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Tips for Tagging your Etsy Items

Posted: Lis on Jun 27 | Etsy Buzz

Tags are one of the most important parts of item listings on Etsy, yet so many sellers are under-utilizing them. Here are some tips for getting the most out of your 14 tags.

Get Inside the Buyer’s Head

When you are choosing tags, your focus should be on your potential customers. You need to figure out what search words they use to find the type of item that you are selling. Luckily, there are handy tools to help you with this task.

To get an idea of what buyers are likely to search for to find your item, use Google’s Keyword Tool and Yahoo’s Keyword Selector Tool. Just plug in a word (e.g. “purse” or “necklace”) or phrase (e.g. “ceramic bowl” or “art print”) and the tools will generate a list of the most popular related search words and phrases. They also rank the words in order of search volume.

Using these tools, create a list of popular (high volume) search words for each of your items, and use them as your item tags on Etsy.

Color Tags = Treasury List

People who make color-based treasury lists frequently search for the name of the color to find items to feature, so add a tag for the color of your item. Consider using both the standard color name (red, blue, yellow, etc) and a more descriptive color name (apricot, turquoise, seafoam, etc). Don’t put them in the same tag space - put them in different spaces so that your item will appear in the search results for either word. There’s a big list of descriptive color names here.

Cross-List in Multiple Categories

If (and ONLY IF) your item fits in multiple categories (e.g. Jewelry and Weddings), you can add tags that will make it appear in both a category, and in a subcategory of a second category.

To do this, add your item to the first category as you normally do, with the dropdown menu. Then add the name of the second category as a tag (e.g. Housewares, Ceramics And Pottery, etc) and add the name of a subcategory of the second category as a tag (e.g. Kitchen, Sculpture, etc).

For example, let’s say I made a clay sculpture, and I wanted it to appear both in the Art category and in the Ceramics And Pottery category. I would select Art from the dropdown menu, and then I would add the tags “Ceramics And Pottery” and “Sculpture”. My item would then appear in the Art category, and in the Sculpture subcategory of Ceramics And Pottery.

The subcategories are listed on the Etsy categories page and on the left sidebar of each individual category.

Please *only* cross-list in more than one category if your item actually belongs in two!

Use ‘Em All

The default search on Etsy only looks at item titles and tags. This means that if you don’t have your important keywords in these two places, your item is not going to show up in the search results. So often I see items with only one or two tags - what a waste! Add 14 tags to your item every time.

Additional Resources:

• A Semi-Epiphany on Tags (forum thread)
• Considerations for Tags on Etsy

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