ImagesMagUK_February_2022

www.images-magazine.com FEBRUARY 2022 images 27 BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT every sentence you write – and you could actually see your rankings go down. ■ Try a more natural approach Consider the following sentence: “Andy Murray has won three Grand Slam singles titles – one at the US Open and two at Wimbledon – making him the most successful British player in recent memory.” You probably understand that this sentence is about tennis, even though the word ‘tennis’ is not mentioned once. As you were reading it, you saw phrases like ‘Andy Murray’ and ‘Wimbledon’, and you were able to infer the topic without needing it to be spelled out. Modern search engine algorithms can do the same thing. Google and its rivals now use semantics to evaluate whether your web page is relevant to a given query – and this means that repeating ‘school uniforms’ over and over again is a less effective SEO (search engine optimisation) tactic than actually writing about school uniforms. Before you start, make a list of words and phrases that are closely related to school uniforms (eg polo shirts, trousers, skirts and school shoes). Then try to weave these into your copy while still mentioning school uniforms directly in key places like the page’s heading and title tag. W hen you’re writing copy for your website, it’s a good idea to think about what keywords you want to rank for. For example, let’s say you sell school uniforms and you want your website to appear on the first page of Google results for the term ‘school uniforms’. Obviously, if you want to achieve this, you will need to mention school uniforms in the page content to make it clear to search engines and users alike that they’re looking at a page about school uniforms. But how many times should you mention school uniforms on that page about school uniforms? Is it enough to mention school uniforms just once or twice, or is it necessary to repeat the phrase ‘school uniforms’ over and over again to have a chance of ranking for ‘school uniforms’? As the above paragraphs show, repeating the same words ad nauseam can affect the readability of your content, resulting in copy that sounds rather unnatural when read aloud. But you may feel that this is a price worth paying if it nets you a first- page ranking. ■ Keyword stuffing is not the way to go Google and other search engines take a dim view of keyword stuffing, ie repeating the same phrase as much as possible in website copy, considering it a form of spam. According to Google’s own guidelines, this practice “results in a negative user experience, and can harm your site’s ranking. Focus on creating useful, information-rich content that uses keywords appropriately and in context”. While it certainly makes sense that the phrase ‘school uniforms’ would appear multiple times on a page about school uniforms, you won’t gain any advantage by shoehorning it into SEO tips: Will keyword repetition help to boost your Google rankings? I implement a few strategies in my business that help me receive information from my customers more easily and also help them decide on specs too. For example, I make a lot of templates for my customers, one of which is a printable area template. This gives realistic sizes to my customers so they know how much print area they can use on a shirt or hoodie. This has the additional benefit of highlighting print locations that they might not have considered. A customer using my template as a reference can now be educated on sizes and locations, and as a result might also opt to add a sleeve print or inside neck. This method produces great content for social media and gives us clarity in the print jobs, which saves us money in the studio. It also acts as a handy upselling tool for higher value jobs. There are lots of other ways in which you can educate your customers in order to increase your profit margins. Maybe you want your customers to choose better shirts, or perhaps you are tired of printing rough hoodies? Now is your chance to make a video or email your template to them, detailing your favourite garments and letting them know all the colours that garment comes in. You will, of course, choose a garment with a good profit margin and one that has consistent stock levels and Help your customers make you more money! makes your job easier. You could also explain about Pantone colours and how someone would go about finding their Pantone reference for their artwork. Again, this might speed up your communications, which in turn could save you money. Customers enjoy knowing what makes a good print – with this information, they’ll be able to understand more of the process and also order the premium products that you enjoy working with and give you a greater profit margin. Chessie Rosier-Parker is director and studio manager of Squeegee & Ink, a screen printing and embroidery studio that also provides pre-exposed screens and film to garment printers along with social media workshops. www.squeegeeandink.co.uk/ learn-to-screen-print Joel Dear is from ETrader, one of the industry’s leading suppliers of websites to garment decorators across the UK. www.etraderwebsites.co.uk