Today we'd like to review some SEO basics about the product catalog of your jewelry website.
Because of our own recent experience and some announcements from Google over the past 12 months, it's time to review our previously published work.
On August 17-18, 2010, we held a live broadcast detailing many ideas for the design and structure of a jewelry product catalog. Some of those ideas will be updated in this brief Daily Gold Nugget.
1. High Word Count
You need to have at least 300 words of text for each product item. Preferably we'd like to see you with 400 words. This is up from 250 words that we said last year. The total word count should include as many details about the item as you can think of. Details should include the construction of the item (prong count, width, diamond count, ctw) listed within the written description. However you also need to write about the ownership experience. Will she love the ring? Then explain the ways she will. Was the jewelry design inspired by something? Then explain that.
You may sit for hours or weeks trying to creatively write your descriptions, and after a while you might develop an automated process and simply start your descriptions with "This ring features..." or "This engagement ring has 2ctw..." Unfortunately, this will hurt your user's experience. As they click from item to item on your site, they will become bored with identically written descriptions and their attention will wander. Try to write the descriptions of your products so that at least the first sentence is completely unique..
2. Multiple Views
We gave you some ideas on June 10, 2011 on how to get your jewelry images absorbed into Google Image search (click here: http://bit.ly/m1N2D0). You need to follow those ideas, but also note that your photos need to be professional looking if you are trying to sell online. Don't overly process them with the computer; instead, try to get natural photography done correctly or learn to do it yourself.
You should have photography at different angles so the customer can see the back, front, and sides. You may also want to include the hallmark in one of the photos if the designer name is important.
You also need to provide a way to view the fine detail of the jewelry. There are many easy to use zooming features available using free JavaScript. If you don't want to use a program you, could simply zoom, crop, and upload photos from different points of view, too, but that will take extra time.
3. Size Comparisons
This feature is really important for the user experience and final customer satisfaction, but unless you are doing your own photography you can never do it. You need to provide a way to present size comparisons of your jewelry to an everyday common item. In our photography training videos, we've suggested using coins like a dime or a quarter placed next to the jewelry in at least one photo. But we now see a potential problem with this idea.
If you are not using your website for e-commerce, then odds are you will get very few phone calls or emails from someone looking to buy without coming in your store. In other words, you are truly servicing you local market in which case you could still use a coin in your photography.
However, if you have your website set up for e-commerce, you may attract worldwide attention. Unless your customer is in the USA, they will not know how big a dime is, nor a quarter, therefore you will have to use something else.
We suggest Bic Pens! The standard Bic "World-Renowned Classic" CRISTAL pens (click here: http://bit.ly/l5KvJn) are known all over the world and anyone from another country can easily identify them. Just make sure you explain on your website why you are using them, otherwise someone might think you are cheap.
4. Shorten Your URLs
The more we look at it, the more we realize that it is easier to get your pages ranked in Google when the URLs are shorter. Nesting multiple layers of your product catalog into different directories just to accomplish keyword placement (e.g. /diamond-rings/wedding-rings/ring1234.html) is not working as well as it used to. Google warned us in early 2010 that they would lower the importance of the URL for optimization, and now the affect is painfully clear. Long URLs still work on larger sites with operational link building strategies, but you need to get those inbound links. New jewelry catalog sites are having extreme difficulty.
Tomorrow we will continue the review of things you should have (or not have) on your product detail page.
