Specific tags

[CassiopiCollection]

Hi everyone,

I have been doing a review on my tags and wanted to know your opinion on whether my tags are too general and need to be more specific perhaps?

This item for example;

https://www.etsy.com/listing/201121150/seaside-photography-seashore-photography?ref=shop_home_active...

I have it as seaside photography rather than any tags including the word bench as I was afraid no one would search for that. I have tended to list by general style rather than being more specific on items like this.

Is this a bad idea? Any help greatly appreciated :-)

Thanks,

Cassie

[Former_Member]

Off the top of my head, I can say yes, you're doing it exactly right. As you say, no one would search for a photo of a bench.

Have you actually researched the phrases you're using to see if people actually use them in search, or are you guessing? Learning how to research them is the only suggestion I would make, because otherwise you seem to have a good grasp of tagging.

[CassiopiCollection]

Hi Mary,

Yeah every time I list I spend time with the search bar to make sure I get searched for terms.

Good to know you think I have done an OK job on that, thank you :-)

Cassie

[Former_Member]

The search bar is a good start, but there's an even more precise way to do this. Take your existing tags and run them through the Google Keyword Planner for more ideas, and to see how many searches there are on each term every year.

Then take each phrase that gets goo search and Google it yourself (in quotes -- that's important to just get search results for that exact phrase) and see how many other pages in the Google-verse are using that phrase.

Finally, divide the annual search number by the number of existing pages to get a mathematical representation of how competitive that phrase is. Even if it gets lots of searches, if there are far more pages already using it it Google, you'll probably never be found on it.

This applies to Etsy pretty much as well as Google.

I explain this in more detail here:
https://cleverruthie.wordpress.com/2014/09/08/a-sweet-secret-to-seo-and-etsy-happiness/

This method works incredibly well for me and the Etsians who are now using it too.

Good luck!