handbags: Etsy Success: What the Heck Is SEO?

1.4.10

Etsy Success: What the Heck Is SEO?

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Share Your Success!

April 1, 2010

The author of The Handmade Marketplace, Kari Chapin, describes SEO in her latest Etsy blog post: "This stands for Search Engine Optimization. People use SEO strategies to increase traffic to their websites by using keywords that make them easier to find and higher ranked in search engines."
The truth is that search engines like Google not only like to keep their search result algorithms top secret, but they like to constantly evolve the way they return search results so no one person can game the system. With this said, there are still a lot of things you can do to get found by search engines. Here are my top three tips to help optimize your Etsy shop:

1. Get down to business with your item titles. Instead of whimiscal item titles that don't describe your work (like "Lola Daydreams"), make sure to have a descriptive title that uses a few keywords shoppers might search (like "Large Modern Lola Daydreams Oil Painting").

2. Describe your shop in your Shop Title and Shop Announcement. Web search engines love this spot and look for significant keywords. Example:

Hollandsworth.etsy.com

When I head over to Google and search "handmade art & illustration," guess who comes up as the very first result?

3. Say no to fancy shop sections. Your shop sections help describe the contents of your shop to a search engine. So "Upcycled Shirts" would be a better shop section than "Kooky Collection."

Here's a shop that's doing a lot right:

UbaUpcycles.etsy.com

What do you think I find when I search "upcycled shirts" on Google? Uba Upcycles is the second result!

Etsy's Guide to SEO is your best study guide to help optimize your Etsy shop. So make sure you check it out! Have you worked through this guide, but still have a question? Let me know and I might answer it in next week's newsletter! Submit your question here.

Keep in mind that even if you are doing everything you can to optimize your shop, search engines also look at the "interestingness" factor of your Etsy items and shop. This is another secret forumla, but there is something you can do that I'll talk about in Tuesday's Etsy Success to increase your "interestingness," so stay tuned!

xo,

Danielle

P.S. We will have a live SEO workshop on Tuesday, April 6 at 5 p.m. ET, find out more details on the Virtual Labs schedule.

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