Building content

OK, I don't think I explained very well what I'm trying to do in that "Link Exchange" thread. Also, the idea has evolved a little bit since then.

Some background: I design Celtic jewelry. I chose this first and foremost because I really like it. Once I shifted into trying to make this go more as a business, I realized two things: I have a lot of competition (bad!), but I picked something that is popular and has an established market (good!). My goal is to carve out my little corner of this big market. Since I have a day job and I can't travel the country doing Irish festivals every weekend, the bulk of my sales have to come online. So, I am focusing on building up my web site. Right now my site and my Shapeways shop do OK on some really specific keywords. But on general key words like "Celtic jewelry", I'm not even on the radar.

Everything I've read says to improve your search engine standings is to do these three things: content, content, and more content. So this is where this idea comes in: I am planning once a month (or so) to write a post about various jewelry and other items of interest that I've found that I like, find inspiring or whatever. A lot of it will focus on 3D printed products, but not all of it. At first it may end up being about 50/50. If this is something you might want your things to be featured in, let me know. If you plan to post it to Facebook, tweet it, pin it to Pinterest, put it on your own web site or any place else, it's a bonus.

I would make a Facebook page for your jewelry, treat it a bit like a blog and invite friends etc to like it which means they'll automatically follow all updates you do as you post new work with links to the same item on shapeways.

Then join jewelry and general 3d printing Facebook groups, post your work there, get more likes and followers, rinse and repeat as you do new stuff.
Keep an eye on people doing similar things, find out how and where they promote their worn stuff, and mimic that. There's nowadays forums and groups for anything that can be consumed, like jewelry. Find it, show your work there.

Getting attention through established sites, forums and groups will give you a lot more traffic than trying to have your own site or post someplace that nobody knows about.

And while I do dislike facebook, traffic to your little page/blog multiplies rather fast as soon as you post in some groups.
Likewise, I use Flickr... you can post to the shapeways group (that's rather dead-ish) but also to a ton of large 3D printing and jewelry groups. If every photo or render carries a shapeways and facebook link in the description (so people can like and forward you), you'll get all the traffic you need.

There's also pinterest, tumblr... any site that allows to post and link your stuff back to your shop and blog and allows you to like and pin other people's work, which in turn makes them come see you work and like and repin it too, will generate good traffic, especially if your descriptions include the keywords you want to be found with.

Search engines will work well down the road if you give them time and you spread your work through all the platforms above. Celtic jewelry (which I love too and will do some down the road is as common as bread and trying to compete with search results that have been on the front page for years, seems like a rather long term game to play.

The key is not really to have the physical content, but to have pictures of your content in as many social platforms as possible, tagged with the keywords you want. Same result, just a lot quicker. Google doesn't know or care if you have a 1000 celtic rings in your shapeways shop, or 1 ring with a 1000 pictures spread over all kinds of social media.

You'll also get more google hits from being featured on 1 jewelry site once, than you'll get from generating content for a year. Using social media to get your work out there, is also not much work once you have things set up to avoid too much clicking.