Steady as She Goes
Instagram hop
We had the first reveal in the Spring Instagram hop I’m participating in. There were a few hick ups, but overall it went really well. I scheduled my post, so for my part it went off without a hitch. It was a lot of fun to hop around and see what everybody else had made. The hashtag is #sharingspringcards if you want to check it out.
The next reveal is on Sunday. The theme is “Single layer spring.” It was a bit of a challenge for me because I like my layers. But in the end I came up with something I’m happy about. I need to schedule the post for this Sunday and also schedule the listing on Etsy. Last Sunday I was late with creating the listing on Etsy. If I get tje timing right, I’m hoping that my reveal will drive traffic to my Etsy store.
I’ve created the first four cards, so far. Because I have travel coming up in early May, I’d like to be done with all cards before then. That would be a load off my mind. Eight cards are left. That should be doable.
EtsyEO
Marmalead screenshot
I bought a keyword list from Kara Buntin last week. So I’m slowly working through it and updating the titles and tags of my Etsy listings. Hopefully that will improve the visibility of my cards. Unfortunately there’s no way of determining if it works, except through lagging indicators like views, clicks and orders.
Research
A keyword list is just that - a list of search terms that visitors may use. For each of the terms, I have to check Marmalead for how many people searched on it last month and how many of them clicked through to a listing. In the screenshot Searches is number of searches for that keyword. Engagement is number of clicks on listings on the result page. Etsy’s API does not tell us if the user actually buys anything, so we have to go by clicks.
The average search ends with the user clicking on roughly two listings. So ideally Searches=2 * Engagement. In the example I searched for “funny birthday card.” The result is that Searches~3 * Engagement, so that’s a good keyword. That tells me two things:
If I have any cards that can be described as funny birthday cards, I should definitely consider using this term in the title and/or tags.
I should consider making more birthday cards that can be described as funny.
Titles and tags
As far as titles and tags go, they each have their own limitations. The title can be up to 140 characters long. Ideally it should be phrased like one or more sentences. The Etsy algorithm penalizes keyword stuffing. Word order matters and words at the beginning of the title are weighted higher. Case doesn’t matter, though.
Etsy’s algorithm doesn’t think that “funny birthday card” and “funny birthday cards” is the same keyword. So you’ll often end up with some repetition in your titles. The current recommendation is to use all 140 characters, even though users only see the first 50 or so in search results.
For each listing you get 13 tags of max 20 characters each. “Funny birthday card” just fits into a tag. After a while you can look at a phrase and tell if it’s more or less than 20 characters. You should use all 13 tags. Tags are not visible to users. But there’s a Chrome extension you can install that shows them. Very useful if you want to spy on the competition.
Given all these limitations Etsy SEO or EtsEO often feels like reading tea leaves.