The First Search Engine

[#1]

The Very first Search engine was called the Phone Book.

There were many different kinds of Phone-books, The white pages listed people and the yellow pages listed businesses.

Every business was listed for free, set in alphabetical order according to topic. On every page in the phone book, at the very top of the page was a " Title " with a "keyword"

The phone-book used Keyword titles to help you find what you were looking for quickly.

By placing "keywords" in this titles a person could flip through the pages looking at the title keywords and in alphabetical order they could find anything they wanted very quickly.

Many businesses paid thousands of dollars to have a full page ad running to attract more customers, other businesses who did not want to spend money, Even went as far as changing their business name to start with the letter A

AAA Towing, A+ Auto Sales, Aaron's Furniture~ just to name a few. As the phone-book listed business in alphabetical order by making your business name start with an A, you were first one the list and got more calls.

The Phone-book is not used much anymore, but your webpages and advertisements and Facebook posts, and video's are all using the same system as the phone-book did.

Today's Search Engines work exactly the same way!

When you have a Store set up with the wrong keyword's and title's or tags your chances are very slim that potential customers can find you.

When you hear " Tags" or "keywords" or "titles" ~Just remember the phone-book.

Think to yourself,... if you were looking for your product listed in the phone-book, what keyword at the top of the page would you look for ? Use that as a tag. Or use it to Title a product. This way people can find you.

If you name your store or your items with words that nobody is looking for, that is exactly who will find it... Nobody

