Oh for the love of SEO, Google is King

I'm a lover of sharing information, particularly information that helps fellow crafters who are trying to survive in a world dominated by corporations. This post is no different, I want to tell you the latest thing I've discovered about SEO (search engine optimization).

So, you have your product, and your lovely photos and your lovely website, but sales are minimal if even any at all. So you start to look into ways to get yourself noticed. There are many different ways including paying for advertising. But, give that we're small businesses we can rarely afford to pay £100's for advertising. So, where to start?

I'm going to let you in on the research I've done this week. Google is one of, if not THE biggest search engine going. More organic searches come from Google than any other search engine, I know I for one use it for 100% of my searches it's even built into my browser.

There are a number of different things that you can do to increase your Page Rank (what Google uses to determine where you come in the search results).

1. Create a Google+ account - this is easy and if you have gmail you're already part-way there.
2. Create a Google+ page for your website - make sure you create as a local page, as Google will give you more weighting for local searches.
3. Link your website to Google+ - medium difficulty, you need to have admin details for webmaster tools (NB. if you use create.net then you can indeed access this)
4. Add the Google+ badge to your site so people can directly add you to their circles.
5. Build meaningful circles - invite your friends, people in the same industry, all those lovely crafters you've met. However, don't just add people for the sake of it. Social engineering is all about meaningful relationships, one person that interacts with your 10 times a week is better than 10 who interact with you once a month.
6. Connect your blogger to Google+ - this helps you engage more of your readers.
7. Interact - Google+ has communities that should be relevant with your industry, join in with the discussions and look for local communities also.
8. Get your website verified by Google - you can only do this once you've built a meaningful circle, but it's meant to vastly improve your search rating

This is just a drop in the ocean for how to improve your SEO, but if you start here then you're onto a winner already. Then you can look at things like Google Keyword Tool for writing descriptions and meta information. Oh and don't forget commenting on  blogs and the many other things we're supposed to do too.

Knowing Your Rights

When buying goods it's essential to know your rights and where you stand should something go wrong. There are a number of different consumer laws available to protect you.

If buying goods from the internet then you are covered under Distance Selling Regulations, and you have the right to reject an item you change your mind about. The buyer has to refund you the cost of the item, and you pay your own return postage. This gives you the same rights as if you were to go to a shop. Some buyers will also refund you the cost of the postage paid.

If however an item is faulty, or not as described, then you are covered by the Sale of Goods Act 1979. This law entitles the buyer to be returned to the same state they were in before they purchased the item, this includes return postage. You are within your rights to request the seller make their own arrangements for collection of the item, or ask them to refund you the cost of the delivery. In this case the buyer should be returned all monies paid.

Any seller refusing you your statutory rights can be taken to court.

At Fabridashery, unless the item is custom i.e. cut ribbon/non pre-cut fabric, we will issue a full refund once the items are returned to us for "change of mind" goods. If however the items are faulty, rest assured we will issue a full refund including outgoing and return postage.

Great British Sewing Bee

Over the past few weeks I've been eagerly watching The Great British Sewing Bee. I've never watched the Great British Bake Off so I can't give my opinion on the comparison of the two. But what I did love was how they made sewing seem fun and easy. I can just imagine the people of Britain watching the television thinking "ooh I could do that!"

This has also inspired me to make a dress for an upcoming wedding. I've used SewDirect and signed up for their magazine at just £7.50 every third month. For your money you get the magazine, two free Vogue patterns and half price patterns, bargain! especially given that a pattern can cost anything up to £14ish.

What I loved most about the GBSB was the fact they had people from all walks of life. This programme wasn't just about sewing, it was about getting people back doing things of creativity, making things from scratch and enjoying the things they made.

So, what did you think of the GBSB? Did you enjoy it? Do you think the right person won? I'm not going to put who won here in case those of you reading haven't seen the programme yet. But my favourite person, I loved them from the moment we first saw them, was the one to win. Hurray!

New Arrivals - May Arts Ribbon

May Arts ribbon is an exquisite craft & dressmaking ribbon produced by American manufacturers May Arts.

