Hi Shelby.
It took me a a bit to look at the team. I am having computer problems and I do not need to bore you with the time and money spent on that one and it ain't over yet. But I see your request for help.
I think this is a very important comment pertaining to your concern! And you made it.
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I realize I'm being quite picky wanting to show up in a broad search for "hair bows" (there are over 200,000) however being in the first 50 pages and showing up before shoes and coffee cups would be lovely.
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Why? Because, as you say a broad search of "Hair Bows" does indeed give some 225,264 individual listings or some 56,316 pages.
If you think about that, the problem is the first 50 pages of 56,316 of them is
>> .09% <<
Yes some product listings are a pure numbers game when it comes down to it.
And it takes a temendous amount of skill to come up with a listing that will give any kind of a presence when it represents .09% to be seen in the first 50 pages.
And to be honest if I were looking for a Hair Bow and found that there were that many pages and you must realize I do not look past the first 5 pages most of the time. '
I as a shopper are going to refine my search using advance search tools that the search responds to. For example.
Quotes like this > "Hair Bows"
http://www.etsy.com/search?q=%22Hair%20Bows%22&order=most_relevant&view_type=list&ship_to=ZZWhich cuts the number found in half.
And then I am going to define what I am looking for. Face it I am not going to look at red hair bows if I want to buy a Turquoise one, thus.
http://www.etsy.com/search?q=Turquoise%20%22Hair%20Bows%22&view_type=list&ship_to=ZZand this gives a little over 3000. Thus making the first 50 pages some where around 2%, still lousy but it is indeed a numbers game when it come to searching and listing to be found.
So again if I was looking for a Turquoise hair bow I might look for ways to narrow my list down to those I wish to look at.
So Turquoise hair bow would give me 3000 vs almost 300,000 what else might i use to search with? What other characteristic makes sense that I can define a hair bow with to make a selection of them on a list be what I want to see?
I might decide that being held on with an Alligator clip is a good thing. If I include that in my search I might see what happens.
And in writing this and thinking about how you could be helped something popped up. Please look at this search, with the addition of the word Alligator Clip.
http://www.etsy.com/search?q=Shiny%20Turquoise%20Hair%20Bow%20alligator%20clip&view_type=list&ship_t...One item, and not yours! Why.
Take a look at the word Alligator. The spelling, two L's!
http://www.etsy.com/search?q=Shiny%20Turquoise%20Hair%20Bow%20aligator%20clip&view_type=list&ship_to...Aligator with one L.
Now there is a point here. Whether it helps you or not, it is a factor in being found.
Aligator with one L is spelled wrong. Alligator has 2 L's. But correcting the spelling is not the point.
The point is what actually is the purpose of tags.
One purpose is to emulate the description of the product. '
Tags are searched not the description. So if I as a buyer describe carefully what I am looking for, the purpose of the search engine is to match my search request (words) to a listing search request (Title and Tags)
Titles of course are the most important. Tags are secondary to titles, but also a secondary purpose of tags is to offer alternative spelling, synonyms and colloquialism. And by including these types of words in your tags you are improving the probability of being found by one of the some 40,000,000 people who visit Etsy during the month, many of which may not use the search term "Hair Bow"
Enter the concept of Probability. What will be the probability of what terms will be used to find your hair bow? or Barrett?
But the bottom line still is, at the present, your hair bow is less than .09% of being found using the term Hair Bow to search with, what is the percentage of being found by using different terms.
Up to and including, extended descriptions using common terms to describe your product.
