I’ve been working on some new jewelry that I’ll be launching later this summer, and that has me thinking about what to call my pieces.
There’s one school of thought that says you should give your pieces names (at least for your online store) based on phrases people might search for if they were looking for your products.
This is logical enough. If you want to improve your search engine optimization (SEO) you should put key words in your page titles. And since most online stores use the name of your pieces as the page title, it makes sense to maximize keywords through the name of your pieces.
No one is searching for the “Betty necklace”, or so the thought goes, so you should focus on describing it in a way that people searching will find.
But what you end up with are kind of generic descriptive names.
And if you work in a series like I do, descriptive names start to all sound alike. I mean, how many ways are there to really say steel necklace with silver accents made from leaf shapes?
I actually keep track of my pieces by their item numbers, which works fine for wholesale, but isn’t really useful when writing online retail marketing copy.
Regular readers of this site will know that I’m a huge fan of Made to Stick
I think about the story of the Mount Hamilton Wilderness all the time. I love the idea of naming an ambiguous thing in a way that gives it concreteness, and therefore makes it more sticky. It’s the reason I called my new silver line the cosmos collection.
At Selling Your Soul, I asked Danielle and Marie about how to position my jewelry in a way that fills a need. Their response was that it wasn’t about filling a need, it was about selling my art. They recommended doing something to make each piece feel even more special, like giving them names that evoke a feeling or emotion I want people to get from my jewelry.
The internet marketer in me keeps reminding me that I should be doing everything possible to improve my SEO. But at the same time, I’m starting to believe that might not be the right strategy for my products. Especially considering that most people searching for “steel jewelry” probably aren’t looking for something quite like what I make anyway. Instead, I think I’m leaning towards more evocative names for my jewelry and focusing on bringing in traffic for my site from other sources.
How about you? Do you name your pieces for SEO or do you try to make the names more special?
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Good article – To me, SEO is the mystery of the ages. It makes my brain hurt. That being said, I tend to take a combination approach. For instance, I put things out there with titles like “Wrist Cuff Wallet – Intrepid Journey”. Maybe that way the practical part is taken care of for generic searches but once someone finds me, maybe some emotion is evoked.
I think you’ve addressed a really important question that I’ve had for some time, and I totally agree with the advice from Danielle and Marie about evoking an emotion or feeling with the name. I’ve gone back and forth between names and SEO, and SEO optimization for titles just doesn’t sit right with me, but I’ve been reluctant to act on that gut feeling.
At the beginning of the year, I changed all my listings to be more SEO friendly – lots of keywords and sentences that didn’t really make sense. The more I look at them, the more I’m turned off. I think SEO does play an important role in creating the script to sell our work, it just shouldn’t play the ONLY role. Making my listings more buyer-friendly, less SEO-heavy is on one of my many to-do lists.
I just recently changed all of my items a bit for SEO. Pieces that used to be called “Round Reversible Leafy Silver Tree Pendant” are now “Sterling Silver – Reversible Round Leafy Tree Pendant”
I do not know if this has really made much of a difference, but I thought it was worth a shot.
SEO is tricky, trying to capture a lot of people without being to generic is tough to balance.
I completely agree with Marie+ Danielle – you’re not selling a commodity, you’re selling a work of art! And art is not seo-optimized 🙂
Maybe it’ll help to think about it like this: your SITE can be SEO-friendly, but each piece doesn’t have to be. Especially since the descriptions of the piece ARE going to include all your keywords, naturally.
As long as you have your keywords in your page titles, image tags/titles and in your descriptions, I think people searching will find you.
And then they’ll be stunned by your stickily-named jewelry!
I actually think everything is about filling a need, including art. It might not be a basic need like housing or food, but everything, even art, fills a need, at least on an emotional or psychological level. Most people buy what they wear, including jewelry, because it makes a statement about their personality, style, culture, etc. People have a need to declare who they are and connect with people like them. That is part of what makes people buy this dress or that necklace, etc. So with that in mind, yeah you want to give things names that people have an emotional response to. On the other hand, you also want people to be able to find your stuff.
I think there’s a middle ground to be had between SEO and creative product names. If SEO’ing your product names doesn’t work for your products, you can always do landing pages or category pages that are optimized with keywords, that way you have both SEO and your unique product names.
For our product line at Ex-Boyfriend, SEO’d names usually work for us, both from the perspective of writing sales copy and from an SEO perspective. We get a ton of search traffic and conversions on our product names, so we deliberately try to pick names for our items that people would use to describe them. Some product lines are more conducive to this than others, but pretty much all online shops are going to make more money if they have great SEO.
I know a lot of people find SEO intimidating or tedious, but it seriously drives a ton of traffic and sales if you spend the time on it, so I do think it’s worthwhile.
I cannot tell you how many times a piece has sold based on the title. Mostly in person, but even online. A piece I once named “Oregon Sunshine” sold because the new owner laughed, being from Oregon where it is grey a lot of the time.
My work is my art, and I do want it to sell, but not at the expense of the piece itself, “sold” to an SEO name. Naming it to evoke a feeling, a memory, or a connection, I think, ultimately gives me a better sell. Things end up resonating with the buyer and linking them to the piece in a personal way. A lot more can be packed into “Oregon Sunshine” than “Artisan Glass Focal Bead on Sterling Silver.” And I try to make sure the front of my website works to catch by description. Once they are in, they can connect as they see fit. =)
Lovely new work, congrats on it!
