Laryssa Wirstiuk 0:00
Ready to break free from algorithms, vanity PR, and money-sucking ads? My name’s Laryssa Wirstiuk, and I’ve learned in 8 years of jewelry marketing that content is the crown jewel. My agency Joy Joya takes a holistic approach, leading with laser-focused storytelling, impactful content creation, and strategic content distribution. This method has worked for the solopreneur as well as the multi-million-dollar company, and now I’m sharing these systems and tactics with you. Here’s to standing out in the Sea of Sparkle.

Welcome to Episode #295. In today’s episode, I want to talk about the future of SEO for jewelry businesses! This is an area of jewelry marketing that’s evolving very quickly, with AI-created content becoming more and more prevalent and search engines like Google adjusting their algorithms to account for the future of how people will be using the Internet and searching for useful content. If Google search is a primary way that your target audience discovers your brand, or you’re interested in driving more traffic through Google search, then you definitely need to check out this episode to understand what the future holds. I’ve done many episodes about SEO before if you want to reference them for the basics, which I won’t cover here in this episode. So if you’re completely new to SEO, I’d recommend you go back to episodes #238, #239, and #240 for a deep dive into those basics. When you search something on Google, you’re probably already noticing that one of the first search results is an AI Overview. AI Overviews provide links to resources that back up the information in the snapshot and delve deeper into the topic. This feature helps users explore and uncover a wide variety of content from various sources, including publishers, creators, retailers, and businesses, enabling them to use the gathered information to further their tasks. So keep listening to this episode to find out what these changes mean for you and your jewelry business – and how you can adapt to changes in Google search as well as to changes in how your customers are searching for you and your products.

But before we get to the solid gold, I’d like to take a moment to remind you that this podcast has both audio and video – so you can either listen on your favorite podcast platform or watch on YouTube by searching “Joy Joya”. You can support the podcast for free by taking the time not only to subscribe but also to leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Also, if you didn’t know, I co-host another podcast called “Success With Jewelry” with my friend Liz Kantner, who’s also a jewelry marketer and the founder of the Stay Gold Collective. We have a free version of the podcast, available everywhere you listen to podcasts and on YouTube as well as a membership community with extended episodes and additional resources. I invite you to check it out if you’re hungry for more content!

And in case you’ve missed it, I have some big news. For the third time Joy Joy is opening an incubator grant and it officially is live and waiting for your applications. Visit jewelrybrandincubator.com to apply and get all the details. But basically in a nutshell, we’re giving away six months of free full service digital marketing support valued at $18,000 in total to one emerging jewelry brand. Last time I offered this about a year ago we did have pretty strict requirements to enter. I got a lot of feedback on that. Guess what we took off all the requirements. All you need is an active jewelry business with an E commerce presence. And if you go to jewelry brand incubator.com You will see all the details of what you would receive if you win this grant. But also we’re doing something completely new as well. We’re offering the following for five finalists, they’ll get six months free of the mid tier membership to our joy deck platform

that’s a $3,600 value. And that’s an all in one marketing support platform that provides accountability and direction, personalized plan, confidence assurance progress monitoring, accessible marketing expertise and more. And last but not least, all entrants everyone who enters for the grant will receive three free months of an entry law have a membership to joy deck. So just by applying for this grant, you get something. And I think that that is really exciting. So if you want all the information, go to jewelry brand incubator.com To apply, get all the details, applications close Friday, July 12 at 11:59pm Pacific time.

Okay, let’s get into today’s episode, my Sparklers! First, let’s talk about AI and Your Approach to Content Creation Let’s talk about how AI should impact your approach to content creation. For pretty much all our clients, we do blog post creation and optimization. These blog posts strike a balance of brand storytelling with useful/interesting content and also being mindful of keywords they can be ranking for. Even after just a few months of blog once per month, pretty much all our clients across the board gain keyword rankings. We can’t always measure direct sales results from the blog posts because the buyer’s journey can be long and have multiple touchpoints, but we can see how much more meaningful and qualified traffic they’re getting to the site. If you want eyeballs, blog posts can give you eyeballs. However, writing blog posts completely with AI is not the answer. AI can be a great starting point for helping you brainstorm keywords, come up with an outline, and generate some ideas you may not have thought of before. But it absolutely doesn’t substitute for your unique voice and perspective and what you have to offer as well as the way you can put things into your own words. Even before AI content was a thing, Google search always prioritized high-quality content. Content written by an experienced, thoughtful human who puts time and intention into what they’re saying. Keywords are less important Search Engine Land did a really amazing breakdown of this earlier this year, and I’ll give you some of the key takeaways for you to know.

First, keywords are less important, and I totally agree with this. For us at Joy Joya, keywords always play a role in how we develop content for our clients, but we also want content that actually tells an interesting story for our clients – and also content that can repurposed for email marketing and social media marketing without sounding like the most generic BS you’ve ever heard.

Search Engine Land says, “The era of keyword stuffing is over, replaced by a focus on user intent.” Thanks to evolved technologies, search engines have become even “smarter”, and they can understand the context behind a query that a user makes. So when you’re creating content for search engines, you also have to take the user’s intent into consideration, like where are they in their buyer’s journey, what are they hoping to gain/find/learn, and how can you meet them where they are? The content that will rise to the top of search results will have relevant keywords, yes, but more importantly it will align with the user’s needs and goals.

