Getting in Touch with Your Etsy Shop: DAY EIGHT: Tagging Your Items

Welcome to Day Eight in the Getting in Touch with Your Etsy Shop series. If you have missed any of the previous posts you can catch up here.

I thought that tagging deserved its own post. While it seems easy....Etsy gives you 13 tags to use to describe your item...I find it a bit more complicated than that. I can never seem to find enough tags and I'm certainly always afraid that I am breaking the tagging rules. However, it is the way for people to FIND your items so it is certainly something I want to focus more on.

If you go to your Etsy shop stats and scroll down you will find a list of keywords that people have used in search and found your shop. I have begun to review these frequently and to find out if I have these keywords in all of my listings. Here's my example for you: When I create a listing for a charm necklace in Etsy there is an option to choose Jewelry>Necklace>Charm for a category. Since I had already chosen this option when I created the listing I didn't think I needed to use it again in my tags. However, unless a potential customer uses the categories and clicks on Jewelery then Necklace then Charm my item my not show up. I think that alot of people use the search function and actually type in what they are looking for so I've begun to add "charm necklace" as a tag and if my shop stat keywords are any indication...its a good thing I did! You can also start to type in the search bar and it will provide you with a drop down menu of suggested searches. If you are stuck these can sometimes be a good idea booster, plus they are recent searches by actual customers so it gives you an insight into HOW THE BUYER searches for items.

Here are some other questions to ask that can give you some tag ideas:

• what is it?
• what colour is it? Not just "blue" is it denim blue? navy blue? royal blue?
• is there a special technique that you used in it?
• types of materials
• who will be using it-not just man or woman...teacher, artist, crafter, sewer, painter, bride, bridesmaid
• does it fit with a particular time era?
• themes/motifs
• patterns
• is there a size?
• where will the item be used? garden, kitchen, bathroom, etc
• is there a synonym? babies-infants, handbag-purse
• consider adding your shop name to a couple of listings
• consider adding your country or location to a couple of listings

***Todays assignment:  Take some time to review 5 shop listings. Are there any tags that you can be adding? Need some help? Feel free to post a comment below or on my Facebook Page and lets see if we can help each other out!***