Still Always Learning

I attended another v-lab today on Etsy. This one was about tags, titles, and descriptions. There's another lab tonight covering shop critiques that I also hope to get into. They really are about 30 times more fun and enjoyable than the forums (which are far too negative lately to draw much of my attention). I learned a few things in the lab. Most importantly, it is allowed to have the same types of items in multiple categories. So for me, I've been experimenting with putting my gift boxes in paper goods and in supplies, to see what draws more attention. I didn't know if that was allowed, but Danielle let us know that you can.

Some other things were covered that had been confusing me. Unless you are listing in supplies, you don't need a handmade tag on your items, because it's already going to fall under handmade anyway. I am still debating whether or not to include handmade in my titles though, for SEO purposes. Title space is limited as to what you can work with before being truncated, however, and it's not as important as my other keywords like "Origami Crane Ornament" for example. Though SEO is related to all of this, we didn't cover anything that wasn't directly relevant to titles and descriptions.

However! If you are having trouble understanding the lengthy 25-page SEO guide that Etsy released (found here), Sheryl Westleigh (aka noadi on Etsy) wrote a very, very basic helper guide on her blog. You can find the mini-breakdown here. I suggest that if you are having a hard time getting through the guide that you start with her cheat sheet, but then I would definitely go back to the guide (I know, it's long) because it has a ton of information in it. Sheryl's post should help you understand the very basics of what SEO is about, which will help you when going through that huge guide once you know what to look for.

Is all this shop editing time consuming? Absolutely. Is it worth it? Well, I don't have stats to prove one way or the other, but I know my GoogleAnalytics is showing searches that are a lot more relevant. Whether it's a coincidence or not, I believe my SEO work has had something to do with it. I'm nowhere near done, either. I know that I am very much looking forward to Etsy being able to automatically upload our item listings into Google Base, but as Danielle told us in the lab today, she is not sure when they will have that project finished. It will, I assume, change the entire listing process, and so I will sit here and be patient as long as I know they actually are working on it.