Launching your new online jewellery store in todays internet driven society is the relatively easy bit.
The real work begins when you aim to attract traffic, engage your customers, and clinch those crucial sales.
It’s a dynamic world out there – the ebb and flow of consumer behaviour and social media trends make it quite the challenge.
This is our first steps SEO guide, the must haves to get your company getting traffic and being found online.
First up: What is SEO?
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation, is a set of strategies and techniques aimed at improving your jewellery store’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs), like Google.
In other words, it’s about making your website more attractive to search engines.
When your website is well-optimised, it’s more likely to appear higher in search results when people type in keywords related to jewellery or your specific products. This increased visibility can lead to more traffic to your site, and ideally, more sales.
SEO strategies for a jewellery store might include keyword research to find out what terms customers use when they’re looking for products you sell, creating high-quality content that uses these keywords, ensuring your website loads quickly and works well on mobile devices, and building a network of links to your site from other reputable websites.
It’s all about the right traffic
SEO isn’t just about attracting more visitors to your site, though. It’s also about attracting the right visitors – those who are likely to buy your jewellery. That’s why understanding your audience and what they’re searching for is such a crucial part of SEO.
SEO is also an ongoing process, not a one-time task.
Search engine algorithms change frequently, and what worked a year or even a few months ago might not be as effective today. That’s why it’s essential to monitor your SEO efforts regularly, adjust your strategies as needed, and stay up-to-date with the latest best practices.
Getting started with SEO
There are many parts to SEO and there is a whole industry dedicated to it, which means that it can be a bit intimidating to dip your toe into. In this article, we’ll give you an overview and explain
1: Set up and install Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a treasure trove of insights, letting you delve into the minutiae of your site’s performance.
From visitor numbers and their geographical spread to the keywords that led them to your virtual door, it’s got it all.
Plus, it can even offer you monthly reports for an even deeper analysis. One thing to know is that Google Analytics is currently changing – from 1st July 2023, the old GA will no longer work and only the new ‘Google Analytics 4’ will operate.
If you don’t already have a plan for migrating to GA4, it’s time to work on one!
2: Set up and install Google Search Console
Google Search Console is like your website’s health inspector. It’s on the lookout for any crawl errors, helps you submit pages for early indexing, and even assists with updating SEO-related data like sitemaps.
It’s a great way to understand what keywords people are using to find your website, but also see what search terms you could be getting clicks for but aren’t currently.
3: List your business on Google
A crucial part of local SEO is the use of Google’s Business Profile tool.
By creating and optimising your Google Business listing, you can appear in local search results and Google Maps. This listing displays important information about your business, such as your address, hours of operation, and customer reviews. This isn’t something typically focused on in traditional SEO, but helps you be found when a potential customer searches something like ‘jewellery store near me’.
Online customer reviews can be a strong signal to search engines that your brand communicates, authority, confidence and trust. Make a habit of asking your customers to leave a review and if you ever receive a negative one, use this as a learning experience and work hard to change their mind.
4: On site SEO – Keyword linking and Meta Descriptions
If you want Google to read, understand, and serve your content to the right audience, ‘onsite SEO’ is your best friend.
It’s all about making sure every page on your website – be it a product page or an information hub – has the right information that Google needs to understand what the page is about and make it more likely to show it to visitors.
Elements like Meta tags, Title, Descriptions, and matching keywords serve as signposts, guiding users to the content they seek.
Although the site content itself will index and be searchable over time this Meta information is important to secure considered pathways to your content via search results. Go through every page on your website and ensure the Title, description and meta tag information for the site is filled in with information relevant to the page being viewed.
5: Content/Blogs/Education
A good blog or education centre is a fundamental part of a website and a great way to showcase your expertise.
A blog can increase organic traffic (people searching google) and enhance your link placement in search results for new and relevant content.
Provide breakdowns of procedures, talk about new technology, give in-depth reviews of particular machinery or processes you are using, the types of diamonds or gemstones you are buying and their origins and quality or guides on how to care and look after their jewellery purchase.
Share this content on your social media accounts too to increase your reach.
7: Link building
In brief this is the strategy of getting links from other relevant industry websites back to yours. This might be in the form of a press release with a link back to your site or advertising through online platforms. The most beneficial links are permanent ones through press release or educational articles written for industry magazines and directories.
Also consider the use of outbound links to authoritative websites as these can play a major role in your sites search engine optimisation. If Google thinks that the your website page is a hub of information based on things such as the relevancy and quality of outbound links, your website can be established as a page of helpful content in the views of Google.
8: Conversion
The goal of getting traffic to your website through SEO is of course to convert the website visitor into a customer.
This doesn’t always mean making a sale, although that’s the eventual goal. A conversion could be as simple as an email sign-up, a valuable step that ushers a potential customer into your sales funnel.
Each engagement with your website, be it reading a blog post, subscribing to a newsletter, or making an enquiry, brings a customer closer to making a purchase.
SEO plays a key role in this journey, attracting the right audience to your site, providing them with engaging, relevant content, and guiding them through a seamless, enjoyable online experience.
Remember, every conversion, no matter how small, is a step towards building a loyal customer base for your jewellery business.