The most common mistake Business owners make when building a website or uploading a video, is using a business name as a title instead of what they offer.

~~~Part 2 Coming

[YouTubeArt]

Please revise your descriptions so they are not penalized

[YouTubeArt]

For example if you want to let people know there is free shipping, Post an image on the product page that says free shipping. DO NOT WRITE IT IN ALL CAPS

Write about your wonderful product. Tell customers about the benefits and uses.

[Former_Member]

What are your thoughts about linking related products or shop sections on the item description page?

[YouTubeArt]

That's great idea as long as they share the same topic keywords, Do not refer any item that is not relevant.

Remember, Etsy has set up a way to do this by creating a treasury list, set up all of your related items in treasury lists. or get a friend to do it for you

then you can link that multiple item list on each of the product pages that are included in the list

(:

[Former_Member]

How does one link the multiple item treasury list to the individual product page?

BTW I LOVE THIS TEAM!!!!!
ok so I broke the rules and used all caps and lots of exclamation points : O
Lizzie

[Former_Member]

Eva- All this is very helpful! Thank you for explaining it in terms I understanding. I think most of my items are shinning brighter, just need to finish a few and also work on my titles and tags..."just". Haha it's never ending!

This is off topic for this discussion, but can you go more into social media avenues, other than facebook/twitter etc?

[YouTubeArt]

Thank you Amanda !

Social media is the new way we do business. in just a few years I think social media will be one of the main sources for business marketing. It all goes into to building a network. Just like a fishing net, the bigger your net is, the more chances you have to catch a fish.

There so many to choose from ! Don't waste your time deciding on which one you want..... They are free! Choose them all !

You set up a Facebook account, so you have the skills required to sign up to them all. It will only cost you a few days work, The return is huge, each social media outlet lets you extend the reach of your net. regardless of how many sales each one creates.

Most all of the social media outlets provide you with a private home page that you can insert anything you want. That's free real estate, yours to keep for many years to come. take advantage of it.

OK so how do you find them? Wikipedia is an excellent source for finds links to different groups and teams.

Go to Wikipedia >>search for " social media websites "

There you will find a list of over one hundred.

Now as a good marketer you want to start with the best, So here is the top 15 according to actual traffic data:

1 | Facebook
2 - eBizMBA Rank | 750,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 2 - Compete Rank | 2 - Quantcast Rank | 2 - Alexa Rank.


2 | Twitter
13 - eBizMBA Rank | 250,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 24 - Compete Rank | 5 - Quantcast Rank | 9 - Alexa Rank.


3 | LinkedIn
27 - eBizMBA Rank | 110,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 44 - Compete Rank | 23 - Quantcast Rank | 14 - Alexa Rank.


4 | Pinterest
31 - eBizMBA Rank | 85,500,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 42 - Compete Rank | 16 - Quantcast Rank | 36 - Alexa Rank.


5 | MySpace
84 - eBizMBA Rank | 70,500,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 51 - Compete Rank | 62 - Quantcast Rank | 138 - Alexa Rank.


6 | Google Plus+
95 - eBizMBA Rank | 65,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *NA* - Compete Rank | *NA* - Quantcast Rank | *NA* - Alexa Rank.


7 | DeviantArt
183 - eBizMBA Rank | 25,500,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 346 - Compete Rank | 74 - Quantcast Rank | 130 - Alexa Rank.


8 | LiveJournal
303 - eBizMBA Rank | 20,500,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 605 - Compete Rank | 203 - Quantcast Rank | 102 - Alexa Rank.


9 | Tagged
315 - eBizMBA Rank | 19,500,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 447 - Compete Rank | 217 - Quantcast Rank | 282 - Alexa Rank.


10 | Orkut
350 - eBizMBA Rank | 17,500,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | *NA* - Compete Rank | *NA* - Quantcast Rank | 156 - Alexa Rank.


11 | CafeMom
451 - eBizMBA Rank | 12,500,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 127 - Compete Rank | 82 - Quantcast Rank | 1,144 - Alexa Rank.


12 | Ning
456 - eBizMBA Rank | 12,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 617 - Compete Rank | 411 - Quantcast Rank | 339 - Alexa Rank.


13 | Meetup
621 - eBizMBA Rank | 7,500,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 838 - Compete Rank | 516 - Quantcast Rank | 509 - Alexa Rank.


14 | myLife
728 - eBizMBA Rank | 5,400,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 122 - Compete Rank | 391 - Quantcast Rank | 1,670 - Alexa Rank.


15 | Multiply
1,590 - eBizMBA Rank | 4,000,000 - Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors | 3,382 - Compete Rank | 780 - Quantcast Rank | 608 - Alexa Rank.


***I would start with those, MySpace is number 5 !! who knew ?

[YouTubeArt]

When your on These social media sites, use the information on a thread here called ~ How to connect with Facebook fans

Your goal once you have a bunch of profiles and pages, is to link them all together. This is done by adding a link to your pages pointing to other pages that all point to your store.

Take Google on the wildest goose chase you can possibly imagine, get creative and think of like like game.

Have links on your Facebook account to Google +, Have links on you twitter to YouTube, have links on your Youtube channel to facebook, digg to stumble upon, and then to MySpace to LinkedIn and back again, Do you get the idea? GO NUTS the more the better !

Share links to each of your product pages, use the Etsy mini, write about your products and then link them to the store ( remember to always write the right titles even on Facebook)
