Detail behind section two and three

What to call things, and why it decides who finds them

Of roughly forty products, one appears in Google's rankings. This page works through why, product by product, and what each one should be called instead.

Two names for every piece

Squarespace lets you set a second, hidden name for each product — the one Google reads, separate from the one on the page. They do different jobs, and using both means you never have to stuff search words into a name a person reads.

Two different ways a name can fail

These need opposite fixes, and getting them the wrong way round makes things worse.

"Soap dish" works because it's two words naming one kind of object — specific enough that Google knows what it is, ordinary enough that people search it. Same shape as water jug, butter dish, spoon rest, bud vase, cake stand, herb stripper.

Four tests, in order

1. Is the noun a word customers use? Jug yes. Pourer no.
2. Is it specific enough to tell the object apart? Bud vase yes. Vase no.
3. Does it say what it is before what it's like? Slim water jug, not Skinny Pourer.
4. Would a stranger know what they were buying from the name alone?

Test two is the one most often missed — and it's the difference between a name that reads well and a name that gets found.

The jugs — the clearest single win

"Jug" isn't quite the right target. If they hold water — and a wide-lipped pourer surely does — the phrase people actually type is water jug.

The carafe isn't a guess — "water carafe with cup lid" is the exact phrase somebody typed into your own site search.

The rest of the catalogue

Cups and mugs

There are five separate mug listings. They should be one listing with the glaze as a choice.

Plates and platters

Bowls

After jugs, bowls are the thing people search your site for most — serving bowl, tall bowls, wool bowl, gold bowl all appear.

Vases — the biggest tidy-up

There are ten or more vase listings, several of them the same thing twice.

Kitchen and home

And while renaming — never write "sold out"

The same pass through the catalogue is the moment to change this. Around eighteen pieces are currently dead ends. The full argument is on the comparison page.

Your Plates page alone: 159 visits this year, 95% of them leaving straight away, because there is nothing to do there.

The order to do it in

1. Merge the duplicates first. Five mug listings, two Large Vases, two dipper sets, two Frilly Tops. This shrinks the job before it starts.
2. Rename the three jugs. Easiest term available and the fastest thing to measure.
3. Restock and rename the butter dish.
4. Bottles becomes bud vases, and reconsider Jar → Vase on the $350 piece.
5. Everything else, in shop order.
6. Replace every "Sold out" with the made-to-order line.
7. Add the hidden names and product codes as a second pass — only 3 of 40 pieces have a code either, so it's the natural moment.

Two things to check with you

• "Candles" — are you selling candles, or holders? Five people searched for a candle holder.
• "Tea Time in Pink" — what's in the set? If there's a teapot or strainer in it, that connects straight to the largest piece of unmet demand we found.