I name my pieces to evoke a feeling – something that would increase enjoyment of using my barware or dinnerware. For instance, one of my cocktail chalice sets is named “Gentlemen Prefer Bourbon.” The colors on the chalices are meant as a complement to the color of a Manhattan, and most people smile when they hear the name.
For me, I prefer that the names of my pieces help potential buyers connect with the work. An increase in SEO is fine, but if the descriptive name that you choose *solely* for increased SEO leaves the buyer feeling “cold,” then the high number of views may, very possibly, not translate into sales.
Personally, I’ve never had this problem but that’s because I have to title each pen and ink illustration according to the title I give it. You never go to a museum and see, “Pen and ink fairy tale illustration with young girls,” as a title. But I think that makers should name their pieces according to the name it needs. I’m a big lover of naming things. (Heck, I’ve even named my car, my bicycle, and my boyfriend’s bicycle – just so there’s no confusion.) Using SEO terms for titles lacks the organic nature that the piece should evoke.
I name all my pieces because I like to and it makes them more personable and memorable. Then I try to make my descriptions full of keywords people may use to search for what the actual piece is. I think people will have more of an emotional response to a pair of “lolly” earrings rather than earrings no. 158. You’re right – it’s about selling your art and art needs a title!
This is a really interesting question. I used to have creative names on all my pieces and then everything I read said that I wouldn’t come up in google searches so I should stop doing that. Now I look at my shop as a whole and it just looks so boring and devoid of personality (how many different ways can there be to say “Chainmaille bracelet in {color} and {color} aluminum”? And what kills me is — I don’t even see that it helped my sales. But I’m afraid to switch back to the old way out of fear that my views will totally grind to a halt. I wish there was an Etsy batch-title-editing tool so I could quickly test this out and quickly put it back if it ends up hurting me!
I also like Danielle and Marie’s point that selling jewelry isn’t about filling a need. I’ve been struggling ever since I opened my shop to figure out how my jewelry can be positioned as a need when, really, jewelry is a want. And you know…. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. Our wants are what add color and fun to our lives, right?
This is a great article and something I have considered a lot myself. The way I see it is that we should ‘craft’ ur marketing efforts the same way in which we create and design our products… the old form/function deal.
That way the names we use to decribe our work are descriptive but also intrinsically label the purpose of our products. I guess it takes a lot of wordsmithing to do this which is difficult, but if you think about it, its sorta like writing poetry.
This post really caught my eye. It caused me to think about the reasoning behind why I give my pieces special names. I never thought much about whether the combination of words I was using for titles was right or wrong or SEO friendly. But I think it’s really important to give artistic creations a name. It gives the buyer more incentive to buy something when it has a unique name. It personalizes the product so that you can connect to it in some way and in some cases can make you want to buy the product even more as in Carli’s experience. I’ve been naming my artwork the way Mary Ellen suggested – the combo approach. I originally gave all of my note card sets fun names for a craft show just because I thought it would be a nice touch. This carried over when I started to put my items online. Who knew I was actually doing something that would help in selling my artwork?
Megan, this is a great question. Being in sales and marketing myself for over 25 years, always testing SEO to the max. I believe a seller should do both. Mix and match if your will.
Here are a few examples below:
1) List the actual product name-then description: Candle-Scented-Beeswax
2) List a creative description –then actual Product. All Natural Beeswax Candle
3) *Next is to take it a step further and repeat these Title phrases in your actual descriptions up to the first 150 characters. Each description slightly different of course. (
*Example – An all Natural, Environmentally, Friendly Candles. Made from nature’s renewable resources; Beeswax Pillars, Dinner Tapers, Votives, tealights, and Soy wax…
Tip: If you have shops on multiple selling venues, and or use an importing tool, always be sure to slightly change-up each venues description.
As a rule, there are no magic beans to SEM (PR) and SEO (Optimization). It takes patience, shameless self promotion, PR and blogging… No one venue can promise you the sales you seek, you have to go out and find your market.
Best Regards,
Ricki Mountain
Founder-Groove Press
My most popular yarn colorway, far and away, was named after one of the most unpopular institutions in America. The IRS. There’s a cute story that goes with it, and despite the fact that the colorway in no way looks like the IRS (what color is”IRS” anyway? red? black?) people love it. I can’t keep enough in my store.
I heard a great quote the other day. It went something like this.
Google hires herds of PhD’s to write search engines that ‘think’ like people. So good SEO is to write for people – not SEO spiders. Besides, spiders don’t carry much plastic. People do.
Awesome article!
Excellent question! I believe strongly in both points of the argument, so my jewelry titles have the seo name first, in lowercase, and my personal “fancy name last, with capitalized first letters. Like: “Rainbow bib necklace – natural jewelry – Falling Rainbow”. That’s even better for the customer, too, because they get an even clearer idea of why they’d want to click on your item. Then when they get there, they get the surprise and magic of the necklace’s “soul name”. (Too cheesy? Hah! I revel in cheese!!)
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I’ve decided that I have to name my designs based on inspiration. I can’t stand to look at my shop and see titles like “red cotton spandex a-line skirt with bird on branch detail”. It feels dull and yes, not artistic. How many people would truly stumble upon my item anyway based on a search?
By the way, GREAT blog! Thanks for all the helpful info.
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I’ve been working on a new collection, and this exact question has been rolling around in my head. I definitely want to name my pieces and collection based on inspiriation and emotion but was worried about SEO. I now feel much more confident in my choice, but am still thinking of putting an SEO title on my etsy listings and the true name in the item description.
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