Quilting Web Sites and How to Get Traffic

NOTE FROM CHUCK: This week's article is inspired by a question from one of the Quilting Biz ezine readers. With her permission, I've reprinted her question and my response to her for your benefit.

QUESTION: “Hi, I have been reading your quilting ideas and they are great. I have a web page with quilts, baby quilts, cat quilts, red, white & blue, table runners, placemats, wallhangings, etc. But I do not get any orders. People do not get to my web page. Do you have any ideas. My web is www.bettys-quilts.com Let me know what you think.”
Betty Doyle, owner of Betty's Quilts, Naples, FL

ANSWER:

Hello Betty,

I'm glad you have been enjoying the ideas, etc. I checked out your web page, and there's a couple of quick things that I noted that you could do immediately to bring some more traffic to your quilting business site.

First, submit your quilting site to Google and DMOZ (The Open directory Project which feeds a lot of other search engines with search results) to get your sites listed with these search engines. Right now, you are not indexed by Google, so people won't find you when they search for quilts or quilt shops. You can do this by going to:

To submit to Google:

http://www.google.com/addurl.html

To submit to DMOZ:

http://dmoz.org/add.html

The submission instructions for DMOZ are a little bit trickier, but if you put up your site, you can definitely handle it. And the DMOZ.org site feeds a lot of the other search engines, so once you are listed there, you will be picked up by other search engines.

Once you have submitted to the search engines, you should consider opening a quilting storefront on either eBay or Yahoo. There is some cost involved, but both of these sites offer a lot of visitors and promotion of your stores to these visitors. You can get more information at:

For eBay Stores (basic subscription $9.95 per month):

http://pages.ebay.com/storefronts/seller-landing.html

For Yahoo Stores ($50 setup, $39.95 per month):

http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/merchant/

Both of these will give you a lot of benefits, including putting you on the virtual map and driving more business your way.

In addition, if you are in to writing about quilting, you could start adding quilting articles to your web site. Search engines love new content, and the more you add, the more of your web site will be indexed by the search engines.

You can also submit your quilting articles to a few of the article submission web sites that allow other people to post your article on their web sites as long as they put a link back to your site. The more links you have in to your web site, the higher you will show up in the search engine listings. To find some article submission sites, just go to Google.com and search for “free articles” or “article directory”.

And finally, you should take advantage of all the sites that will list your quilting services. There are a number of web sites that will let you list your quilting business online (some are free), again increasing the number of incoming links to your site and pushing up your search engine rankings, but also driving people to your site who are looking for quilts. Here's a couple that are popular (some may require a listing fee):

http://www.quiltprofessionals.com/

http://www.usaquiltguide.com/

http://quiltropolis.com/

I hope this helps. I am working on some books and articles that will help quilters like yourself sell your quilts, so watch your emails for news.

Thank you, and please feel free to send your quilting questions to me.

Regards,

Chuck Smith

If you have any questions about your quilting business – whether just starting out or looking for a boost with some solid marketing or business advice – feel free to send me an email at chuck@quiltingbusiness.com.

Chuck Smith is the owner of QuiltingBusiness.com, the web's only site dedicated to helping you make money with your quilting. Visit QuiltingBusiness.com today to sign up for the FREE email mini-course: “7 Unique Ways to Make Money with Your Quilting.”