An insight on tags

[Former_Member]

Hi fellow Etsiers!

Today I realized that I've had the wrong idea about something regarding tags, and since it may not just be me, I'll share it with all of you.

We know that the most important words in our titles shall match our tags in order to get a better chance to be found in searches.

Since I sell printable artwork files, "wall art" is quite a central keyword for me. Today when I checked it out in Marmalead I saw that in "My Listings", it was showing green for whether that keyword was included for all of my listings' titles but red for all of my listings' tags...

I was surprised since I was totally sure I had mentioned it in the tags and went and to check what was going on. The thing was that I did have it there, but not completely exclusively or how to say. I had for example "printable wall art", which I had thougth was smarter, thinking that it would then cover for both "printable wall art" and just "wall art". But obviously I was mistaken, it had to be straight out "wall art" to count as a tag for wall art. 

When I changed that, Marmalead started showing green for tags and the visibility grade also went up for the keyword.

I didn't know this was the way it had to be done so if anyone else has been mistaken as well till now, please look over your tags for better visibility chances!

[StyleForDOLL]

Thank you very much!

[NoctilucentMind]

Thank you very much for this insight! 

[TheVintageCraftCave]

Very interesting. Thank you!

[CleverClayShop]

Well that is entirely contrary to what Etsy would have us believe about our longtail tags.  It will be intersting to see if that change increases or decreases your sales.  I hope you will report back about that.

[Former_Member]

Yes! It's very weird, isn't it? 

Now I really doubt that Marmalead is showing the truth, because on Friday I checked out the grade for my listing in erank, and it's giving kind of the opposite of an advice, saying that the short tail tag is redundant and that it's smarter to replace the short-tail tag with something else. 

So on that same day I emailed Marmalead and asked for a comment. It is really not great if it's giving us misindications. But so far, no reply from them. If still nothing within a couple of days I will have to send them a reminder.

Will of course update in this thread what my findings will be!

[Former_Member]

Hi folks, I finally got a reply from Marmalead regarding what seems like a contradiction, comparing Erank and Marmalead. 

"Thank you for reaching out! I'm not sure what factors ERank takes into account. What I can say is that Marmalead is honored to have worked hand in hand with Etsy before the release of their Ultimate Guide to Etsy Search to make sure that our tools are in direct alignment with their advice. So while I can't answer questions about ERank, I can tell you that when you match a tag in your title, it changes your chances of visibility. So adding that tag, if it's also in your title, would make that score go up. Now, it's true that you don't want to repeat the same tag over and over and over. You really only want to do that with your focus keywords (keywords matched exactly in your tags an titles). You want to be as diverse as you can with the rest of your tags that you aren't matching in your titles. I hope that is helping but let us know if there's something that needs further clarification. "

I guess they are saying that their tool is showing the correct thing.