In layman's terms, search engine optimization is a delicate balance of information you show on your website: programming code used to make your website, ways that people can find your website, and how you treat people once they try to use your website.
We agree with the top reports from organizations like SEOmoz and Search Engine Land. They usually indicate that the Titles of your website pages and the quality of the content on your pages are the most significant website ranking factors.
The "quality of the content" is a strange phrase that many SEO guys will throw around but no one ever really defines it. That's because it's an indefinable concept that may change from website to website or industry to industry.
The search engine companies will never publicly say how they rank the content on your website. Google does have many teams working on different parts of their ranking technique, and they try to improve it in small ways every week. As changes occur, we SEO experts need to assess how ranking strategies need to be changed.
Since 2008 we've seen a huge shift of ranking effectiveness from websites that were convoluted and keyword stuffed to a more natural style that was keyword stuffed and then to a simple conversational style. When Google started using conversational styles as a method of ranking they upset many SEO experts and website owners who paid a lot of money to tweak their website for top ranking. Google's point of view was that they wanted to give a fighting chance to local stores who couldn't afford paid SEO services.
As of today, here are our current thoughts on getting a single jewelry website page highly ranked:
1. Write conversationally, as if you were talking to a customer in person.
2. Don't duplicate website content from any other source.
3. Don't use the stock product descriptions supplied by vendors; write your own.
4. Put at least 400 words on each page.
5. Limit each page to a single topic using a few targeted keyword phrases for that topic.
6. Do not overly repeat the same phrase on a page.
7. Write naturally, as if you were talking to a customer in person.
Did you notice that #1 and #7 were the same?
If you suffer from the feeling that "you can't write," then use a digital voice recorder and simply record conversations you have with customers, transcribe them, and post that on your website. Watch this 3 min video for an example explanation of this technique: http://youtu.be/ZnBHlFu4vQA
Writing jewelry descriptions is extremely important for your website's overall ranking. But writing descriptions for each jewelry style can be very exhausting if you sit at your computer just trying to be creative. On the other hand, you could carry that voice recorder with you 1 day each week and record all your conversations with customers. The next time you work on your website you will have seed material to reference.
If you still feel like your own recorded conversations are worthless as content seed material, then here's our bottom line Nugget for the day... Call your jewelry designers and talk to the sales reps that handle the in store trunk shows. These sales reps travel the country and need to perfect their selling styles to overcome all consumer objections. Ask them to tell you the best stories, anecdotes, and selling techniques then transcribe those for your website.
Content writing is a slow process but we've seen some small websites outrank Goliathan websites on a local level simply by having a few well written pages.
