The adword tool is great to help with your titles and tags. But don't forget, the first 3 words of your title aren't the only way that you're being found. For example, if I'm shopping for jewelry on etsy, I'll search a keyword of phrase that I specifically want like amethyst, or flower. After getting those results I use the categories to narrow it down- so that's when I'd get to clicking on 'dangle' within the 'earrings' category. I find it's an easier way to see what I want. Maybe that's just because I'm an etsy seller as well and I live in the world of search terms and tags, but I'm sure others search that way too. And sellers are buyers too :)
When I was revamping my other shop (February Jones- which needs to be restocked) I did a lot of research to choose good tags and titles that would help me get found. I used the adword tool to check each one of my tags and title keywords to see what to keep. You can also use adword to see what other keywords are being used for a specific kind of item. I kept a record of all the words that get the most search results, and also noted which of my shop specific terms get any hits to see if I should still use them or not ( ie: Quantum Rosette, which are stud earrings that look like little wire metal roses)
When I redid my listing titles and tags, I used a few different combinations of terms for exactly the same item (colours were different) and saw what kind of search results I got over the next week or so. Some items got more views and hearts than others so I had the opportunity to see if it was the difference in titles and tags that caused it, or something about the item itself like the colour. By the end of it all I had a good little format for my titles and my Quantum Rosettes ended up with one of these two titles:
1) Nickel Free Post Stud Earrings. Clementine Orange. Wire Wrapped. Quantum Rosette. Inspired by Physics, Science. Wire Rose.
2) Stud Post Earrings. Royal Purple. Nickel Free. Wire Wrapped. Quantum Rosette. Inspired by Physics, Science. Wire Flower.
So the most important terms ended up being: Nickel Free, Post, Stud, Earrings. You can see how I changed up these terms so that half of my listings had "Nickel Free Post" first and the other half had "Stud Post Earrings" first. I listed the other terms in order of importance to the item or branding for my shop.
It's tricky stuff to figure out in the beginning, but the more you do, the easier it becomes. When I redid this my shop had probably around 75 listings- it took about 3 weeks to perform the research, test out terms, redesign my titles and then change them all. And the best part? It worked! My listings were much easier to find, and my buyers found exactly what they were looking for.
