Optimizing Your Listings For Relevancy

Posted by Johanna Draper on 2/09/10   |   Categorized as Etsy Tips,For Sellers,How To

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An important step to making your items more visible in the google and Etsy search engines, is to make sure your listings are properly optimized for keywords and key phrases.
Searching by relevancy is becoming more popular on Etsy, especially with all the recent changes being made. There is a lot of potential for increased exposure with these changes, plus, the proper optimization is essential for being seen on google.

Search engines pull content from 3 things in your listings. Titles, descriptions, and tags. These things work together to help make your listings more relevant to the search terms used when people are looking for products like yours.

Titles:

Your titles are important to being found in the search engines. Keywords are the key! Make sure your listings are titled with the most important keywords.
We will use my crocheted necklace for an example.

While it might have looked nicer to title it “Starry Night, Crocheted Necklace, this wouldn’t have been ideal for the search engines. Instead I used my most important keywords first, which where “Crocheted Necklace”, and then the colors, and then the flowers.
The keyword flower is pretty important, but I think most people will search by color, so I chose to put that first.

Don’t stuff your titles. This looks sloppy, and could do more harm than good. A stuffed title might look something like this:
crocheted necklace black and white flowers and leaves lariat style long necklace, starry night.

Ugh, that’s an awful title! And it’s way to long for the search engines to pick it all up anyway, so it’s a waste of keywords.

Descriptions:

Another important part of ranking high in the relevancy search is the use of keywords and key phrases in your descriptions.
I usually start out my descriptions by using a key phrase or keywords. For the crocheted necklace, I wanted people to find it when they search for “crocheted necklace” and directly after that, I use the key phrase “black and white necklace” so those who are searching by color will find it easily.
It is not necessary to repeat your keywords over and over. A couple of times is all you need. In googles case, repeating your keywords excessively can cause you to rank lower rather than higher, as google may interpret this as spam.
Instead, use a key phrase or two near the beginning, and another key phrase later on in the middle if you can, but if you can’t do it without the listing looking sloppy, than don’t do it!

Tags:

Probably the most important part of your listing is your tags.
When you tag your items, only use tags that are relevant to your product, and start out with the most important.  Start with exactly what your product is, followed by colors and other things that describe your product.

Does it work?:

Yes! Currently when I search for “crochet black and white necklace” by relevancy on Etsy, my necklace is on the first page.
When I search for “crochet black necklace” by relevancy, I’m on the 3rd page.

Also my artfire listing for this same necklace is on the first page of google when I search for “Crochet Black and White Necklace”!

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  • http://www.ubervu.com/conversations/handmadespark.com/blog/optimizing-your-listings-for-relevancy/ uberVU – social comments

    Social comments and analytics for this post…

    This post was mentioned on Twitter by findinghandmade: Learn how to optimize your Etsy listing for the relevancy search http://ow.ly/15l6A #handmadespark…

  • http://www.barbkowalik.com Barb

    Thanks for the great info!
    I’ve printed this off and I am putting together a spreadsheet so that I can get each piece consistent across all the sites where I have my work.
    Why the spreadsheet?
    I have an Artfire site, a Zazzle site, a personal website, a facebook site…
    With a spreadsheet, I can cut and paste!
    Barb

  • http://topsy.com/tb/ow.ly/15l6p Tweets that mention How to optimize your content for search engines | Handmade Spark — Topsy.com

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by timothyadam, handmadeology, 2kutekreations, Handmade News, Sudie and others. Sudie said: RT @handmadeology: Learn how to optimize your Etsy listing for the relevancy search http://ow.ly/15l6B #handmadespark [...]

  • http://www.Salts.Etsy.com Jennifer

    Great article Johanna. I will definitely be paying more attention to this in the future. Barb! You can get fb to upload your updates automatically from etsy so you don’t have to cut and paste! Mine also loads to my twitter. Check out my facebook group to see what it looks like.

    http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=882770079#!/pages/Salts-Organic-Clothing-and-Studio-Boutique/7933958494?ref=ts

  • http://thisartistsjourney.blogspot.com Gayle

    Is it important to put handmade in the tag for Etsy? I thought that was a given. I noticed the above listing uses that as a tag. Also would you want to include that in your title and description?

    Great article by the way. I’m going back to tweek some of my listings.

  • Janna

    Great information! Thanks!

  • Tim Adam

    @Gayle….. It is important to add handmade as a tag. There many items on Etsy that are not handmade.

  • http://www.beadedjewelrybysusan.etsy.com Susan Campanini

    Thanks for the great summary. I have been using most of this in my titles, descriptions, and tags, but it’s good to see it all confirmed! I love writing descriptions, BTW … it’s such fun!

  • http://www.mysticpieces.etsy.com Shelly

    Thank you for the clear and concise information!

  • http://www.NicoleAnnes.com NicoleAnne’s

    Great information. Thanks for sharing it.

  • http://www.etsy.com/shop/HellsSewingCircle Nicole

    wow, I had no idea that priority was a main issue when writing titles. I thought that as long as the words were there, things would be great… lol! This is so helpful, it reaffirmed what I knew and opened my eyes as to how I can keep improving my listings.
    thanks!

  • http://www.eccentricity.etsy.com Sonnee McCabe

    Thanks for the great tips. Your examples were clear and concise.

  • http://www.PaperOnParade.etsy.com Teresa Riley

    Thanks for sharing such an important article! Very much appreciated!

  • http://www.orsinimedici1951.etsy.com Elsie Collins

    A question for Tim: Do you still recommend using the shop name and URL name (if they are different) in the 14 tags?

  • Tess

    Thanks for explaining it so clearly.
    I think I understand it now!

  • http://www.kristenandrewsonline.blogspot.com Kristen

    great tips, makes perfect sense.

  • http://www.etsy.com/shop/joyoustreasures Johanna Draper

    Tim, thanks for answering Gayle’s question. I include Handmade in my tags if I possibly can!

    Elsie Collins, I am not real sure on this one, but I have heard that it’s a good thing to include your shop name in just one or 2 of your listings just in case someone who is not familiar with the Etsy system is searching for you.
    Otherwise, you shouldn’t have to include it in all of your listings.

  • http://www.quirkycreatures.com Irit

    Thank you so much for this, i think I have to go work on my titles .

  • http://www.sundayafternoonhousewife.wordpress.com Martha Latta

    Thanks so much for all the tips. This has to be one major thing that separates those who make hundreds of sales from those who don’t- good tagging and titles. I learned a lot I didn’t know from this- especially the handmade tag, but also about including what the item actually is in the title. I thought that is what tags were for, so it’s good to know I need to do it in both places. Thanks for all your info!

  • Tim Adam

    @Elsie I would still add your shop name to a few listings…

  • http://wedsmack.favorideas.com/wedsy/ Blake

    Another thing about the handmade tag — there are a lot of applications outside of etsy that pull etsy listings. Right now etsy doesn’t have a way to let you “search by keyword WITHIN handmade listings,” so you have to look for it in the tags. So, people that specify handmade have a good chance of appearing higher in applications that care about that than those who don’t. I hope that made a little sense. :)

  • http://www.storybeader.com storybeader

    thanks everybody for the tips!

  • http://splendidlittlestars.blogspot.com Splendid Little Stars

    Does the order of the tags matter? Johanna says, “start out with the most important.” When writing the title, she put “black and white” before “flowers.” In the tags, she put flowers first.

    I sell silk scarves, hand dyed. I found that it makes a difference whether I use the word “scarf” or “scarves.” Perhaps I should use both words. I would suggest playing around with your words and then searching your items to see what works best.

    I see, Johanna, that you are using the word “original” in your tags. Apparently, that is different from “handmade.”

    Thank you for this very helpful article!

  • http://www.jenniebgoode.etsy.com Jennie B. Goode

    I just found this site today and have already learned a lot just from this write up. Thank you so much for sharing your insights!

  • Tim Adam

    @ Splendid Little Stars The order of your tags do matter. You want your first tag to be the Etsy category that your item fits best in. I would also use both “scarf” and “scarves” you never know what shoppers are going to type in. Also the word “original” “handmade” are very different, I would use them both if fitting.

  • http://juliemagerssoulen.blogspot.com Julie Magers Soulen

    Great tips! Thanks for the tutorial.

    Cheers!
    Julie
    Julie Magers Soulen Photography
    Blog of Note

  • http://www.etsy.com/shop/joyoustreasures Johanna Draper

    Splendid Little Stars, I like to use the tag “original” sometimes because all of my designs are created by me, so it seems fitting to use it since original means “not dependent on other peoples ideas, inventive and unusual”.

  • http://whitebirchdesigns.etsy.com Debbie

    Tim, it’s great that you show examples. Many people are visuals so specific examples go a long way. Also, when people give instructions on how to do this or do that, alot of interpretation can come from it. You speak in “crafter” detailed language which is very helpful. Thanks!

  • Marjorie Dawson

    It’s quite frustrating isn’t it? You go online to start a shop, make it your own, with your style, your own corner of the online world, and then you have to go back and change every single thing in the hope you might just get someone to look at your stuff a bit more because Etsy tries to ‘improve’ things.

    It’s frustrating but I expect I will have to go back and change everything, again. Can I hope they won’t have any more bright ideas as I’m about to upload a dozen new items :-))

  • http://www.tools4etsy.com Tools4Etsy

    Great article… Doesn’t get to technical with the HTML coding techniques that Etsy use to make SEO relevancy.

    For the Tag Words, we’ve made a special tool that looks at the Relevancy or Popularity of tags in a comparative manor called TagWars – http://www.tools4etsy.com/tagwars

    TagWars highlights other tag words that others are using and gives you an outside-the-box point of view of tags that you may not have considered. One thing that we’ve noticed is that some Etsy sellers are using mixed spelling and common spelling errors in their tags … Like Color & Colour…

  • http://www.designdream.etsy.com DesignDream

    Thank you for this article

  • http://mermaidspalette.etsy.com sheryl

    Thank you so much for the awesome tips on titles, tags, and especially descriptions! I have some editing to do. Anything to help with views! Thanks!

  • http://lizetfrijters.etsy.com Lizet Frijters

    Thanks so much for all this good information. I am going to my etsy shop now and will make some changes.
    About the color and colour issue. I think I might be one of them who uses them both. I do not really know which one to use. For Australians it is colour and for Americans color. Will it make a difference for the search engines if I use the Australian version?

  • http://www.seaphemera.com Gail Cormier

    Thanks for this great article – it really sums up SEO nicely! I never thought to add either handmade or my shop name to my tags.

  • http://libertyimages.etsy.com Jen

    Thanks for this article, am beginning to slog through an understanding of SEO. Your help is appreciated!

  • http://www.artistastyle.etsy.com Rebecca

    Lizet Frijters.

    Thats a great point about the difference in spelling colour, as an aussie, i wonder too whether i need to use both. I think i will change it to the American version, simply because it’s a much larger market. If there’s room left over to stick in the Australian spelling, by all means I’ll be hedging my bets and doing so!
    This has been a very useful article to me,thanks to all involved.

  • http://mercurios.etsy.com MerCurios

    Thanks for sharing these tips. It would appear that I have some fixing to do, tightening up my titles and rearranging my tags. The proof is in the pudding and I have found that new listings from my shop that take SEO into consideration have more than double the views in the same time-frame. …backtracking is just so time consuming, lol.

  • http://www.newmexicomtngirl.com CheyAnne

    this is all great info. Don’t forget your own name once in a while. I wrote two blog posts about googling yourself.
    http://newmexicomtngirl.com/2009/05/26/have-you-tagged-yourself/
    and
    http://newmexicomtngirl.com/2009/02/23/i-take-up-92-pages-on-googlecom/

    and your user names if you use them in other places.

    I also use blu and blue
    along with watercolor and watercolour as well

    Thanks for the info and insight
    Peace n Abundance
    CheyAnne @
    http://www.redbubble.com/people/nmexicomtngirl
    http://www.cheyannesexton.etsy.com

  • http://www.kimscraftyapple.com Kim (KimsCraftyApple)

    Thanks for doing this! Very informative and helpful!

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