SEO For Etsy And Google Part 1: Tags and Keywords

It does not matter if you are talking about a webpage from your website or a product page on Etsy. You need to be thinking about SEO or Search Engine Optimization.  Tags and Keywords are one of the most important starts to a successfully optimized page. Choosing the right words to optimize for may mean the difference of coming up on page one of the search or page 50. You need to come up in the first 10 pages of any search to be found!

When talking about Tags and Keywords you need to understand some basic ideas. First off Tags and Keywords do not need to be single words. For proper SEO you need Tag phrases and Keyword phrases. In fact single words can and will actually hurt your chances of being found.

Take this example: Blue, Crochet, Hat are all words that you want to be found for. However they are all generic terms. But if you search for just Blue or just Crochet or just Hat you are very unlikely to be found in any search engine!

Now if you use the phrase Blue Crochet Hat you stand a very good chance of being found. Think of it in the sense of you using a search engine. If you were looking for a hat that was crocheted and blue what would you type to find it? You would not expect to find it if you just typed in the word blue would you? Try to think like your customer. What would they type to find you?

On Etsy you have 13 slots to fill with tags/keywords phrases. Use them all wisely. Use phrases that describe you product. Make sure the words accurately describe your items.

Tomorrow I will talk more about tags and keyword phrases and the different ways that Etsy and Google look at them. In the meantime let me know if you have any questions.

Working Hard On Etsy SEO

I have been very busy lately. I started a new wholesale campaign. I have been reworking two Etsy shops. I just have not been able to find time to blog lately. For that I am sorry and I will try to do better.

One of the things I have been working on lately is SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Did you know that Etsy has its own search engine? It is very different from Google or Bing or Yahoo. If you want to get to the top of the search on Etsy and one of the big search engines you have to optimize for all of them at the same time!

Next week, if I have time, I will be revisiting how to optimize your Etsy shop to be found on Etsy and Google and Bing and Yahoo and other search engines. SEO is important. It is how you are found and how you make money.

Anyhow, until then, have a great weekend and leave me a comment if you have any questions or comments about SEO.

Etsy About Page

Etsy added a way to expand what you can show your customers about yourself. I stumbled across it purely by accident. It is in the Info &Appearance section. You can add a photo of yourself, multiple product photos, more info on you and your company and EXTERNAL links!

The portrait photo is one you can have of yourself. This will allow you to keep your avatar photo whatever you wish and still have a photo of yourself. This is pretty nice because I have found I get more people looking at my profile through clicking on my avatar when it is a product photo rather than one of me. If you have multiple employees you can also set up profiles for each of them.  Of course you have to set up yourself as the owner before you can do that.


After you set up a short bio, much like your profile bio, you can set a full story and add pictures. You are able to upload 5 pics with captions. These do not have to be current products. They can be just about anything. You can have pics of your work area, past projects, etc. On the about section they are a slideshow.

At the end of the info you are allowed to add 3 external links. They are for Facebook, Twitter, your website or blog. These links are GREAT for SEO because of the weight an Etsy link carries. This is the first time Etsy has ever allowed external links. The links open in a new tab and for you SEO nerds, there is not a "no follow" attached to the link so it will help your SEO on your pages that you link to.

Anyway, I suggest you go and fill out the info as it is a great way to get your customer more familiar with you. I have been very busy the last couple of weeks but things are slowing down again and I should be able to blog. If you need some one on one consulting please send me an email for details on what I do. I do not advertise my consulting because I do not have time to take on many clients at any given time. But if you need the help I can discuss what I can do.

As always, if you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email to MarketMyShop@gmail.com

Etsy: Less Views Can Mean More Sales!

I have discussed Bounce Rate before but I wanted to revisit it after talking about Etsy's search algorithm. Sometimes when you tighten up your relevancy you actually experience a drop in views, sometimes it is a significant drop in views. Don't panic!

A drop in views means very little unless you have a drop in sales accompanying it. If so, you might need to revisit relevancy in general. If your drop in views does not seem to change your sales rate then you have actually done well. You have dropped your bounce rate. Meaning, those who just click on a listing and leave within seconds because it isn't what they are looking for. Those people rarely buy anyhow. Sure, someone might buy because they randomly landed on one of your products, but the customer you actually want is one that sought out your product because that is what they were looking for.

The better your relevancy the better chance you have at connecting with a customer. So, before you start to panic after making a change, look at the big picture. Give it a little bit of time. If your sales are not dropping you are probably doing okay. You might want to revisit some of my articles on Bounce Rate by clicking on the tag cloud to the right.

Hope this helps a little. Let me know if you have any questions by leaving them in the comments or sending me an email to MarketMyShop@gmail.com

Google and Etsy Revisited Part 1

Some of you have asked me to revisit making your shop listings more friendly for Google and other search engines. Where Google is concerned it is all about the content and by content I mean relevant content. Google is looking for experts.

