SEO and Your Etsy Shop Part 3

 Jim Arnold
Jim Arnolds Chess Sets







So if you've been following along and doing your homework, you should now have a good list of quality keywords, and an idea of where your etsy listings now rank within certain keyword categories.  If you haven't, then its detention after class!!!

Today we're going to dissect the etsy listing form.   We'll show exactly where to put these keywords in order to give your listings the highest  page rankings we can get, thus the most exposure your product can get via the 'relevancy' system.

Here's the etsy listing form, notice that in virtually every section, keywords play an important part.  Match up some of your listings and see how well they conform to what the searchbots are looking for, you may be doing a good job at optimizing already.  Is your listing showing keywords in the appropriate places?

 Lets break this down line by line.

"Categories"

The first area to enter keywords we want to consider is on the second line in the "categories" section.  While its true you have to choose from the drop down menu for these three boxes (ie. categories, what is it, and what is it, the three headings you fill in at the top of the form) the drop down menus are loaded with highly rated keywords, match them to your product as best you can here.

"Photos"

At first look you'd think there's nothing keyword-wise here at all, but it can be loaded with them.  Etsy 'titles' your photos individually with your exact listing title.  That means you have 5 more opportunities (if you use all 5 pic options) to get your 'title' read by the searchbots.  This points up the importance of having an optimized title, and the importance of using all 5 photos.

"Item Title"

This is the number one most important area to pay attention to in creating a listing (maybe even as important as your product photo).  Searchbots weight your titles the heaviest and titles can help people find your product.  Wording is crucial.

Item titles have to be descriptive.  The title has to say what it is that you're selling, and the title has to be written so it looks interesting to both searchbots and humans (all much easier then it sounds).   In item titles, searchbots will look at the first 30 characters of your title, spaces do not count towards that total, but punctuation marks do.   The goal is to use at least one good keyword along with what your product is and get it done in 30 characters and make it sound sensible to a human being....we'll come back to this in a second.


"Item Descriptions" 


Item descriptions are the second most important place for keywords for searchbot digestion and they go hand in hand with the item title of course.  In item descriptions, however, its the first 60 characters that the searchbots will read (about 40% of the people I researched this stuff with say its the first 120 characters) so hedge your bet and write the second '60' characters with SEO in mind too!  Also, there is a growing consensus that the last sentence of the item description is another place searchbots will look, so I'm just going to hedge my bet and load up the first 60 characters of my last sentence too.  Because you have more space to write in descriptions, you can include more quality keywords and key phrases in item descriptions, put as many in there as you can while getting your point across (having it read like it makes sense to a human).


You might be a bit lost at this point, but have no fear, one of my most favorite things about all of etsy is this little tiny google tool right under the item description box, I circled it on the listing form...get familiar with this tool and make it your friend!   Its hard to write for both humans and robots, but you can see how you are doing instantly with this tool.  While you are typing in your item title and your item description in the appropriate boxes look at the google tool, its typing too!   What appears in the google tool box is exactly how your ad will appear on google.  Edit and rearrange your item title and item description by how it appears in the google tool.   Again, this takes some practice because you're squeezing these keywords and keyphrases along with your product into these first 30 and 60 spaces.  Its essential that you place these keywords and key phrases within the framework that searchbots want to see them.  You have as much space as you want in the body of the item description to say everything about your product you want...sprinkle those keywords and phrases off your list into and around the text body of your item description too.  Two excellent keywords to incorporate into your titles and descriptions (one or the other or both if you can)  are "HANDMADE" and "ETSY", but as you've found out if you made up your list, there may be lots of other highly ranked keywords that will work good for your titles too.  Most likely you have more then one item in your shop so you have ample opportunity to associate all these key phrases and keywords with your product over and over.

"Shop Section"

You don't see a lot of shops using this, but its also a great opportunity to get in some highly rated keywords in titles.    If you have a jewelry shop and you sell earrings and necklaces and brooches, rather then just listing them altogether in your shop you make different headings, different 'sections' so all of the earrings are in one section, all the necks in another, etc.  Benefits are two-fold, one, people can find what they are looking for faster if you have shop sections (especially if you have hundreds of items in your shop), and two, each shop section title is just that, a title (first 30 characters in titles, remember?), its a perfect opportunity to use top rated keywords in places where the searchbots will see them.   Figure out how to 'section' your shop, I thought I was set in stone, I sell chess sets, but by grouping 'styles' of sets, I was able to come up with several sections for my shop.

"Recipient", "Occasion", and "Style"

All three areas are opportunities to punch in keywords that are related to your products.

"Tags"

Here's the one place everybody already knows to put keywords...you should be able to copy them straight off your list onto the form.  Anytime you see "Tags", at etsy, fb, pinterest, anywhere on line  USE THEM...they are very important, so many times we just skip right over them and they are the cornerstone of the relevancy system...its all about the keywords!

"Materials"

Especially good for you jewelers!...13 more opportunities to associate highly rated keywords to your product...use them.

As you can see, almost every section on the form is set up to use keywords.   When you have 50-60 items or 100's of items in your shop you have the opportunity to pack a powerful punch  and make your listings move upwards (a lot) when all your listings are working together...that's they key, to get all your marketing efforts working together.

Practice using that google tool, keep working on that keyword list.  

Next time we'll tie your optimized listings together with your optimized shop.  Your etsy shop is a little different, but we'll show you how to specifically optimize your shop so your listings and your shop work hand in hand, and I'll explain what 'optimizing' has done to my shop and A'esha's shop.   Karen Ruffles will be back with some discussions on the issue of copyrights, and then we'll take our optimized listings and optimized store and we'll  shop them all over the web, and show you how to drive traffic on your own to your site, but the foundation has to be there, and optimizing will get you that solid foundation.

As always, if you have any questions, specific or general, please let us know.

Jim