You are proud of the work you produce and the quality of your furniture. But as a handmade furniture maker you need to showcase your work in the digital world so that people can find you and buy from you.
SEO is a powerful tool for your artisan business. It will increase your visibility online and drive sales. And I bet that’s where most of your website visitors come from (unless they already know about your business through word of mouth).
How handmade furniture makers can boost sales with SEO
Here are the basics of the SEO you need to do to increase your sales as a handmade furniture maker.
Website technology
Your website needs to be on a platform (WordPress, Wix, SquareSpace, Shopify, Big Cartel, Magento, etc) that supports SEO features. So many times I have worked with businesses who have not considered this before they have signed up for a website provider!
Keyword research for handmade furniture
Then you need to consider the keywords and phrases that your customers use when they search on search engines for handmade furniture. The Google Keyword Planner is a useful tool for this research. Look for words with decent volume and low competition.Â
Think about the unique aspects of your business. Do you produce an ‘egg chair’ or ‘rocking chair’ or ‘cuddle chair’. What style do you work with? Maybe ‘mid century modern dining chair’ or ‘mid century modern boucle chair’ is your specialty.
Create high quality, informative content about your furniture
The key message from Google for many years is that content (copy and images on the page) need to be helpful to your users. This sends the right signals to Google that your website and products are of interest to visitors.
Quite apart from search engines, you want the pages of your website to be engaging and helpful to potential buyers. After all, you want to supply them with enough information to make a purchase and that includes good clear photographs and detailed information about your handmade furniture.
Designing a home is a visual process and people who are looking for the right furniture to fit their space need inspiration. Inspire them with high quality photographs and videos but make sure that you optimise them.
The processes you use to make your furniture can make all the difference. Especially in these days when the conscious consumer wants to be sure that the wood is sourced from sustainably managed forests or that the fabric upholstery is not petroleum-based or has had a toxic finish applied.
Optimise the website
Optimising the website pages and creating a well-structured navigation makes it easier for potential buyers to find what they are looking for. If it is easy to find and buy a product, it is more likely that you will sell more. Create dedicated collections for products, describe them, and make them aesthetically pleasing.
Spend time on your website viewing it through the eyes of the visitor. Get it tested to be sure there are no technical issues. Optimise with title tags, meta descriptions, al-txt and links. These will be used by robot crawlers of your website to index the information supplied for later regurgitation in search results.Â
Use schema information to expand the information supplied to search engines and make your search engine results stand out.
Remember to optimise your website for mobile devices. Many of your customers will spend time looking for handmade furniture online in the evening while they are on the sofa or during their daily commute and they’ll be using a mobile device for this. If the website is difficult to use on a mobile phone, buyers will leave.
Use local SEO for workshops, studios and showrooms
Use local SEO if your workshop, studio or showroom is open to the public to visit and purchase. The same advice applies if you have a physical store.
Google provides businesses with tools to advertise their local business so that it appears on maps or for ‘near me’ searches. Make sure your contact details are consistent and easy to find, so that buyers can call you. And don’t forget to ask for reviews of your business to enhance your online reputation.
Build quality backlinks to your handmade furniture website
Build your reputation online with high quality backlinks from reputable websites that are relevant to your handmade furniture business. Look for websites, blogs and publications in your interior design and home furnishing space to collaborate with and reach out to them.
Quality backlinks from high domain authority websites can boost your search engine ranking and gain you more visitors and more sales.
Monitor your SEO work
Don’t forget to keep monitoring your SEO results using analytics tools so that you can track what is working and what is not working. Analytics is full of useful business information that you can use to increase sales – like which products are of interest, what people are searching for, which types of keywords convert the most sales, where your traffic comes from, and more.
Ongoing SEO for handmade furniture makers
SEO is an ongoing process. The website needs to be regularly monitored. Content needs to be refreshed. Backlinks need to be gained and replaced if they are lost. Pages need to be optimised. Localised information needs to be updated.
I hope you have found this overview of SEO for handmade furniture makers useful. If you need help with SEO for your business, reach out and let’s talk.Â