Google looks at the title of the page to see what the topic is about. So, a clear and concise title is a must. I see some people still trying to cram what I would call a short story into the title. Google looks at that as if someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. You really think you can put one over on Google?

The title should be short and descriptive like a headline. Use your most important key words here. Though Etsy places a lot of emphasis on the first three words, Google uses the entire title to figure out what the page is about. The title does not have to be a complete sentence but it does have to make sense. Just listing keywords tends to confuse people.

"Red Blue Stripes Sequins Vintage Dress Summertime Sundress" is an example of a poor title. It is a jumble of keywords but does not accurately describe the dress. Of course you need to figure out what people will be searching for and optimize for those keywords.

"Vintage Summertime Sundress - Red and Blue Stripes with Sequins" is better organized and much easier to read. Google will ignore the extra spaces and dash. Using your three main keywords up front and eliminating the repetitive "dress" helps to make a more clear and concise title that works for both Etsy and Google.

Tomorrow I will delve back into relevant keywords and tags. Please let me know if you have any questions by email at MarketMyShop@gmail.com or by leaving a comment here.

If you find this blog helpful please recommend it to your friends!

Etsy Teams Are Great

Most of my sales come from outside of Etsy. Most of my sales, but not all. Approximately 30% of my sales come from direct interaction inside of Etsy. Some of that is from being on the front page treasury and some of it is from being featured in Etsy Finds. Most of it is interaction with Etsy Teams.

Teams are a great place to find like minded people, people living close to you and people who know more about Etsy than you do. I am currently a member of 25 Etsy Teams. Keeping up with them all can be a daunting task. But taking 30 to 45 minutes each morning to skim through them with my coffee can be quite beneficial.

I look for people asking questions that I know the answer to to help them out and I look for answers to my questions. Etsy Success is one of my favorite teams. I have helped many a new Etsian there as well as learned valuable information for my self. Here are a few more teams that are very helpful: Beginner SEO, Helpful Relevancy Team, and Seemingly Undiscovered.

Go join a team or 25 today and interact! Most teams have a thread to show your latest work or your newest treasury. Be sure to read about the team to see what is allowed and what isn't. There are tons of teams for your art as well. Just do a search for your medium and see what pops up.

Free Etsy Shop Link Day!

And we're back, I think.... There were some interesting technical problems over the last few weeks and I am pretty confidant that those are now cleared up. There was some lost data and some other glitches that just reminds me that I need to back EVERYTHING up. Lesson learned.

To get back into the swing of things I would like to invite all of you to reply with your Etsy or Artfire or any other shop link. (That is of course within reason and not anything in the R-Rated area) I will do this from time to time to make sure that all of the new followers have a chance to see what you are doing with your shop.

In further news, I am in the process of writing some mini-books on Relevancy, Advertising, SEO and more for your Etsy Shops. Each of these mini-books will be 5 to 7 pages long and will be broken into beginner, intermediate and expert level. I plan to open an Etsy shop and sell these books as well as selling them directly from my website. What would you price them at?

Well that is it for today. I will be back tomorrow with something new and completely different for you to ponder. In the meantime, feel free to send me an email at MarketMyShop@gmail.com with questions or comments. And please leave your link below in the comments section.

Linking To Your Etsy Shop

Yesterday we talked about some ways to get links back to your Etsy shop to help increase your Google Pagerank. What I didn't mention is that your Pagerank is not really all that important and that a few good quality links mean more than hundreds or thousands of poor links.

What I mean by that is if you have a link from sites that bring you customers it is better than having links from sites that bring you nothing. There are link farms that will put up a link to anything. They don't have any categories or subjects, just links to your site. These things can actually hurt your Pagerank and can even potentially get your site blocked from Google all together just because of your association with them.

If you see ads for "Get 1000 Links Now" or "1000's Of Social Network Links For Only $19.95" stay away from them. These do NOT help your SEO. If you want more traffic faster than building it organically then buy some adspace on a website that relates to your medium of art. Better yet, buy some Google Ads or Facebook Ads and target your market.

The very best ways to get links to your site is to ask for them, talk about your shop on Facebook and Twitter, and just plain old word of mouth. Comment on blogs. Write an article about your shop and submit it to online news media.

That is it for today. Check back next week for more tips for marketing your shop.

Add Links To Your Shop

I woke up to an email from a frustrated shop owner that wants to know how to get relative links to her shop without paying tons of money or being spammy. Here is a copy of the e-mail:

"I was told by someone on etsy that I need to have my links placed all over the internet for SEO purposes and they have to be relevant to the category I’m selling in (jewelry). Other than blogs and such they suggested directories and sites where you add your url in with thousands of others. I tried this today and about walked away in tears because each site (including the .org ones) wanted a boat load of money to list my url. My question for you is: can you give me any ideas n where to find free (and relevant, not spammy) places to add my url to? I am getting so frustrated with seo. I’m so thankful to have your help, but it just gets so overwhelming. It is no wonder people pay webmasters large quantities of money to manage websites for them."  -A Frustrated Shop Owner


Well, Frustrated Shop Owner, yes, incoming URLs to your shop help with pagerank and SEO. "Pagerank" is a term that means "the importance of your page." Pagerank is on a scale from 0 - 10, with 10 being the very highest. Google has a Pagerank of 10. Most peoples page has a rank of 0. The higher the number the more important the page is. Aim for a 3 or better, but don't expect much very fast.

