Custom Jade Earrings

Right before Christmas, I sold a Medusa necklace made with Nephrite Jade, Lizardite (whatever that is!), and Swarovski pearls. A few days ago, I received a convo on Etsy from the customer wanting matching earrings, so I made these. Nice and simple. I love the Nephrite Jade, it has a beautiful translucent avocado sort of color. Actually, I like it so much that I used most of the rest of the strand in a cool necklace for a friend of mine, which I will probably post tomorrow :) I hope Rings & Things has more next time they're in Phoenix for a trunk show!

Fun fact: Even though I shamelessly plug Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs on a daily basis at this blog, and have a big Etsy widget, I have been getting more visits to my shop from my dance blog, where I don't mention my shop and just have one little link to it! But SEO demands that I keep mentioning it here to raise my Google rankings.

I'd blog more, but right now there are a couple of little corgis who would like my attention!

Special Weekend Etsy Update

It's been a busy, rather emotional week, so I unfortunately did not list any new items on Etsy, but I do have a few Etsy related things that I'd like to share with you.

First, my SEO efforts on items like the above-pictured Beaded Pomegranate Faerie Necklace (aka, The Hungriest Pixie Ever) are starting to pay off. I did a little Googling last night and was pleased to find that Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs is the #1 Google result for handmade fantasy jewelry! My visits are still low, but at least I know that it's getting easier and easier for people to find my shop. I even found a pair of my Steampunk Key Earrings on a search for handmade steampunk jewelry.

Then today, when I logged into my shop to do more SEO work (it never ends!), I found that Etsy has given me the capability to offer coupons! I'd like to be able to use this to do some great holiday sales, but if you'd like to get a head start on the other shoppers and help me test the system, you can use the code "yaycoupon" to get 10% off your order!

In FAETeam news, our latest Gift Guide is Decorate for the Holidays with FAETeam. Although the main focus is ornaments, there's also a tree topper, a few holiday-themed prints, some greeting cards, and a few decorations well-suited for your mantle, centerpiece, or desk to lend a little festive cheer.

I also curated a treasury just for fun. Green and Magical is pretty self-explanatory, I think.

This week's cool find is VooDooBunny. I saw her featured on another blog and her shop has several items that I might have to buy as holiday gifts!

SEOhmygoodnessthisisgoingtotakeforever.

Yesterday, I started on a project I've been putting off for a while -- doing Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO) on my Etsy shop. It started out easily enough... Changing up my shop title, the names of my shop sections, and the welcome announcement. Just little re-writes here and there to take advantage of how Google and other search engines actually work. Go ahead and visit Handmade Jewelry by Erthe Fae Designs and have a look-see.

But then I hit the hard part... re-writing all of my item titles and descriptions!

I currently have 70 items in my shop, and my method of presenting them is about as un-Google-friendly as you can get without doing it on purpose. Little did I realize that by trying to make myself stand out from the crowd with lyrical item names and short story snippets at the start of each description, I was actually lagging way behind the crowd. In fact, I was probably in an entirely different country from the crowd. Maybe a country with no Google.

I may continue to tweak things as I watch my site stats to see what actually works, but for now I'm working the title into the description, and placing the stories at the bottom of the listing -- I do not want to get rid of them entirely, because some people come to my shop specifically to read them. Check out Her Airship Sailed Through Time Steampunk Necklace to see the difference. Please let me know if you think the new format is too awkward or see room for improvement.

And now, a little apology in advance. Apparently the most important step in SEO is building lots of links to your store. Blog posts count towards this, even if they're your own blog, so I will be promoting my shop a little bit in every post from now on. I will try to keep it minimal, and make it an addition to what I'm already writing instead of the focus. I want to keep this blog interesting for those of you who've decided you like to know what's going on in my life. Please whack me upside the head if I go too far in the wrong direction.