You're Knitting Your Net..work, and you're going to catch fish !

The search bots job is to find pages and click on every link and record the information.

Social Media management is hard work. Set aside an amount of time everyday to build your links back to you're store. As an example I have four very popular websites with 50,000 + visitors a day, I spend 3 hours a day, 7 days a week maintaining that traffic. with only social media marketing.

For those 21 hours a week, I make anywhere from 500 to 1500 a week in revenue generation from ad sense and banner ad's. slowly but surely I keep getting more traffic, next year I will make twice or three times what I make now ( as been the case for the past two years)

The nice thing about marketing your own products is you get all of the profits. With banner ad's I only make a small % of the actual profit.

Don't be discouraged. It is not that hard to do. and if you get stuck I am always here to lend a hand.

(: Eva

[YouTubeArt]

Amanda~Two Very Important things

You need a website. At the end of the day all the efforts you make to market your lovely wedding jewelry, without a website, your not getting any of that credibility. Etsy is. Your store is on their domain. I am not saying to stop marketing it, but you should get a website and link it at the same time as your store.

Websites are easy, you can do it yourself or get a friend to help you ( wink wink) If you want to be in business online professionally, You have to have a website. Nothing fancy, just a web address that you own and control and this way down the road if Etsy decides to start charging more or they go out of business all the hard work you put in won't be lost.

I would be happy to help you build your website no charge as long as you pay for the expenses. The domain name will cost you about 10 bucks a year ( GoDaddy is the best) and hosting I can get you for around 30 bucks a year unlimited. I would be happy to build the site for you no charge as long as I can have a " Designed By" at the bottom

[MeshuMaSH]

Not sure where to post this question...

I am working with a team who makes tasks of promoting each others items in social networks.

My question is general, i am not sure that can be answered...

Does working this way is less/more efficient then doing it ourselves in very specific ways (as you teach us)?

If the people we are working with don't have many followers or not tagging our items properly, it will not do much, is it?

The question is mainly about time management, because all these activities take time and energy, i would like to know what is the best way for me...

Thanks!

[YouTubeArt]

Hello Irit,

There are many teams here that have a place to put your links to your products ( including this one) It does help any way you look at it.

You have almost 5000 admirers now, 600 sales, a place where many on this team would like to be.

One of things that makes your store difficult to market is the names of most of your items is hard to place for example,

Retro Polka dot Enamel cup is not something anyone is looking for. so that makes it hard to sell.

You have over 300 items in your store. Take some time and have at least 35% of your store items things that people are looking for. That traffic will see your other items like the Retro Polka dot Enamel cup

As for your question, It is never a waste of time. It all brings you activity, and that's good.

What you need to do is link your products from outside of Etsy, for instance place links to your products on Facebook and social media, Go blogging. find people blogging about vintage cookware, or vintage dresses and then make a nice comment and link your product

You have been very busy creating activity, but you need to build credibility as well.

[MeshuMaSH]

Can you give me an example of how to title this one, the cup?
https://www.etsy.com/listing/129531965/retro-polka-dot-enamel-cup-white-enamel

The title is having more woerds and phrases that seems to be good...

[Former_Member]

It seems like the more I tweak my titles, the more items I add to my listings, the less views I get. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. This is really frustrating.

[Former_Member]

Eva- thinking about the website. Keeping you in mind! Thanks for all this input. This team is actually helpful, unlike many others.

[Former_Member]

I am so glad I found this site. Online 101 rocks. The analogy of the phone book is something very simple and relevant . I'll remember. Now my job is to google search Keywords and re list my items. Thank you so much.

[Former_Member]

Thank you so much for all of the useful and understandable information here! I definitely have a job ahead of me for my long weekend!

[RusticlyInspired]

Thank you so much Eva Maria for sharing all of your social media knowledge with us. I'm in the generation that is a little behind all of this :) so anything I can find that is easy to understand is very appreciated!

[Former_Member]

Hi Eva Maria-

I have a question, when I had a critique on my shop.
The person that critiqued my shop said to add Era/Style/Date to as many listings.

I only did a couple, I wanted to know if the information is correct, before I go changing anything.

[Former_Member]

I just started my shop on January 1st. I am not sure if my titles/keywords are working as well as they could be. I am using Google Keyword planner, but I am having a hard time coming up with a main idea or keyword. Is the goal to have one main keyword I use for each listing then list item specific keywords after the main keyword?

[ShillyShallyjewelry]

This is a great team. I have found what others have said, the more I change my titles and tags, the fewer the views. How you become one of the bright stars seems very overwhelming for an over 60 hipster! Will keep listening and trying your ideas! Thank you!

[DovesClosetInc]

I sell handmade photo coasters and I just don't get it. Handmade by itself gets 110,000 searches a month and Photo gets 823,000 a month and coaster 40,500. So should I call one of my coasters Handmade, Photo, Coaster, or would Coaster with the name of the coaster be better? This is like Greek to me.