Commenting on Blogs is a quick and easy way to get links to your shop but it only goes so far. You should try and find relevant blogs to comment on because those links carry more weight. Your own blog will carry more weight because you know your product best. Posting in relevant forums with a link to your shop in the signature provides relevant links. Asking relevant sites to place a link to your shop is also good.

As far as directories go, there is one that is above all others: The Open Directory Project or DMOZ.ORG is the largest human-edited directory on the Internet. That means that every submission is reviewed for relevancy before going live. It does take a few months to be listed so get on it. Squidoo is a site where you can create Wiki like articles about subjects you know. These links are relevant because you write the story. Speaking of you can even start a Wikipedia entry about your company, too!

There are a lot of places that you can create relevant links to your shop. I point a lot of links over to my main company website and link back over to my shop page. It is easier to get links to your website because you can reciprocate. Believe it or not but ArtFire is a great way to build links to your Etsy shop or website. Every item page has links to my Etsy shop and my website.

Tomorrow I will add some more free ways to get links to your shop. I hope this helps. Be sure to keep the questions coming, either as comments or through MarketMyShop@gmail.com

Relevancy SEO And Planning Ahead

It is the last day of November and the Christmas buying season is in full swing. If you are not yet optimized for Christmas you are well behind. It isn't impossible to get caught up with Etsy and ArtFire, but as far as Google is concerned, better luck next year. If you want to be optimized for Google, you should have started months ago.

You may want to get a jump on Valentines Day now. Sounds crazy, right? Well, with a little planning, you can have everything in place by February 1st. Google, the all powerful, all knowing search engine runs a little behind. Sure it is okay to rely on just Etsy and ArtFire but if you really want to increase your views and sales you have to feed Google what it wants.

Using relevant coherent titles and keyword rich descriptions is the key to being found on Google and other search engines. It may be close to impossible to be optimized for a broad keyword like "jewelry" but you may be able to get to the top of the search with "pop can tab jewelry" or "natural pine cone jewelry." Your niche is your saving grace. The more specific your medium the better you'll do.

I will be talking more about SEO this week. I will provide real world examples on how to be found in Google. In the meantime, please feel free to ask questions and make comments. Want to send me a note? MarketMyShop@gmail.com

SEO The Ongoing Battle

One thing about Search Engine Optimization(SEO) is that it is an ever changing ongoing battle. What works one month may not work the next month. As more and more people optimize their titles and tags on Etsy the more you will have to modify yours to stay on top. I wish there was a solid onetime fix to keep you in the top of the search but there is not.

One way you can stay on top is marketing for the different holidays and trends. If you add holiday related tags and changes to your titles you may just get that extra boost that translates into sales. For example, right now the current trends on Etsy have moved away from Summer and Back To School and have headed over to Fall, Autumn and Halloween.

Keeping an eye on what is hot will keep your shop fresh and hot. Every morning I look at the current trending tags in the Treasury section. This give me an idea of what is trending daily and over the long run. Also, it is a good idea to subscribe to as many of the Etsy newsletters as you can. They all have valuable trending information in them.

Got questions? Comments? I want to hear them all.

You asked for it and here it is. A blog dedicated to helping you market your online shop through making the technical aspects easy to understand and even easier to implement. Through understanding how SEO works, you can put your online shop on top.

Learning how the different online marketplaces treat Titles, Descriptions and Tags can help you to optimize your shop for maximum exposure. Views equal sales and the more views the more sales. Learning how to increase your views and decrease your bounce rate will dramatically improve your shop's performance.

Whether you crochet baby hats or sell vintage clothing, the basic principles are all the same. If you run an online retail shop it is important for your products to be put in front of the people who want to buy them. With thousands of items being sold online every day, you want to make sure that your items are being seen.

In addition to being seen, you want to make sure that your photos tell the story of what you're selling. Photography sells your item. The better you can capture your item in a photo the better chance of someone buying it. I will have easy to follow, inexpensive tips and tricks to making your photographs help you sell your items.

What I am offering you is to help marketing your online shop. I want to help you get more sales through optimizing your shop to the fullest potential. I am doing this for free. All I ask in return is that you help spread the word about what I am doing and maybe link over to one of my retail shops on your blog.

I want you to feel free to ask questions about the things that you do not understand. The only stupid question is the one that goes unasked. Feel free to comment with your questions and suggestions. If you have an idea for an article, by all means share it with me. If you have written an article that you think would be beneficial I will be happy to add it here. My email address is marketmyshop@gmail.com