How are your writing skills? Every week someone asks me how I can come up with so much to write about, but it's really easy for me because there's simply so much to keep up with. Figuring out how the basic functionality of the internet, and new technology, is going to fit into the jewelry industry is a constant challenge.
On the other hand, much of the basic information in the jewelry industry doesn't change. Sure, styles come and go, but through the years the industry provides possibilities for broad topics like rings, diamonds, gemstones, birthstones, and gold qualities.
You may consider these broad topics to be of lesser value because you yourself know these topics like the back of your soldering iron. But for your customers, this isn't their every day topic of conversation, so you have to expect that for them, it's a novelty and worth reading about.
I've learned over the past several years, that it's almost impossible to successfully target single word "phrases" like the ones mentioned above. Organic targeting has always been way too difficult for single word ranking, and even bidding on those words in Google AdWords is often futile.
However, people who do not the know specific terms to search for, often start out with Googling generic words and then refining them as they go. They may not be initially looking to buy when they do this, but are searching either academically, emotionally, or simply to browse.
Google says that 10% of people search for broad topics every day have a need for deeper information, and would be willing to sit still long enough to read a lot.
To answer the need for this deeper content, Google added a SERP feature back in August 2013 called in-depth articles. The goal is to add an extra section to page 1 of the SERP results whenever someone searches for a broad term, usually a single word.
Those single words I mentioned above should trigger some in-depth articles if you search for them yourself: rings, diamonds, gemstones, birthstones, gold.
However, there's room for several more in-depth articles from jewelers like yourself, but you have to follow some pretty strict rules to get listed... in-depth.
The killer is the length of the article. It has to be long. At least 800 words, but it's more likely that you will need 2000+ words. How can you possibly write so much?
Let's break that down...
Searching for "rings" is an incredibly broad topic. You could easily write 2000 words about rings in general because you can include the history of ring making, how to re-size a ring, the different reasons to exchange rings, and the most popular rings in history. Of course you could throw in information about engagement rings for a little extra measure.
This is probably the only time I'm going to suggest that you cover more than one topic on a page.
Above all, this long article needs to be original, interesting, and intriguing to the layman.
Your in-depth article will need at least 1 image. But realistically, few of us will gleefully free a slab of 2000 words without the opportunity rest our eyes on a few photos, so 1 is probably not going to cut it.
Now that you know what to write about, you also need to include some technical details before Google will recognize you.
First, you will need to use the Article markup outlined by schem.org. I wrote a little about rich snippets last year but this is much more in depth technique. The full details of the Article markup are here, and you will need a programmer to set this up for you. This is not for the faint of heart.
Google says the required minimum for the markup is the following:
* headline
* alternative headline
* image
* description
* date published
* article body
Next, you must set up your Google Authorship. You can refer back to my previous Nuggets on Authorship by ckicking here and here. Google's official directions on Authorship are here. This requirement means that you can't simply outsource this 2000+ word article to someone. At most you can hire a ghostwriter, but you have to put your name on it.
In Google's official directions for setting this up they also suggest that you set up your Google+ Page and link that page to your website. Make sure to select a logo as your Page's image. This will add to your identity and credibility for getting listed in that in-depth section of the SERPs.
My personal opinion is that any jeweler should be able to talk for hours on broad topics like "rings" and "birthstones," so these in-depth articles are the perfect opportunity to show your expertise by putting all that "talk" into written words.
I've covered all the important stuff to get started with this. The full Google directions for in-depth articles is here.
