Sunday, May 31, 2009

Report on 5/28 Etsy Lab on Tagging, Titles and Descriptions

Here are the notes I took during this interesting discussion, which also included info on the new "relevancy search." I hope there are some helpful tidbits here for those who couldn't attend.
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I was one of several etteam members who attended the 5/28/09 lab. Leading the lab was Danielle, with Sean, Eric and Amy.

Titles:
  • Should be accurate and specific.
  • Title your most important words first in both title and description. What is it, then descriptive words
  • Don't use "free shipping" or "sale" as first words in title (Danielle recommends using towards end of description)
  • Danielle said to put subcategory in Title.
  • Google will pick up 160 characters of title and description.
  • Don't make title too short or too long. Danielle said 3-4 words.

Description:
  • Vintage & supply searchable by description in Advanced Search
  • Break description into short paragraphs or bullet points instead of one big block of text
  • Give dimensions of item, don't forget to include metric
  • Tell your story- makes them add the item to their cart-- show your personality, love, ideas, heart, why, how, inspiration-- connect to the buyer and show you're a real person behind the handmade item.

Tags/Relevancy:
Main category, then most important 1st tag is a subcategory. This will become even more important in time as the relevancy search is tweaked.

Suggestions for types of words to use as tags:
  • what is it
  • materials
  • where used
  • style
  • motif
  • shop name in just a few listings, not all
  • team tags do not bump down relevancy. (They are working on finding a new way to tag for teams.)

Using plural vs singular tags, and word variants: item comes up in search either way.

Use all 14 tags- good for relevancy. They will be continually adjusting the relevancy search.

The relevancy search is not the default search and
they have no plans to make it so.

Fresh search results are one goal of relevancy, so date listed is also
factor.... keep items freshly listed..add new items, renew, relist.

Materials:

List all your materials

Misc:

Order of Importance in Searches:
1. tags
2. titles
3. description
4. materials

A good way to be found is to add your link to Google base.

Etsy will have an option for moving around our shop items and it will be "launched soon." Danielle has already tested this feature and thinks it's cool!

For further information, visit these Etsy Storque articles:

Hitting the Sweet Spot with Etsys Most Relevant

Sort Search Results by Most Relevant

7 comments:

Heather Leavers said...

PHEW! thank sfor this , I didn't take notes this time around. I'm not convinced that word variants come up, although I also noticed this was said. For instance, my English spellings do not come up in searches using American spellings.

Beads, Beads and more Beads said...

I very much appreciate you taking notes, I was never good at taking notes in school. I shows at times like this. Very Helpful...but that is the kind of person you are.
Thanks Lynn, all your efforts are appreciated!
pjlacasse

Beyond the RockZ said...

Thank you so much!

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Sandie

YooLa said...

Thanks for the summery, i appreciate it A LOT !!!!

Pamela Zimmerman said...

wow, thanks lynn for posting all that for us. i am still not sure i understand it, but i will try!

Anonymous said...

Wow thanks for the report! This is definitely helpful for a newbie!