Tips and Tricks to Tags of Etsy

Update: QuirkyDolls so kindly added a great link in the comments, but I wanted this front and center. The information is invaluable! Click HERE to read the article on tags.

A big thanks to those who put on the Virtual Labs in the classrooms on Etsy. I always come away with such good information, that really helps my shop improve. Now I want to share my notes with all of you!

A week ago in the Tags Critique I gained a few tips and tricks to help your buyer really find you and want what you are selling. So crucial. Your tags might be pulling traffic, but if it all fluff traffic you aren't going to make a sale. You need those truly interested in what you have to sell to make the sale.

*hops off soap box*

Okay now to the tips:

• -Having trouble finding enough to fill all 14 slots??? Never fear, you probably already have a passe in your description. Take a peek and see what you can't borrow from there as a new word. Say you have a listing with forest hills and cute bunnies. Try to sum them up into another word, like woodland. Ta-da, another tag.
• -Here are a fews tags that might not get enough use: "sale" if you are having one, handcrafted, your location, "free shipping" when applicable, "world wide", "international", and your user name in a few of your shops listings.
• -Always use your main color as a tag. This is how most treasury hunters find their items! Plus in another workshop where I played 'search guinea pig', the more specific, e.i. color I could get with my adjectives the better my results were. So get those color tags in there!
• -and last but not least, try to go all the way to a sub-sub category in your tags. The farther you get within a category the better your chances are to be pulled by the relevance search engine.

Now, for the cream...the tricks:

• The best way to test out your new tags are to search like a buyer. Imagine you knew nothing about your listing, but wanted to find it. What is the basic search word(s) would you use? See what page your item ends up on.
• Then add the color you want, and a specific characterisitc of your item, that makes your item stand out...did you come up?
• Finally, think about where you would use the item, and who would be using it. This will help you brainstorm your target market.

After reading this I hope you feel ready to tackle those tags and see if you can't improve their usefulness.

If you are doing great already, feel free to add your trick and tips in the comments!