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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Items in your Shop

Watch the SEO Basics video on our Screencast-O-Matic channel!

When adding items, there are a few steps you can take to make your item listings extra search engine friendly:

Use descriptive file names for every image you upload. Your camera will probably give your images names like “0716SND.jpg” — which doesn’t tell your search engines anything useful. If you change the image name to “handmadegreensockmonkey1.jpg” instead, that’ll tell them a lot more. Use your keywords!

You’ll also want to spend some time and care on your item descriptions. Flesh them out — instead of saying, “This is a green sock monkey.”, try something like “Howard the green sock monkey is handmade out of Vermont wool and naturally dyed with spinach and foxglove. Its soft texture is pleasing to the touch. Howard is very durable and guaranteed for life.” Not only will this be a lot more appealing to your customers (I kinda want to touch your sock monkey now, heh heh) but it gives search engines something to hang onto.

There’s also Wicked Plum’s own integrated SEO. You’ll have your shop SEO, but there are also a couple of optional fields for adding keywords to each item. We encourage you to use them — they’ll really help customers find you. They’re in the box all the way at the bottom of your ‘Add New Item’ page, under “FV All in One SEO Pack”:

• Title: this is the title that will appear in the search engines. If left blank, the title will be the same as the item title. You can leave it blank, but this is another good place to add keywords. Say you’ve named your item “Howard the Sock Monkey” (this title will appear on the item listing) but want the search engines to see “Naturally Dyed and Handmade Green Sock Monkey”, which is a much more search engine-friendly title. You can enter “Naturally Dyed and Handmade Green Sock Monkey” in the “Title” box here.
• Description: this is the description that will appear under the title of the page in the search engines. If left blank the first 160 characters of your post will display. A good use of this field is to provide a brief but content-rich description of your item, such as: “Handmade, naturally dyed green sock monkey with lifetime guarantee.”

When you upload your Featured Image for each item (see here for adding Featured Images) you’ll also want to add descriptive titles and descriptions to each image. I usually copy the title and description I’ve entered into the “FV All in One SEO Pack” here, giving the search engines one more chance to find my keywords.

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