Plain and simple: we’re in an era of information overload. More of the same-old, same-old is NOT going to cut it. You have to offer your unique expertise and perspective or Google is going to pass you by and present a competitor who’s doing a much better job with their storytelling. Adhere to Google’s Search Essentials best practices: Google tells you exactly how to get eyeballs on your content, and there are no tricks or magic bullets. Here are just a few of the best practices: Create helpful, reliable, people-first content. Use words that people would use to look for your content, and place those words in prominent locations on the page, such as the title and main heading of a page, and other descriptive locations such as alt text and link text. Tell people about your site. Be active in communities where you can tell like-minded people about your services and products that you mention on your site. If you have other content, such as images, videos, structured data, and JavaScript, make sure you’re following those specific best practices so that we can understand those parts of your page too.

Plain and simple. Again, there are no tricks. Just come with the best content possible, and encourage people to engage with it. You can also go back to your old content and update it, improving upon it for the future. How to get ranked in Google’s AI Overview So again, when you search for something on Google, you’ll see that AI Overview as one of the first search engine results. As I mentioned in the intro of this episode, that Overview provides links to resources that back up the information in the snapshot and delve deeper into the topic. How can you appear in that AI Overview, which is basically Google’s “best answer” for the search query? It’s a lot of what I just mentioned: Create high-quality, in-depth, authoritative content Supplement your content by adding photos, videos, etc. Use proper SEO guidelines, like alt text, headings, descriptions, etc. Also think about optimizing for voice search, which means writing in a conversational way that mimics natural speech Answer common questions that you get from customers, so that again you’re addressing user intent and meeting your audience where they are If you’re a local business with local customers, then optimize for your geographical location by using location-related keywords Be consistent and build out your content library, monitor your keyword rankings over time and pay attention to what content seems to be gaining traction, do more content like that; interlink your content and keep building it out If you’re writing something really in-depth, like a deep dive into diamonds or a gemstone, include references and citations by linking to high-quality sources, showing that you did your due diligence in providing relevant information As search gets more personalized and smarter thanks to AI technologies, it’s actually in your best interest to try to rank for keywords related to your business because Google is going to continue doing a better and better job of delivering your content to the people it best suits. So the more effort you put into producing and sharing high-quality content, the better-qualified users will be coming to your website to learn about your business and your products. So what are your thoughts about SEO and how it’s evolving? What else would you like to know about SEO? Let me know in a comment on YouTube or DM me on Instagram. I’d love to chat about it!

Okay, let’s get into the GOLD MINE. Welcome to another edition of THE GOLD MINE – a segment where I get personal and share insights on entrepreneurship, mindset, success, growth, and all things business. THE GOLD MINE allows me to share topics and insights close to my heart. In this week’s GOLD MINE, I want to share some thoughts I’ve had recently about marketing and its critical role in business. Many people in the industry, especially solopreneurs, tell me that a major challenge with their marketing is simply not having enough time to execute it. It’s not that they don’t totally know what they should be doing, but instead it’s more so that they don’t have enough time in the day to do it all, and then of course the marketing gets pushed aside because no, it’s not fun. I understand that; time is invaluable, and we could all use more of it, especially for rest – and things that are actually fun.

However, from my perspective as both a marketer and a business owner, here’s the tough truth: marketing is business. If you don’t prioritize marketing, if you don’t make time for it, you essentially don’t have a business. You might have stumbled into what looks like a business, and that might work out for you for a little bit, but this isn’t sustainable. Without marketing, a business cannot thrive or even survive in the long run. If hiring marketing help isn’t in the budget, then it’s on you to find a way to manage it. That’s the reality. Simply making products or opening a store—online or physical—doesn’t constitute a business. Marketing does. So, think about this seriously. Owning a business might seem glamorous and fun and like it’s a ticket to independence, but without investing time, effort, and work into building an audience and crafting and constantly working on your marketing strategy, and without the luxury of paying a specialized marketing employee, what you have isn’t a business. It’s just an expensive hobby and a dream. And hey, I’m constantly juggling this too! For Joy Joya, I’m actively out there marketing the business, but there’s always more we could be doing, and I’m fully aware of that. In Asana, we have a laundry list of items to do at varying levels of priority depending on the resources we have right now.

But I can tell you that one major priority always is figuring out how I can allot more time on business development and marketing, especially for me as the founder of the business. Pretty much every strategic business decision I make is guided around: will this give me more time or less time to devote to marketing the business and expanding the audience. Or is it just causing me stress and acting as a time suck for the time I could have been marketing the business? Like for example, if it’s taking me 5 hours/week to do some kind of non-marketing admin task that I could hire someone to do competently for a reasonable wage, and I could be spending that time working on activities that could be spent marketing and growing the business, well then I really need to evaluate how my time is best spent. That’s really how you and I have to think about time and value. I’m coming at you with some tough love today, but it needs to be said. What do you think? Let me know in an Instagram DM or YouTube comment. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Did you have any questions about today’s episode? You can always email me Laryssa at laryssa@joyjoya.com. If you loved this podcast, please share it with a friend who’d appreciate it. And don’t forget to subscribe as well as leave a review on Apple Podcasts. If you’re completely new to digital marketing, then you’ll want to purchase and read a copy of my book JEWELRY MARKETING JOY. Visit joyjoya.com/book for more information.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai