Anthony Wolf of EtsyRank answers YOUR SEO Questions- Replay

hello all you people who can guess what's new who can guess what's new post it in the chat post it in the chat if you can already see what's new and what we've been working on non-stop for the last three or four days post it in the chat right now what do you see in the room that's new Roya I just taught something new to the guy from Yellow Pages a little bit ago that's not what's new I love the wall yeah it's the wall it's a good kind of wall not a political type of walls that a lot of people are not fun enough but it is the Alpha wall and not only is it a wall it is a chalkboard wall which means we can do live sessions and demonstrations and I can write on it for you guys so more awesome stuff coming soon the the wolf is actually metallic I painted I spray-painted the wall with metallic chrome paint let us know if we kind of cut out it looks like our video might be kind of buffering so if we end up cutting out let us know if we lose Internet anything crazy like that Internet's been kind of wonky so chalkboard that well is awesome it looks at net neutrality repeal kicking in no I don't think so yeah we got about another 55 days for that oh guys alright so big news for anybody who's just joining us pre stream usually lasts about 10 minutes we're having an earthquake pre stream lasts 10 minutes right at noon we will open up the actual video and get into the meat and potatoes of this whole thing but first of all big news I don't know how you could have missed it because I've sent it out a million times but just to make sure down below Renae Christine yes the Renae Christine and I are hosting a huge masterclass on March 10th March 10th yeah March 10th down below is the registration for that but there may be a cap on it I'm not sure mm-hmm usually she kind of has to cap off those free webinars simply because too many people sign up and it slows the whole webinar down and anybody any besties down in the comments tell people like tell the alphas how crazy Renae Christine webinars get because we've crashed I think five different webinar hosting sites yes they like because too many people so now she has to kind of segment them out business class G Suites you I know well that's expensive so to sign up for that registration down below it should be the nine steps to building a profitable handmade business it's totally free you'll get email reminders all that good stuff is down there awesomesauce webinars yes chris hardwick host from talking dead live announced he's on there oh yeah we got a do our vera research still we're working on it it's been a busy last few days i know that some of you guys are thinking you know that whoa what is this new app it is so sketchy all of this news that's come out about it here's the thing the person we've just heard we've heard that the person who actually published that article is known for kind of exaggerating stories for the sake of media who would have thought so i don't really see the big deal with somebody being associated with russia owning something well he had okay there was a couple shady allegation one what can he do with it really right so i don't think it's so much that your personal information is at jeopardy i think it's more that it's whether you want to support somebody who's associated with russia and doesn't pay his workers no human beings from a different place on earth right well here's the thing we'll get to the bottom of whatever this is you know things things are crazy but either way we'll figure it out he's gonna do some research on it you guys know he's ex-military and when it comes to snooping out bad people he's real good at that so we'll just leave it at that all right second big announcement something that you guys have been waiting for non-stop down below also in the description if you have scouted that out there's lots of easter eggs down there it's like hidden goodies galore RPO a box or pio pio box is finally open you guys can send us fan mail and in the long run what we're hoping to do with our fan mail products that you guys want featured on our channel we're gonna do fan mail and boxing videos like we promised and we want to feature your products back here somewhere some of the products we're going to keep some of the products we are going to pull together and do giant alpha giveaways where we give away big boxes of products that have been submitted to us and some stuff we're just gonna keep because we like it yeah well you know so and you know I was also thinking that some of the products will put them on the wall for a while and then we'll throw them into the giveaway box so the P o box is down below you guys are free to send us whatever just make sure that if you send us anything edible it cannot be homemade it needs to be in original packaging especially if you're shipping international and are our alphas that are outside of the United States please do not send this liquid because like you if you do send liquid for any reason whatsoever like soaps or something like that and you're outside of the United States please package it in a way that it's not gonna get everywhere right for some reason the change in pressure makes the container erupt or what's whatever just make sure it's packaged in a way it's not gonna make a mess when we open it if you do send liquids right because I mean just a just a pressure change can make that thing bust open and if you do it like put it in ten Ziploc bags please you don't and we want them if you want them featured on the channel and anyway make sure they're family appropriate you don't have to send family appropriate items but if you if it's something that we can't put on here we're not going to write so if you want something that's goofy and not family appropriate you want to send to us we'll check it out but we're not gonna put it on the wall or on that on the channel rightly say could keeping this channel like family family-friendly right like bad word items and things like that won't be able to feature all right guys it's 11:55 and little do you all know that um Anthony's actually been here the whole time chillin out just waiting for us to unmute him so we're gonna go ahead and let him say hi for a minute we're not starting questions yet we're just saying hi so go ahead unmute and you can click on his screen just bring him up say hello great to be here um hey there's big crowd so uh sorry if I get a bit nervous but I'm sorry Andrea showed me they're gonna make sure everything runs smoothly so yeah yeah and I mean come on it's go ahead it's only a hundred and seventy people it's not that many no I'm kidding this is a you know one thing that I noticed about Anthony right away is that he I guess when I first started talking to him I couldn't find his face anywhere so we've streamed what this is are time face to face on camera so I think that this might be the first time other than people who are in the Etsy right group this might be the first time that people are actually seeing you so that's that's pretty awesome for anybody who hasn't you know gotten to say hello to you yet hi everybody every Oh everyone's saying hello Anthony Jemma says hello Anthony Senora que creation says hello Meghan says hello thank you don't be nervous we all love you Janet says hello Anthony so everyone is super super excited all right let's see here are you drinking all my water don't drink all my water so starting off guys what we're gonna do is right at noon we're gonna go ahead and kind of do a quick introduction a lot of you don't know oh why at sea rank is so we're kind of gonna go into Anthony's background what Etsy rank is some of the new algorithm changes I know that everyone's really stressed out about that so we're gonna break down exactly what Etsy is doing and then we will go ahead and get into questions because we want to make sure that everyone's on the same page Before we jump into those questions otherwise some if you might be confused and as always if we get repeat questions we will be skipping over them if it feels like your question was submitted like five or six times and we never answered it watch the replay I promise we're not gonna purposely skip anyone and we'll probably Anthony do you have a time frame that you need to be off here is there because we usually end these around what one o'clock I think one one thirty yeah yeah so is there a time frame that you need to be off look when you run out of questions and run you oh that's it oh oh you you asked for it you asked for it because they will go crazy well we usually get off at 1:30 because our daughter gets off the bus at 2:00 so we've got you know we've got it a little while but as long as everyone's you know the big questions get answered then we we should be good okay all right perfect so it is 11:58 how's everybody doing everyone let's see em says happy Friday from Indiana hi Anthony hi from New Jersey let's see oh Anthony you can't see the chat that's cool alright perfect Chris Foreman what are the most significant differences between Etsy rank and marma lead we will get into questions in just a minute Chris so if you want to copy your comment and reap aced it so we don't lose it once we start at noon hi everyone from Texas UK says hi we have people from all around the world joining us today SuperDuper awesome and Anthony where are you from where are you currently streaming from I'm streaming from a very chilly and snowy Toronto this morning oh yeah we've been seeing pictures of all that it's not too bad we're enjoying that nice little warm spell for about three or four days which was great that's - yeah you did - oh yeah yeah it's it's a I believe here today it's um it's 46 out right now it'll probably climb to mid 50s but for Ohio that's pretty great for this time of year so pretty exciting Oh CIN says hi from freezing Germany BRR we have a couple people from there alright so let's go ahead and we will break in two quick introduction first of all Anthony thank you for hanging out with us today I you know you're like our first guest other than Renae Christine and most of the alphas already know Renae Christine so it's really exciting to actually have you here hanging out with us why don't you tell the alphas a little bit about your background and what makes you kind of qualified to give all of this awesome Etsy information okay well first of all I'm not an Etsy employee never worked it's alright will people understand they're not affiliated but my background is fairly unique I guess when when I talk to other people that are experts here in that I've worked for the Microsoft search engine for over a dozen years so I've had the luxury of being able to hang out with some really smart engineers and and talk about relevancy testing how to you know spot spam and get rid of it all these wonderful things that go on with inside a search engine so I think I was very blessed with that and you know I I think that what really got me into Etsy was my wife with her struggles with her store she was made she was let go from a big Canadian bank and yeah she was like what do I do now I said well do anything you know be creative and so she she dabbled with eBay and found that a horribly impersonal terrible sort of experience and then started to get into Etsy because it just seemed like a better fit she was making these handmade beautiful jewelry items and they were beautiful but no one would ever see them and she struggled with emphasis for the longest time it was really really heartbreaking and and and I have a bit of search knowledge you know I do know how you know algorithms work or the concepts work and maybe they're different from from being and from Google and from Etsy but you know there are still some underlying principles that are very much the same and I thought okay oh try make a few tools for you just to see what what's going on and I discovered the HC API and read the sellers handle over and over and over again and started ago okay well I'll take it here and lo and behold I realize she was making a bunch of spelling mistakes and she's got also spelling by the way it's much better than mine missing tags and you know when you got a hundred listings or more it's it's easily done right and all these things and then fix them up and she started to get results and it was like oh this is very cool this is actually working and I thought why don't I just give it to everyone you know it's I've been at Microsoft for years I felt like you know I was just taking taking taking I thought it's time to get back something and so I thought okay I'll release it you reckon and that's that's really where it began well that's and and what that's the one thing that really stood out to me is that you've got this really really great website that yeah I mean ultimately other than a few Pro Tools you pretty much offer this for free and for anyone who isn't where the website is Etsy ranked calm it's linked down in the description but I didn't make I forgot to make it a live link so you can actually copy and paste it if you want to grab that if you've never used it but I was just surprised that that you had all of these features for free and that your you know your what to do this to give this to people is just really astounding to me so what what's your wife's shop just so we can kind of give her a little a little shout out if people want to run I don't think I've ever looked at it before they sworn me to secrecy but you know what I'll go and ask her again and see whether she's comfortable doing that I think she may be watching somewhere in still in the YouTube channel but I if she can feel free to do that otherwise you know I have to respect her privacy okay well we completely understand that so um all right we have a lot of new people here there are a lot of people who are who are selling for the first time they haven't even opened their shops yet they're still kind of putting things together what advice like first and foremost do you have for that new seller the seller who just opened their shop and they those sellers who really don't even know what SEO is or they don't have that grip on it like what advice would you give to them you know tips on if I can share my screen here hola sir of course exactly that let's see okay can you see that yes okay so you know I think that the I've got eight points here you know they're all good in certain ways but you know the first thing I'd say is gonna be wary when you hear rumors and speculation you know if some fly-by-night person popped up and says they know the secret to Etsy success you know treat it with care you know I see a lot of people you know they hear some crazy rumors and speculation and then they they go and act on that information without you know verifying the sources so do this it's just common sense you know so you know if it comes from Etsy can trust it comes from Google you can trust that but remember not all the rules apply yeah it comes from me you can trust me you know but I also do a lot of research I have you know hundreds of gigabytes worth of data so you know I can mine some of that and do research like that you know there there are experts out there stylee I know you've analyzed stuff face you know they're the sort of people you know you can trust and and listen to that you know make sure they've done their homework and you know they can cite a source from from EDC or Google than that that just helps as well so you know just be careful with what you hear and and you know take it easy the next thing is just make small changes whenever you hear you know a great idea or you know the next best thing and you know AI does this and that make a small change you know find a listing that isn't doing too well tweak it based on what you think you understand now and you know to avoid having that all-nighter where you change every listing on your shop you know that that to me is a very neat jerk reaction you know really what you've got to do is make those small measure changes and then validate it with you know by looking at your Etsy stats every few days because that is really the best source of information for you to let you know if you're doing the right thing I think that that's the key things I like to get out front or a front straightaway then you know it gets into some of the nuts and bolts of the the SEO tactics that we have here and and all of these here are you can find them in the in the Etsy seller handbook and I've got some links at the end if people are interested in those I can share those but firstly use all your tags I mean it's seriously the it's an the easiest of things to fix you know if you've got three tags five tags eleven tags whatever it is use all thirteen it's just a missed opportunity and you know just from from when looking my wife shot from the very very early days on this was the thing that stood out you know she just went in there it was beautiful at creating these amazing things but didn't know SEO no one here is born an SEO expert so she put a few tags in that thought worked and that was it so use them all there really helps it's a great opportunity to get exposure to more people one thing that the alphas have always told me is that they they run out of tag ideas but what I got what I always tell them is don't just think of a million ways to describe like if you sell a mug it doesn't need to be a hundred ways to describe a mug you can ultimately go in there and switch it to you know gifts for blah blah blah if you can't think of a thousand ways to describe that mug it doesn't need to be a tag that describes the product it could be an abstract you have that applies to it it's a great idea I think that it may be a little harder now with the way that the CSR algorithms are working and I can talk about that a little bit but they do recommend that in the seller handbook there's a there's a great article on brainstorming keywords and titles and descriptions and they they talk about things like not just what the item is but who's it for so again completely agree with that things great idea [Music] another thing that Catholic say is you know use the words at the beginning of me rephrase it the beginning of your titles they send the strongest signal to Etsy they've said that in multiple places in the seller handbook so I treat that as a pretty clear indication get your best words at the beginning and what do you consider the beginning to be how many characters like what's the cutoff yeah yeah they don't at least I haven't seen anywhere in the handbook that says you know you have to have 45 characters or 50 characters but they did give a subtle hint which makes sense when you think about it and that is that think about how many words you see in your title when you're searching in grid view when you think about it you you've got about 45 50 characters I think depending on how many narrow characters and wide characters you've got in there so you really want to have those best keywords visible when people are searching and seeing the results in the grid view you know it they are the first words that they will see after your images hook them in and they're curious so yeah support the image make them enticing to draw a click you know I see some tools out there that allow you to bulk edit and prefix all your listings with things like 20% off today and things like that and to be honest I don't know whether that's a smart strategy or not but I just think from a long-term SEO perspective I can't remember the last time I searched for something like that so I'd be suggesting look for something that people are searching for when they're about to buy something that that to me is what I would always lean towards and keep in mind I haven't heard this directly from Etsy but you know it makes logical sense to me that you try and get inside the mind of the buyer when they're about to purchase so you know if you're just starting out you know it's mums birthday next week or something like that you go okay what am I going to get her I might search for gift for mum that's horribly generic right it could be anything you know it's he's going what the hell do you mean so as you go through that research and discovery phase you start to get a little bit more knowledgeable about what you would like and your your searches will change from that broad sort of gift among stuff to silver necklace for argument sake and then you look at them you compare them and you know you're really in this comparison sort of stage you're looking oh that looks cute that looks beautiful I like the price of that one and then by the end you you really know what you're looking for in that in that final stage you know it's it's like 18-inch silver necklace with opal pendant or something like that now that to me is it's a beautiful long tail keyword and that's the sort of thing I'd be wanting to try and get into my title you know you've still got all the good words in there like still the necklace gift for mum and Etsy will match on those but think about what those most valuable words are and get them towards the beginning of your titles right perfect and the next thing is emphasizing what the best words are so if you think about it like this search engine or Etsy we'll be looking at your listing and going okay I've got about 50 words here I you know maybe 10 or 15 in the title and say 30 most in in the tags but which one's the most important ones we're gonna go maybe at the beginning of the title looks pretty good but I'm not 100% sure my suggestion is and and and this is again in the in the seller handbook emphasize your best words by putting them in your title and tags as well and I don't mean try and copy all your tags into your title and credit stupidly ridiculous looking title but you know if it's 18-inch silver necklace try and get those into one or two tags just to give your listing that little extra emphasis so that when Etsy sees someone searching for a silver necklace or an 18 inch silver necklace they go huh this listing has got a really it's sending me some really strong signals there so you know these are the things from a keyword perspective that are going to help disambiguate or will make it very clear what your listing is to Etsy and they can keep that in the back of their mind when they're ready to show those sort of listings to potential buyers right and what would you say that this this whole SEO thing it's not just knowing SEO it's an overall mindset that you kinda have to have at all times you know thinking you know well every single area every single text field that I have available is a place that I could potentially you know sway the search results and you know leave that impression on Etsy where they're saying okay well this is exactly what this item is and they're gonna show it to all the right people so the other thing and I don't really I don't have it in here but again they call it out and then the seller handbook use the entire title use three words and your tags if you can and you know I'll give links at the end and I can follow up with that sort of information but it's there they've laid it out for it so so do that you know it's gonna help the more words you put in there the more combinations of sir you could appear for so keep that in mind as well be wary that you don't start throwing in irrelevant words because that's not not gonna do you any favors people gonna look at and just go not for me so keep that in mind I know it's a lot to jumble a lot of process but I hope folks there there is so there is one thing that the alphas always ask and it's they say for example in in my listings I'll put skeleton key necklace and key to my heart necklace in my title but a lot of people say well why would you use the word necklace twice or why would you put skeleton key necklace on all of your listings doesn't that make your listings compete with each other and that's always been a really obscure term to me compete with each other do you have any opinions on that or you know why that you know it's um I feel like the the landscape has changed recently with how are you handling clumping here so before when though very aggressive about the clumping I would say that's very true you know you need to have a bit more variation with your titles and tags and I do still say that in the sellers handbook but I think I've seen enough overwhelming evidence from from various post in the forums and in the Facebook group and people that reach out to me that clumping is back so I think that it probably isn't as bad as it used to be I also think that you know you have to you know call a spade a spade or call a necklace a necklace so you know I don't know what any other synonyms are out there for the necklace I think that it's perfectly fine to emphasize that a couple of times I hope that answered the question it's it's it's an interesting yeah I hear that one a lot bless your heart studio asks should we fill them the title with relevant keywords or just use three or so we have technical difficulties every would Oh Oh is it gone by the rooms I think so found some pillows everyone everyone is completely understanding of that okay what we saying Stella yeah okay that that question was from a bless your hearts to do she asked should we fill the title with relevant keywords or just three or so keywords oh my you know I feel like every time I read the advice from ed C and they say fill it with relevant keywords I think okay yeah makes total sense to me and then I'll go and see a shop that's got four words in their title one word tags and probably phenomenal sales that you know just throw that theory up in the air when I and I don't have enough data to say any with any high confidence one way or the other is better but I I'll say this to me logic would dictate that if you have more words in there your search your your listing is going to appear in more combinations of searches then if you had fewer words so if you're a bit like me and you like statistics and and you know increasing your chances of you know a probable sale I go with more and get a full title in there with relevant keywords that describe your listing that are likely to match what people are searching for that's what I would do because those jobs that you are mentioning with the like forward titles and all that kind of stuff who knows what kind of outside factors they have going on with social media advertising right they could have phenomenal marketing you know so you never know and the other thing is that they may have been around for a long time you know like since they went on Etsy when there were rules were you know very immature at that stage and you know you got to think about it when when people figure out the secret that spreads very quickly and it's no longer a secret and what then happens is you get people that are after a quick buck that will go in and start tweaking their listings and abusing you know the secret and then you know it's no longer a secret everyone's using it and I think that you know and it's probably an interesting exercise to dig deeper here but I would suspect that a lot of those shops are now really struggling you know I hear about old shops that were doing really well two or three years ago and in the last year or so released out in the tank right I've seen some that fit that like I described short titles one word tags but I haven't done any deep analysis to say one way or other so if you hear something from me and you think oh yeah that's it I'm gonna go and do what Anthony says like I said at the beginning just try it on a small insignificant listing that's not doing too well and let me know I'm always curious to hear about feedback and how things right and you know with SEO it's like no matter how much you know about SEO nobody has the algorithm there is no that's what a lot of people don't understand is no one has the answer there's no black and white answer that's gonna tell you exactly how you're gonna get on page one of Etsy speaking of which do you want to go ahead and let everybody know what is going on with this algorithm change that way we can get into questions since they're starting to pile up just let them know exactly what the heck did that see do and why is XE ranked suddenly saying that they're listing is on page whine and then they search it and then it's not in the keyword tool okay I'll do two things I'm going to show my screen again because I've got a couple of slides here one's a little bit wordy and the other ones really wordy so bear with me I try and describe it as simply as as I can yeah that's perfectly fine because I'm sure that there are a lot of people taking notes right now so I'll start with can you see me say my screen yes okay great so you know the first thing you've got to ask is why did they change their algorithms you know I'm talking about Etsy and Google here because you know we all hear about you know Etsy's algorithms changing we hear about Google and you know their Pandora changes and all the cute names thank you for all their changes and you know you don't ask why is this and it's really this that you know like I was just saying people figure out how to make money from search engines so that yeah that's why we're all here right but some of those people they exercise what they what's called black hat SEO which a little sketchy dodgy techniques allow them to abuse the system in order to sell their goods and services and so Etsy Google Bing they have to be on their toes all the time looking out for people that are trying to circum you know get around the these algorithms that they create so you know if I gave you a quick lesson in search engine history when I started playing with search engines it was about 95 and 1995 and they were really just matching on the keywords it was a dumb match you know you type in the words will give you back 5,000 documents that contain those words there was no emphasis at all and they they improve the algorithms over time they allow people to pay to get to page one but then you know Google came to the front with their PageRank algorithm algorithms and they they had a better way of showing what was more relevant so you can sort of see what's going on here you know they they create a search engine people find faults and it people start to abuse it then they create new techniques to get around those people that abuse it and fake it and on Etsy I'm sure we've seen people you know try all different sort of techniques to game the system you know one word titles or tags and things like that or they get in there and play games on etsion and and favorite each other's items and view each other's items and oh wait that doesn't work you know it may have early on but you know as these techniques become more widespread and get discovered if it is artificially raising a listing and you know think about it from Etsy's perspective here you've got a hundred listings that are relevant to a user apparently or at least have the keywords what are they gonna do next they're gonna are they going to show you a listing that has one sale and fifty thousand favorites or are they going to show you a listing that's got you know a verage is ten sales every hundred views the strongest signal there obviously is is the one that's got the higher conversion rate so anything that starts to artificially promote listings I'd steer clear of it you know there are I know because I worked personally with teams in Microsoft and their job was to catch these games and shenanigans that were employed by these people and I'm sure they add so you've got similar people trying to figure out how to get around they'll try and identify these people are trying to get around their algorithm so you know that that's a quick history there you know they they need to change because it gets abused every one of us can go in there and go why is this listing here every day we you know I see something I just got that's completely irrelevant it could be innocent it could be just because someone just renewed a listing or sold that listing or it could be something more sinister so that's why they've got to keep changing their algorithms so with that said to talk about the changes and again I don't know the fine details of how Etsy do this but I'm quite familiar with contextual search which and and machine learning algorithms and AI so I can speak with some expertise there but you know the the csr or the contextual specific search ranking as you like to call it it's it's it's a technique that's been used by Google and being in Yahoo for many years now to improve the relevancy of their results and you know answer you're realizing that they've got to look at more than just the words that someone types in and more than just the words that appear on listing that there are other little implicit signals that that we can get from or ANSI can get from a buyer and implicit signals it's a bit of a buzzword I don't like using it but really it's things like you know purchase history by a click patterns location of the buyer you know they may even get to stages like Google where they age where they look at time of day I don't know that as you're doing that yet but that could be another reason they may even eventually look at the device that you're searching from these are all things that help a search engine figure out what really is a good listening to show and what they do and I think what we've seen initially is they've released this and we've all gone all what is this rubbish this doesn't seem right to me but keep in mind they are they have machine learning that's going on in the background here and I saw that in one of the releases where they talked about that I wanted to call that out because what this is is it's like some fancy computers and nerds that have programmed it to look at all these little signals that are coming in from the buyers and to learn from it so the promise of machine learning is that it will get smarter over time so as more people search for 18-inch silver necklace and you know click on my listing they will start to get huh we're getting some pretty good signals from a potential buyer here and if they buy that listing after that search and that's a beautiful signal and if two weeks later or three weeks later they leave a five-star review guess what these are all beautiful signals to get back and the thing I like about it is it's going to make the experience with buyers much better that's gonna be good for our sellers because it means they're going to come back more often they're going to buy more often we've just got to figure out how the hell to deal with the fluctuating sales that so many of us have experienced since then so you know there's a lot of good reasons for changing these algorithms and personalizing the results the the thing that I really like about it is these are when I talk about some of the signals like Purchase History locations and so forth these are a lot harder for people to fake and that's a good thing I think for the Etsy marketplace too right and you know for those of you who who are having trouble kind of grasping this whole concept imagine you know think about how on Facebook if you recently or will even we use Google as an example I guess if you've searched something on Google have you ever noticed how you just kind of tend to get an ad for that product on Facebook or for example you know how how some search engines will favor you know certain links based on what you've searched in the past so for example maybe because I searched for a lot of dragon themed items on Etsy it's more likely that I'm going to start seeing dragon themed items on Etsy if that makes sense so it kind of helps if you know your target market it's gonna help you a lot because you're more likely to be seen by your target market it's just kind of like what Anthony was saying tools like the keyword tool and Etsy rank you know is showing you on page one but you might not be on page one for that result when you look it up right yep that's so - and you know it's a it's like a an impossible problem to solve because you're a seller you're going to you know it's a rank in to the rank checker or any other similar tool you're typing your keywords and you a new performer search there's no user information that's passed through that stage so and and how would you choose which user as well there's 30 million users to pick from you know it's personalized and it's not just personalized to individuals it also looks at people like you so if there are people in your town and they may be starting to favor those local results another google do that they could be looking at people with computers like you or screen resolutions I mean I hear a lot of people now going into incognito because it was a technique they were using before but now incognito doesn't hide your location it doesn't hide the browser that you're using and just hide your cookies so they still know your location they still know you're using Chrome or Firefox they still know you're in you know whatever screen resolution there are all these fingerprints that those advertising companies stole that you were talking about there they use the exact same technique so it makes sense for pet Seto to look at every possible signal that they've got about this person ago hmm okay so we know and what's the the example they put in there um I think they're q3 report it's laundry basket I think and they're starting to look at people that search for laundry basket and you if you're familiar with it there are two screenshots before and after and the first one is a whole bunch of stickers which you know those listings have laundry basket in there someone being nicely optimized in the second one you can see where the machine learning and the a I have started to kick in and and and it's realized that people when they search for laundry basket they're not looking for stickers they're actually looking for laundry baskets so they're it's starting to get smart already they're starting to put more of those laundry baskets in there so that's a that's not necessarily personalized directly to you because you've had a history of that but they've noticed that people who search for that are more likely to be going for the you know the physical laundry basket rather than a sticker so you know the algorithms of working in ways that are very hard to predict at the moment because this is all new to to us we're used to keyword will barely wrapping your heads around keywords they're all these other factors there that are in play now the rank checker is still good for validating your keywords so if you if you type in a keyword and you find you a listing in the rank checker and it's in the first couple of pages of results that's okay don't panic at least you know Ezio's matching you on those keywords but whatever reason they may not be matching you when you're searching or when you're going incognito and search but it treat it as yes you're doing well with your keyword research but get into your stats you know that's really where you have to be now you have to get right into your into your shop manager and look at your stats and go right I made this change on the fifth of the month now ten days later and oh yeah this looks better than the same period last month or something you know usual stats to validate and give you a little bit more confidence there and this isn't just at C rank right this is this is all tools that that do this that are affected because it's not your tool that's malfunctioning it's Etsy you know changing right it's there's no one here that's that's changing the results we show the results exactly a state as we get them from the Etsy API and Etsy a Etsy not deliberately withholding information from us it's just a technical impossibility to single out a person or a group at this point in time right that was one of the biggest struggles that a lot of people said that they were happening is they said you know Oh Etsy rank doesn't work anymore the keyword tool doesn't work anymore and I think that that's one of the main things that people are concerned about right now is they think that the that Etsy rank is just flawed and it's not working when in reality there's nothing there's no way for Etsy rank to predict the buyer patterns and the search histories of you know all of its users that's why all all Etsy based tools right now are kind of you know not as effective as they were before this big algorithm another thing that I was right about people were gonna think that SEO didn't matter anymore because of this kind of thing when obviously it still does matter it's just other factors are affecting it now right so what do you recommend now like with SEO what what should they be doing ginger you know many of our respects it's business as usual um you know really focus on finding good keywords try and empathize with the potential buyer and think about what they would be searching for and think about why I said earlier what would they be searching for just as they're out to buy something no right at the end of that that journey where they've gone from research to I'm ready to buy it right anticipate what they were searching for there it's gonna be long and very specific still do that you know that that's important you know the thing to remember is that at a very fundamental level if you don't have the right keywords in there and if you cannot match what was searched in your listing your