Relevancy Revisited

I get asked a lot to go through people's shop and see if their tags, titles and descriptions are relevant.  They also ask me to look to see how I would tag an item or what title I would use or if I like their description.  Unfortunately I do not have the time to go through the multiple requests I get every day. I would have to stop making my art and go into checking people's shops as a living. So, maybe this will clear some things up.

Relevancy is defined as having direct bearing on the subject matter at hand or as being pertinent. In the past, Etsy did not rely heavily on relevancy for search. They relied on people renewing their items to get them near the top of the search. It gave those with a little bit of money the ability to get their items in front of people without having to do all the work of being relevant.

If you did research on Etsy shops that do really well, you would have found that those shops were not only paying money to renew their items they also had great SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for their shop and items. If you look at who is successful now, many of those shops are still on top because they were already optimized for the changes.

Take one item in your shop and look at it. Write down 10 things that it is. Does it have color? Does it have a shape? Is it a certain style? Who is it for? What will they do with it? Can it be used as something else? Who created it? What process was used? Is there anything special about it? What is the material? What circumstances will it be used in? Is it easy to use? Is it one of a kind?

All of those questions are relevant to the item and in some form or fashion those answers are your relevant tags. From your relevant tags you will create the title for the object. The title should include no less than two of your tags and those tags should be in the very first part of your title. They should also be in the very first sentence of your description. Also in your description you should use as many of your tags as possible.

That is it for today. I will add more tomorrow. If you have questions or comments let me know.