Can I ask some of you seasoned Folksy old-timers for some advice?!
In my shop I tend to title things in a certain way: title, followed by description. So for example, my titles are usually something like: ‘Little Hare Personalised Name Meaning Print, christening baby gift’. The title part (Little Hare) comes first, followed by the description of the item and then a couple of keywords as to who it could be for.
But, should I be titling it the other way round to get found on Google and show up in Folksy’s Shopping results? So, should I be calling it: ‘Personalised Name Meaning Print, christening baby gift, Little Hare’? Putting the descriptive bit first, with the item name at the end?
Do commas interfere in anyway too? Should I be just titling items as one long sentence? I don’t like stuffing titles with keywords as it looks clunky, but does it help to get found (I’m guessing yes, but if you know different let me know!)?
If I try to google my listings on Folksy (and in particular under Shopping) they’re not showing up - even if I search very specifically. On many of my listings I’ve included pretty much the same wording as the title in the first sentence of the actual product description - is this how it should be to maximise being found? And should it be absolutely identical to the title in that first sentence?
It’s really hard to come up with completely unique ways of titling items as I do have things listed elsewhere, including my own website. I’m making sure that all my descriptions are different though (I’m not copying and pasting) - there are parts of the descriptions that are very similar however as it’s pretty impossible to change the practical descriptions (ie, the bits about size, materials, etc). But the first 2 or 3 paragraphs of copy (the descriptive part) on every listing is always different to elsewhere.
Is there something I’m doing wrong, or would my Folksy titles (and therefore my items) have to be incredibly unusual and unique to even stand a chance of being found on Google or showing up in the shopping results?! Do I have to start making items that are practically Googlewhacks?! Or do I just need to tweak how I’m titling, etc?
I have absolutely no idea but when I Google Hand knitted baby clothes my folksy items rank quite high in google images but nothing in google shopping. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any folksy items on Google shopping.
Google search is very erratic, some of my items feature in shopping but not all of them. Some of them show up in images. Some of them in general search. More of my Folksy stuff shows up then my dark side stuff, though no complaints about that!
I don’t really understand to be honest. I read somewhere (when the internet was first invented probably) that commas and punctuation mitigate against items showing up in searches so I tend not to use them. That advice may no longer be relevant of course.
I don’t know if I am making the best use of my descriptions either. Clicks on my pages from social media far outweigh those from Google searches.
I have tried researching search engine optimisation before, but the advice I found may as well have been written in another language.
I’m sure someone out there must understand it. Mustn’t they?
Can’t help either I’m afraid but one thing to note, when you are testing your results, bear in mind Google’s algorithm will ‘personalise’ itself to you. So when you google a given phrase, if you have been looking at that product page a lot on your pc, then it’s more likely Google will present that product page to you, because it thinks you are interested in the page because you keep looking at it. If I then google that same phrase on my pc, Google won’t show those same results to me, because I’ve never visited those pages before.
Search placement is very hard and even those marketing themselves as experts in search inevitably get it wrong. I think the only way you can guarantee results is by paying for search placements. Unless you have a really big brand, doing it yourself in this day and age is probably not going to get you the results you want, even when you use a very niche phrase.
But it would be good to hear of positive examples from other Folksy shop owners. You’ll never hear of any advice that says ‘do abc and then you’ll get xyz’, because Google’s algothrim is top secret and no one knows. Plus it changes so by the time you might have worked out something that works for you, it one all changes and you’re back at the starting point lol!
Thanks lovelies - and yes Chris @ChrisStoneArtist, it does feel as if a lot of it is written in sanskrit!!
Whenever I do any searching on google to test the water on things like this I make sure I’m logged out so that it doesn’t skew the results - as Heidi says, it gives you results influenced by your history otherwise and won’t be accurate.
Maybe it’s a matter of time… or timing… as to whether my shop (or anyone else’s) shows up in the google Shopping results. It is weird that they don’t show when I search with the exact same title though, so not sure how to explain that. When I just did a search for the term ‘Personalised Wooden Picture Block’ my site came up on page 1 of the results, but it was page 4 before the Folksy result came up. Maybe google is dragging its heels about crawling Folksy and new listings or something. And perhaps, in relation to the Shopping section, it’s down to money: those that pay more get shown in the shopping results more often, so perhaps that’s why Folksy doesn’t show up very much in those results? Don’t know!
I’ve had a quick google to see if I can find anything that says commas are a bad thing - not finding much other than google seems to cope OK with them being in meta titles, so I guess they shouldn’t be interfering too much… would love to hear from anyone that knows about these things in relation to Folksy though!
Hi Sarah. I’ve been doing a bit of digging into your product titles and where they rank on Google. And you’re right, the ones I tried out definitely weren’t showing up where I expected them to. I’m not sure what’s happening but think it could be because some of your titles are the same on your own website and Google does not like duplicate content. So the reason some of the items in your Folksy shop aren’t showing in Google results could be that it’s hiding them? To test that try choosing one of your items that has the same title and description on both (or one that’s very similar) and then edit that listing on Folksy with different keywords. You’ll have to wait a while to see results as it can take time for them to show up.
Also the more links in you can get into your Folksy shop, the better. So maybe try some more blog posts on your own blog that feature your Folksy collections, maybe something like a “Mother’s Day Gift Ideas for mums who knit, sew and crochet”, that can feature your crochet and knitting prints, and also include some other Folksy sellers in there and ask them if they can share it too? That should give your results a boost.
In terms of Google Shopping, most Folksy listings are included in this as part of our service, as Shopping results are paid listings (product listing adverts or PLAs) but it depends on how much other sites are bidding on the results.
Search engines tend to ignore punctuation, so it shouldn’t really matter if you include it, but that means you have to remember to put a space after punctuation or the words will run together (red/black = redblack to the search engine, so that could mess up searches).
I don’t have any advice though, my Folksy shop doesn’t show up much. Opposite to Chris, my dark side stuff shows up a lot more… but considering I’ve had a shop there 12 years and here about 5 months it’s not very surprising.
I notice when I google “Kim Onyskiw”, the dark side is right at the top, but my Folksy doesn’t come up until half way down the 2nd page (and that’s only to my sold page)… my name’s mentioned a couple of times on my shop page, but I guess I need to find more places to sneak it in because I really would expect that to be high up. Searching my shop name “konyskiw” does better for Folksy, but even with copy and pasting my Folksy titles into google shopping, it’s mostly just coming up with my Etsy listings instead (or none at all), and I do always rewrite my titles for here (although obviously they have a lot of the same keywords and same photos).
Hi Camilla - thanks very much for that info! I always go to great pains to make sure there’s no duplicate content when I create my listings, although with titles it’s a bit harder (there’s only so many ways you can name a personalised canvas with a picture of a London bus on it, for example!). I’ll certainly go back over my listings though and see if I can spot any that can be changed around. It may mean giving designs different titles perhaps, although I worry that might make life a bit confusing - but I’ll definitely have a play!
I really like your Mother’s Day blog post idea - I’ve got another Folksy one planned for this week anyway, so I’ll schedule that idea in for early March.
x