[blue510]

New here and feeling over-whelmed but grateful for all the great info that really is over my old person head ; \

I've had an Etsy shop for several years now, it grew from 40 sewing patterns to what is usually between 6 and 700 now. I have kept track of my closest competitors over time (closest as in product and price) as we are not artist but suppliers selling the same items. We grew about the same, I even shipped for her if she found she sold what she didn't have. All was well.

When someone new came on I noticed my closest competitor slowing to where she has all but dropped off now...I did not seem affected until the Etsy change over....now the same is happening to me....my shop and the other shop are disappearing while the new shop sales are truly racing ahead at 3 times the speed either of us ever did. It has made me feel that Etsy must have gotten some sort of rotation tool stuck with the big change over, or that something somehow just can't be functioning right as I am unable to figure out how the new one is taking all of the sales that used to divide up between my competitor and me.

Now after reading all of this, I guess this is a younger person so maybe doing a whole lot of this networking stuff that I am not sure I can handle. I didn't see where you said it but I have always heard that those with the most sales also get the shiniest stars.

I have two questions. I have been changing my titles again due to the change and desperation. I had always tried to put in the title what I, myself, would use to search for a pattern, and I put as many of those options in it as I could fit there. Now I am trying to clean it up a bit, although, until the E change it seemed to be working just fine. Do the search engines read the whole title or just the first 3 words (as I have read both)? Is a cleaner title better than one with more options or does it not matter ie only the first 3 words matter. Recently I read that the search engine reads the description area......I had no idea! So now I am trying to put the title words there too even though it all seems redundant to me, but what I read seemed to be saying that redundancy was important to a search engine.


Tags confuse me. When someone is doing a search (the search bar) does the search engine read the tags? Tags seem to me to be more of a link to other shops.......which helps shoppers with a quick price comparison, but doesn't seem too helpful to the seller displaying that link (supplier, so nothing unique here).

I will appreciate any enlightenment you can give me.

[YouTubeArt]

Hello Blue510

First off I apologize for not getting back to you sooner. I was offered a very large contract it it took all of my time thus I was not able to attend to this forum. I am back now and I would be happy to answer your two questions.

Making a title that you would use yourself is a sure fire way to miss out on the search engines. let me explain the right way to select a proper title for your item.

First of all, it takes effort. You have to go above and beyond just to meet the rest of us who already do so. RESEARCH.

I pick out my titles by using the people around me as human Guinna pigs. I simply show them the item and ask them : If you were looking to buy this what would you type?" NEVER trust your own judgement. always get some friends and take a survey. There are many outlets where professional marketers perform surveys. Now you can do the survey just by verbally asking someone and taking notes or you can use online platform just like big companies do. Google surveys for instance will let you create a online survey for the low low price of nothing. Free! sin costo, gratis! how cool is free am I right?



If you try to guess based on your own opinions 9 times out of ten you will get it wrong. this is why large companies and professionals use surveys. its like like getting free help.

Start the survey by simply making a small online form and allows you to share a simple link and when clicked leads to a small and easy survey form that the user can fill out taking all the time they need.

I would be happy to make one for you and send you the link. no fee, it's My treat!

Your second question.

Do the search engines read the whole title or just the first 3 words?

The answer is the the search engines read all the words. but the more words you add, the less relevant you become to each keyword individually. in other words the more words you use, the less power the titles has in general. so keep it as short as possible. now tags work the same way, if you select lots of tags each one individually becomes less powerfull. I would rather have one or two tags and be more powerful on those two then no where to be found using 10 tags. not to say that your item is not relevant to the ten tags, it's just the search engines way of weeding through all the information that gets put up daily on the internet. Search engines try to provide the most credible, relevant information. so be sure that you are providing only the most relevant info. in your title.

[StoneysideTreasures]

Your instructions are extremely helpful.
Although, after I typed keywords, "Facial cleanser " I requested the results be sent to my email. Once sent to my email, I was able to open up their spread sheet, which listed key words. It did not provide the # 9900. It had Facial Cleanser as # 16 on a list of key words.
I used the url http://www.wordstream.com/keywords to do my search.
Do you have the url that you used for your search. Possibly it is different from the one I chose.
Thanks,
Tracy Zackson

[Former_Member]

https://www.etsy.com/listing/561131471/moroccan-traditional-unisex-brown-shoes?ref=shop_home_feat_1
https://www.etsy.com/listing/561359637/moroccan-unisex-yellow-shoes-authentic?ref=shop_home_feat_2
https://www.etsy.com/listing/561557317/moroccan-babouche-slipper-handmade?ref=shop_home_feat_3
https://www.etsy.com/listing/561566447/handmade-babouche-berbere-en-cuir-jaune?ref=shop_home_feat_4