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.
