Is It Possible For A Craft Oriented Website To Rank Highly On Google
Last month in response to a newsletter I wrote, I was asked by a novice craftsman, if it was possible for a craft oriented website to rank highly on Google.
I have a craft based website, from It I sell craft related projects & supplies.
The site in question has been ranking between 4-2 on page 1 of Google for our primary keyword phrase.
Remember, Google deals with individual pages of a website when it comes to ranking, and while it is great to have your home page at the top of Google, the idea is to make all the pages on your site rank well.
Why does our home page rank so well?
Mine is a small niche market; so I do not have many big players with large advertising budgets to compete with.
The site in question has great content; it is very interesting and informative.
I create really good manuals on my subject, package them professionally and give them away from the website, this helps to spread our name about, also, within every manual are our contact details, plus direct links to the website.
On site optimisation consists of making your pages search engine friendly.
I optimised every page of the site, but occasional tweaking will be required as you learn more about the subject.
Arguably the most important part of your on site optimisation ought to be the construction of a compelling page title; it is this that people see in Google when they are searching. The page title you write should make people click it. There are plenty of e-books around which show you how to write compelling text.
What is called off site optimisation is just as vital as your on site optimisation.
Backlinks are a vital element of this optimisation; this simply means getting other sites to link to you.
One of the best ways to get them is by creating them yourself in a blog.
I write a few blogs every week, they serve one main purpose, which is to provide backlinks to my sites, anything else that comes from writing these blogs is a bonus.
Many people I have spoken to believe that reciprocal linking is finished. This is where two sites agree to link to each other.
I once wrote to 30 websites I asked if they would consider reciprocal linking, I only got one link from all that effort.
Certainly, try to get backlinks by exchanging links with other sites, a variety of incoming links is fine, but with my blogs I know that I will get a certain number of backlinks for a certain amount of work, I get a good return for my investment.
Another good way to get backlinks is to write articles about your niche. Spread your name about by getting articles published.
There are many sites where you can submit articles for publication, goarticles.com, ezinearticles.com, articledashboard.com & are some of the popular ones.
I didn't buy my place on page 1 of Google, though I did have to purchase what has become my personal favourite website building software, (it tells you as you make your website which parts of it need to be optimised)
If you have deep pockets, you can use adwords and pay people to come to your site, and of course there are endless people who say they can give you page 1 ranking with Google in exchange for an often serious lump of money.
So to go back to the original question, can a craft oriented site rank well in Google, the answer is sure it can.
I had no aptitude for search engine optimisation; I had to learn it as I depended on my websites to provide me with an income stream.
I admit SEO represents a learning curve, but once you do understand what you are doing you can always go ahead with confidence because you know you are doing the right thing.
Perhaps it comes down to how much you want something to happen?
For 25 years I ran a system of craft workshops in Somerset England. In 1994 the workshops were voted a National Living Treasure for their contribution to the Book Arts.
Richard Norman
www.edenworkshops.comwww.gold-vault.com
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