We're currently awaiting stock of a fantastic range of their ribbons, from leopard print satin to gold leaf, from fun polka dots to gorgeous ginghams.

We're super excited about this range, and hope you will be too. Look out for them arriving in our shop over the weekend.

Spring Forward & A Sponsored Cycle

So apparently spring is on it's way and to be honest it can't come quick enough, I'm completely fed up of reading everyones status updates about the weather. I have windows, I normally look out of them at least once a day, so why I need to be told what I'm already seeing I have no idea. This winter seems to have been especially bad for it, the tiniest bit of snow and people are moaning. Well, I managed to buy two cats from various snow engulfed places in The Valleys during the worst of it, and I drive a little Seat Ibiza so it can't have been that bad (nb. I might have almost got stuck up a very snowy hill!!! But I did manage to get up it in the end).

I really do hope that the weather does get a little warmer by Wednesday though, as I am doing a sponsored cycle ride from Thames Valley Park in Reading, to Stonehenge in Salisbury. It's over 59 miles and the furthest I've been in the past 10 years is 15 miles to Castell Coch and back (that was on Saturday). We're raising money for Sustrans - Sustainable Transport, who over the past 30 years have been working on making safe routes for cyclists and pedestrians alike.

If you would like to sponsor me then I have a JustGiving page and if you would like to find out more about Sustrans then you can check out their website.

This weeks Craftyfolk featured shop is Lynwoodcrafts, and here's my treasury with one of their items - dedicated to spring.

'Spring Forward' by kerrirobberts

Purple flower earrings,... jinjajewellery £10.00	Botanical Flower Waterc... michelewebber £44.00	Rabbit Brooch, Flower F... LaurasJeweller... £6.00	Lilac and Pink Flower B... PatsParapherna... £10.00
Lace Flowers Hair Piece... nurichant $9.90	Heather Necklace, Real ... JustKJewellery £12.50	Embroidered Pendant - L... Lynwoodcrafts £13.00	Personalised Pendant Ar... Careish £9.00
Violet Blossoms bobby p... themagpiesdaug... $11	Pressed flowers pendant... AmazoniaAccess... $19	Sunflower Flower Coaste... TheYarnOwlsNes... £6.00	Wild Flower Card, Blank CShellCards £3.00
Purple with Green Cente... harmony5 $7	Green Flower Buttons Ha... averilpam £4.20	flower pendant necklace... jcudesigns £9.00	Foam flower embellishme... Christinescraf... £1.25

Spelt shortbread biscuits

We have an abundance of spelt flour in our house at the moment, this is thanks to my bulk buying addiction. We were making our own bread in the bread maker, but because I can't really stomach wheat we were having to use spelt flour. Unfortunately, due to the low gluten content the spelt bread wasn't coming out very well. So we've given up on that idea and chosen packet mixes instead. We now have artisan bread for about 45p a loaf, which compared to The Evil Giant Supermarkets isn't a bad price.

So what is a girl to do with over 8kg of white and 8kg of brown spelt flour. Well I decided to try my hand at making some shortbread biscuits. I should give the disclaimer that in our household my other half is the chef, I always, always burn things!

A quick search on google showed me a really simple recipe on the bbc website for shortbread biscuits. The ingredients are very simple:
125g/4oz butter
55g/2oz caster sugar
180g/6oz plain spelt flour (white or brown it doesn't matter)

I whizzed the butter and sugar in the Magimix until I couldn't hear anymore clunking noises (told you about my cooking skills). Then I threw in all the flour and set it whizzing again, after about 30 seconds I took a spatula and scraped the sides, then I whizzed for another 30 seconds. The recipes never tell you about spatulas and bits stuck to edges.

I threw down some flour on the work surface and rolled out the dough. Unfortunately it was at this point that I forgot I needed to read the recipe and I rolled it out too thin. You definitely need to make sure it's at least 1cm thick or the biscuits will be too thin.

Throw the biscuits haphazardly onto a baking tray, prick with a fork over and over about 5 forks to each biscuit. Ooh I forgot you should have cut the biscuits into fingers by now. Dust with some caster sugar and bake for around 10-15 minutes. Do not let them go brown, if they go brown then they are burnt, as I found out.

