When customers search the website for a pattern, the search engine algorithm takes into account both the pattern name and the pattern description, so there is no need to use all of the relevant descriptive keywords in the pattern name. However, naming your patterns correctly and writing good descriptions are important and there are a few things to think about to make your pattern as discoverable as possible.
The first thing to think about is a unique pattern name, if you name all of your patterns ‘Baby blanket’ the website will register them as duplicates and your patterns will be harder to find, and in some cases won’t be found at all. If you are at a complete loss for a unique name for a pattern, think of names of your friends, or a street you have lived on or a place you have enjoyed visiting, these can make excellent pattern names. It’s worth searching for your chosen name first to avoid publishing a pattern with a name which has already been used several times.
Avoid using characters like /, \, ‘, ” in your pattern names as these characters are functional characters in urls and may cause problems with links to your patterns.
Naming a pattern with a plethora of descriptives, e.g.“Baby Blanket, Christening Shawl, Heirloom Blanket, Baby Blankie” might be useful on some platforms, but doesn’t serve to optimise your discoverability on LoveKnitting and LoveCrochet. As our search engine reads both the title and description of a pattern it’s much better to use a short name and add the majority of keywords in the description. You should always include what the actual pattern is; for example, instead of naming a shawl simply “Mystic rose,” you should call it “Mystic Rose Shawl.” Check out Kate Atherley’s blog post about naming patterns for some additional handy tips and tricks.