Former_Member
Not applicable

Does anyone want to learn to view your page source?

It's not really necessary to learn to do this on Etsy since they give us that little preview when we add or edit a listing but those previews aren't always accurate because they truncate them to add our shop names or "on Etsy" to things. The way to know exactly what google is seeing is to view your page source. It's one of those things that looks very confusing when you first do it but then you realize that the only parts that you care about are close to the top and you don't need to understand anything else there. If you have your own stand-alone shop or plan to have one then you'll need to be able to check it.

I don't want to confuse anyone or make you think that you have to do this to be good at SEO here because you don't but if any of you want to know how, just say so. I hate guessing so I always go right to the source to make sure.
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Former_Member
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Re: Does anyone want to learn to view your page source?

I would love to learn this!
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Former_Member
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Re: Does anyone want to learn to view your page source?

I'll use your bluebird drawing that we did here as an example. The first thing that you do is right-click on any empty part of the page. You'll get a list of options and in Firefox it will say "view page source" and in IE it will say "view source". Click on that and a page will open up that at first will look like gibberish to you unless you know HTML code.

The only parts that you care about are toward the top and they're easy to find because they have your title, description and tags in them. A few lines down (or about a dozen if you view it with the long line wrap option) you'll see:

<title>blue bird drawing kids wall art children room by wonderlaneart</title>
<meta name="keywords" content="Children, Art, Print, blue bird drawing, blue bird, bird drawing, fine art print, art print, children room decor, boys room decor, blue and yellow, blue, yellow, sun, kids wall art, childrens art print" >
<meta name="description" content="This cute early blue bird drawing will sing to your sweet children room décor. The 8x10 kids wall art is of a blue bird drawing from original" >

You can see exactly where your title and description are getting cut off. Google still reads the whole thing and it all counts but the part that gets into the description tag counts more. It's also what the preview will look like when you come up in google which is another good reason not to just have a long string of keywords. That looks weird to humans and google won't like it. Google wants us to write for people and let it figure out how to index it.

Unfortunately Etsy has imposed an arbitrary limit on how long titles can be and uses up a bunch of that space by putting our shop names in so this is why we recommend getting your keywords toward the front. Again, google is going to see your whole title but the most important parts need to get into the title tag for the most benefit.

Did that make sense?
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Re: Does anyone want to learn to view your page source?

Thanks for the explanation, I'm gonna try check it out right away on some of my items. :)
Interesting info!
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Former_Member
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Re: Does anyone want to learn to view your page source?

Did that make sense?
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Very much so, Karen! This is such a nifty trick! And extremely useful.
Thanks!
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AkitlaFlair
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Re: Does anyone want to learn to view your page source?

Thanks for info. Very useful
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Re: Does anyone want to learn to view your page source?

I am marking this and will be back! You R the Best Karen!!!
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Former_Member
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Re: Does anyone want to learn to view your page source?

Thank you!
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