When cooked, leave to cool on a wire rack and eat with coffee or tea. Delicious!

The death of Google Reader...what next?

I normally read blog posts via email, but as you can imagine this is now starting to take up quite a lot of email real-estate, not only that but they're not very easy to search.

I've never tried Google Reader, but from what I have read it was the be all and end all of readers. It read through the RSS feeds from the blogs you wanted to follow and produced them in a lovely little format for you to read.

So with it dying in x amount of days, I'm off on a ponder of the interwebs in search of a replacement. Not only are blogs excellent sources of knowledge, but they're fantastic for those little things we like to call backlinks ;) I always forget which blogs I've posted on, so having an aggregated list in one place is just what I need.

So, for the next few days I am going to trying out Feedly. So far it looks like I can add the sites I want to read which is a plus and search for articles, which makes finding new sites simple.

I shall report back.

April New Stock

We've been open for almost a month now and had a flurry of sales, which is all very exciting. So I thought it was about time we showed you some of our latest products that we have available.

I'm always looking for new stock to purchase for lovely people like you to use with your crafts. Most of this months inspiration came from fellow crafters asking on our Facebook Page

We now offer double-faced satin ribbon in various widths starting at just 15p per metre.

Our satin ribbon is of exceptional quality and would be perfect for hair bows, ribbon flowers, trims for papercraft, and much, much more.

We stock Bertie's Bows ribbon currently, but can also stock Berisfords.

After speaking to a lady that required feathers for her granddaughters squaw costume, we raced over to our supplier in Bristol and now stock 4 inch marabou feathers.

We offer them for just 20p per feather, or you can buy packs of 10 for £1.70 or 20 for £2.30.

Available in 12 different colours.

 This month we ordered these fabulous button mixes. We keep our in kilner jars.

They are available in 50g mixed bags in the following colours: pinks, blues, nursery mix, pastel mix

We're hoping to order some more colours later in the month

Fabulous Friday - Wild Game

I recently started feeding our siamese and our bengal cat a raw meat diet. The first thing I tried them on was raw chicken wing tips. After a short persuasion both of them were chowing down, although to be honest the sound of crunching bones is quite repulsive and I don't want to feed them those too often. Or at least if I do I won't be in the room.The next thing to try them on was some Natures Instinct pre-made complete food. I purchased it from their website and it arrived the next day. There were four flavours to choose from: chicken & beef, chicken & lamb, wild rabbit, game bird. From reading reviews other people had found the game bird to be one of the best to try them on. At first they were a little hesitant, but last night they couldn't get enough of it. I imagine if they could catch pheasant and wild pigeon themselves they would be very chuffed and this is the closest they will get as house cats.

So all in all the switch has been successful. I almost wanted to try game bird burgers myself, but being a veggie household that's never going to happen.Anyway, here is my wild game inspired treasury. Please click on the photos to be taken to the relevant Etsy shop/item.

'Wild game' by kerrirobberts

A treasury inspired by the brown & red team theme, and also featuring todays Red Hot 100 item

Book Cover Bag BABUSHKA... WhimsyWooDesig... £19.00	Robin Bird Necklace Pen... Larryware £5.50	Nautical Rope Manila an... TheLandlockedS... £40.50	Cocktail hat, Mocha Flo... talulahblue £35.00
autumn photography- lan... sandraarduinip... £16.88	Fabric iPhone sleeve, i... Enchantingcraf... $8.5	Flower Hair Clips, Brow... nurichant $9.9	Couture dog collar with... Poochville $48
Wood Deer Stag Carved W... mish73 $6.5	Red Grouse greetings ca... thecurioustree... £1.50	Keepsake Box with Cherr... dottiedesignsx... £9.95	Ridgways Shelton Staffo... mish73 £3.85
Wire Wrap Ring Amber Gl... gimmethatthing £9.75	Miss Scarlet. Red Cockt... talulahblue £32.00	Crochet flower hair cli... Christinescraf... £4.00	Button Large Flower Bri... averilpam £2.00