Incredible information about SEO's and the REAL information to help you in listing, tagging and titles in your shops. Thanks so much to Mary from WingsDoveSEOGuides for allowing me to share this great information with my readers
She also has two other shops, wingsdove.etsy.com and printableshop.etsy.com.
Mary also has two Etsy SEO Teams where every Etsy shop owner is welcome to join:
www.etsy.com/teams/11352/relevancy-and-seo-for-all-etsy-shops
www.etsy.com/teams/12637/seo-team-seo-reviews
She sells an Etsy shop SEO guidebook in this shop and custom Etsy shop SEO Services through her SEO Web design Web site: www.wingsdove.com/etsy-shop-seo.htm.
She has also worked with professional SEO and Web design for over 9 years. (so at least we know she knows what she is talking about!!)
SEO Myths you should NOT believe.
These are mythical SEO statements made in the Etsy forums in the past year or so, both in the Open and Team forums.
None of these statements about SEO are true. Please do not waste your time and energy follwing any of these SEO myths.
MYTH: The first 160 characters of your shop announcement are picked up by Google. The first three words of your item titles are crawled, the top three tags are crawled, your top three shop sections are crawled, and your shop title (the words under your shop name on the left hand column) are crawled. All that stuff is super-duper important to increasing your Google rankings.
FACT: Google reads crawls every bit of text on every Web page. At this time, Etsy does NOT make the listing tags are not visible to Google or other search engines. This is the only text that is not visible to Google.
MYTH: The first three words of the description are the most important words.
FACT: Google reads all of the words in the listing description - they are all important. The first 140 characters of the listing description are very visible to Google. It's a good idea to place at least one of the keyword phrases in this area. Use the rest of the keywords in the rest of the listing description.
MYTH: For Google, the listing title must be copied into the first line of the listing description
FACT: Copying the listing title into the first line of the listing description is better than nothing but this may not pass Google's Low Quality Content Filter.The keywords in the listing title should be used in the listing descriptions but not copied word for word into the first line.
MYTH: Do not repeat a word in the title, even if it makes the title make more sense
FACT: Words can be repeated in listing titles, as long as you do not go overboard
MYTH: Keywords in the listing title should be in descending order of importance. title like this:
necklace, beads, green
scarf, crocheted, cotton
booties, red, baby
earrings, wire wrapped, gorgeous
prints, flower, outdoor
FACT: This is "backward speak" and it does not work very well on Etsy or on Google. Use real "forward speak" keyword phrases, such as,
green bead necklace
cotten crocheted scarf
red baby booties
wire wrapped earrings ("gorgeous" is not a keyword used in searches)
(I am not sure what the last one what intened to be, possilby a photo print or an Art Print?)
MYTH: Your title must be in all capital letters to be searchable by Google
FACT: All the search engines, including Google and Etsy, read small letters and caps exactly the same way. It does not matter to Google if the title is in all CAPS, although Etsy will not allow more than four words in all CAPS.
MYTH: Your title must not contain any capital letters to be searchable by Google.
OR
MYTH: You should not capitalize the words in your title with the exception on the first and or second word.
FACT: All the search engines, including Google and Etsy, read small letters and caps exactly the same way. It does not matter to Google if the title is in all small letters of a mix of CAPS and small letters.
MYTH: Then I heard that your Tags have to start with a Capital letter to show up and the first tags are the most important.
FACT: It does not matter to Etsy search engine whether you use caps or small letters: all tags are treated equally. Google does not "see" the listing tags.
MYTH: Do NOT to use punctuation in Titles, etc.
FACT: Punctuation can be used in shop titles, section names and listing titles as long as there is a space before of after the punctuation. ALWAYS use a space before or after the punctuation.
MYTH: Google doesn't like certain words like: burgandy (because it's a type of wine), gun, free, merlot (again, b/c it's a type of wine)
FACT: Google has restrictions like this on Google Shopping but there are no restricted words on Google's natural, organic search results.
MYTH: Etsy did not have the ability to tag images, and the name of your images were irrevelant to SEO's.
FACT: Etsy assigns a number to every image that is uploaded into the database of photos, therefore it does not matter what name you give the photo.
MYTH: I remember reading a long time ago that Etsy uses an item's title as the meta tag for its photos. If you hover over the photos while viewing a shop, you'll see a pop-up box that has the item's title. I'm pretty sure what's in that pop-up box is the meta tag.
Also,
MYTH: Any image that we upload to Etsy in our listings should have a descriptive title. For example, if I upload a picture of a hat, the .jpg should be named "Purple Knt Hat." This helps with SEO especially when the image is then reposted on Pinterest, Wanelo, Google+ etc.
FACT: Etsy creates an image "alt" tag for every image, using all the words in the listing description. These are the words that you see when hovering over the photo with the mouse pointer. This is also the tag that works well when reposted on Pinterest, Wanelo, Google+ etc. Use good descriptive keywords in the listing title for this to work.
MYTH: Use the same words in our title and tags as we have named our photo when we saved it on our computer.
FACT: No. Use good, effective keywords you have researched in one of the keyword databases that are available for research on the Internet to find the keywords that are at least somewhat popular in searches on Google and other search engines. People do tend to use very similar words over and over again when searching for products or services anywhere on the Internet includng Etsy.
MYTH: You should submit your shop to all the search engines for good rankings.
FACT: Submitting Web sites to search engines is something that worked for SEO 15 years ago when Recency played a big role in search results. This stopped working when Google came along with Relevancy search. Sumitting to search engines is a waste of time and money. Big search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing ignore repeated submissions.
MYTH: SEO gives me a headache, I will never learn it.
FACT: Learning something new and very different can seem overwhelming at first. There are more complex parts to SEO but the basics of SEO can be learned by anyone. Just give yourself time and allow for some trial and error as you go along. Experience really is the best way to learn SEO.
Most Etsy sellers knew nothing about SEO when I started posting SEO threads in the forums three years ago. Even with some of these crazy SEO myths floating around, there has been so much obvious progress since then. More and more Etsy sellers are working with and learning SEO and getting better and better at it.
