and every other occasion requiring a comfy and chic

dress! Feel free to contact us for every request: we can provide customisations or different colours. All sizes are available and we would be happy to create shorter

or longer version on your request”.

Keywords

When listing a new product, don’t forget to fill in the keywords box: this will help users find your product when using the DaWanda internal search. As an example, for our long sleeve red polka dot cotton dress, a good list of key-words would be:

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polka dot dress, petticoat polka dot dress, petticoat cotton dress, long sleeve dress, handmade dress, hand-sewn dress

Do not include DaWanda category names in this list but, as for the product names, try to add as much information and details as possible.

Listings

Google likes your content to be fresh, but it is also important to have some URLs to be always the same, to consolidate their presence on the Google results page. This means you should have a stock of products in your DaWanda Shop that doesn’t change, and from time to time you should add some new products to keep your shop up-to-date.

Link building approachesSearch engines such as Google use links between webpages to discover new pages (remember the archipelago?) but also to discover how pages are related to each other and in which ways, in order to measure the authority of each one.

In other words, links are like votes for your website. The more and more valuable votes, you get, the better you will rank on the search results page. They represent those off-page factors which, together with the on-page elements we’ve seen before, if optimised, will help your website ranking be in the first positions for a given query.

However, different kinds of links exist and they don’t all have the same value. In general, Google considers a link to be good when it is natural, which means that your content is so good that people feel the need to share it with their audience. On the other hand, a bad link is a link, which, for example, you paid for, or one from a spam website or a two-way link exchange.

Content relevancy is also important, imagine different archipelagos, each one belonging to a different country, which in our case means different topics (as an example, travel, fashion, or jewellery). In every archipelago there are islands which are bigger than others (our most authoritative websites) which the little ones want to be linked to. Links within the same archipelago, and from the biggest islands, are more valuable than others. So your goal is to receive links from high-quality blogs on subjects that are relevant for your business.

Guest Posting

A great way to help your shop gain more visits and potential buyers is by writing a blog about it: this will help you widen your presence on the web, and it‘s also a great opportunity to gain links from blogs with a similar niche to yours. If you create quality content (as an example, you could provide tutorials or write ar-ticles about your business or related news) on your blog and you are active in building your reputation online, it would be easy for you to ask other bloggers

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to host you on their blogs - with a guest post - to share your awesome products, ideas or projects with their audience (unless they are your direct competitor!). One way to find suitable blogs is to look for something like “Top 10 blogs about [your main topic]”. Don’t forget these blogs have to be relevant to your target audience (so, for example, stay away from websites offering guest posts for all kinds of topics).

Social Media

For years SEOs have been building link strategies in order to gain positions, and Google started penalising those websites with fake backlink profiles, updating its algorithm in order to make the results pages less easy to manipulate and, at the same time, taking into consideration other factors.

Lately, Google started to include a huge number of social signals into its search results. In which way can social signals influence your shop on DaWanda? When you have followers on Twitter or Facebook, you have a team of fans who can share your content. You can also encourage your shop visitors to share pro-duct pages on social media through social buttons, like the ones you can alrea-dy find on DaWanda, to allow them to share your content quickly on their profiles. Above all, you should build your social media presence as a Brand: this means sharing other users’ content, joining discussions and building your brand on those platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) which can be the most helpful for your business. Do you sell supplies for jewellery? YouTube could be the perfect channel to show your audience how to craft necklaces and ear-rings. Do you have beautiful pictures of your products? Pinterest can help you build your brand awareness. And don’t forget Google+: spend time building your audience there can be crucial in improving your SEO results.

Last but not least, don’t forget all the SEO lessons we’ve learnt together: they can be really helpful also in optimising your social media profiles. Here you find a list of SEO friendly rules you should apply to your Facebook fan page:

1. To start with this is not actually a piece of SEO advice. When you decide to

promote your products on Facebook create a fan page and not a private

profile. Otherwise it will be easy for someone to ask Facebook to shut down

your profile because you’re using a fake name (Name: Tins’ Handmade;

Surname: Clothing);

2. Connect your new fan page to your DaWanda shop!

3. You performed keyword research for your DaWanda shop: it is still useful!

When you are setting up your Facebook fan page, remember to include your

shop keywords in the Facebook page name (which will be used as a tag title)

as well as in the URL;

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4. Fill in the about box with a link to your DaWanda shop plus a description

about your page. Don’t copy and paste the shop description you wrote for

DaWanda – Google doesn’t like duplicated content!

5. When sharing a product page or updating your status, remember to optimise

your post title and include your keywords at the beginning;

6. In general, post only related content and do not go off-topic; frequently

update your status and set-up eye-catching cover and profile images. And

don’t forget to answer your fans’ questions.

Now you are ready to start building your SEO strategy for your DaWanda shop! It will take some time to see the results, but they will be worth the wait: without SEO, your DaWanda shop runs the risk of remaining invisible to Google. Good luck with your work!