listening is not going to show so you're still keywords are still at the heart I would be you know looking at other things as well like making sure you're in the right category that you've filled out all your attributes because I see signs that Etsy is going to go a little bit more Amazon like where you have for your filters down one side and you can start to narrow down your listings so fill them in and guess what when people are getting close to buying as well then narrowing down they're using those filters so don't think ah doesn't matter use them you know they talked about it in the seller handbook definitely get in there and use them these are still things if we we can still influence so go ahead and do that and the other thing is that don't do and that's what I said earlier don't try and artificially inflate your numbers know if you're into playing games and stuff like that be very very careful with that like but that really worries me nowadays you know it kills your conversion rates and that can't be a good thing and you know Etsy C is this that a million people are looking at this item and no one's buying it at C's thinking wow this item must be crap note everyone's looking at it nobody wants this thing so we're not gonna show it to anyone you know so so we have about a gazillion questions so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and start with Kelly Matthews and we'll uh anybody who asks a question before Kelly Matthews if it feels like we're skipping over you just resubmit your question and we'll do our best to kind of get back to it because we've just had so many so Kelly Matthews asked you were just saying that clumping is back can you explain in more detail what clumping is yep so when you perform a search to you would or previously you would get a nice variety of shops and listings and you know there's nice varieties good you get a lot of ideas and so forth now what a lot of people are reporting and I've seen this my wife is seeing this you can have cases where four or five listings or more from one shop can be seen on page one I personally think it's a terrible experience it lacks variety and and from a fairness perspective doesn't give other shops a fair go but that's what continues okay and and moon lovers jewelry said if I use beaded bracelet would searchers of beaded bracelets still find the item because bead is part of the word beaded or do I use both in titles and tags to capture buyers who search either way so I think what she's asking is are plurals do you know if plurals are affecting this new algorithm or should they try to stay you know straightforward and use a little bit of variation to appeal because I know Google accounts for plurals but do you know if Etsy yeah so you know I coulda sworn I saw something from Etsy on this last year but I haven't been able to find it of late but I'll talk about a general concept that search engines use and you touched on it there with the plurals they call it stemming and the process basically means it takes a long word and and chops off to the root stem so location locators low locating locate they all go back to a word like local or something like that beads beading beaters or go back to bead now what this means for you is that on a typical normal functions functioning search engine you will be considered in the result set even if you don't have quite the right spelling there it's considered the same root word so that's how search engines generally work as I said I don't specifically know how at sea work but I'm seeing patents that indicate that they do something similar there so that's as much as I can tell you though I hope that explains a the concept and what they do they write an EPS he's getting smarter I mean obviously as he's getting smarter these algorithms are changing and if they're trying to compete with any of the bigger search engines and they're integrating some of those qualities that the bigger search engines have it's a pretty good in to get or indicator that if not now then you know soon they'll begin you know keeping those things into consideration like plurals and so Katherine McMullen asked us copying the title and pasting it first in your description help or should you start right in with actual or with the actual description and I do that like I'm guilty of copying and pasting my title right in the top so that's a that's a great question from from a Etsy perspective but I don't think there's any direct negative effect there but I think there is some indirect influence here my recommendation is that first sentence of your description should always be a beautiful human friendly well worded sentence and I'll give you a couple of reasons why first of all if you just copy and paste the title put it in the first thing in your description people have already seen that if you then copy and paste all your tags and put them in your description as well people have already seen that they probably don't particularly care about your tags right so now they've got a whole bunch of text that they're not really interested in and then you've got all the good stuff what happens with people and human nature we're busy we're time poor we don't have a lot of time for juicing a whole bunch of rubbish and stuff we've already seen we skim over it and we lose interest and whatever's further down so really I would strongly encourage you to get your description into good shape let it start to help sell your product don't repeat stuff that they've already seen don't put a dump of keywords in there get it you know these are humans that are looking at this these are humans that are buying they're not bots that are buying so make it enticing to the human you know you've done the good work already you use good tags you've got a decent price you've got great pictures they've got so far and then they just start seeing stuff like that you know if they're indecisive at this point they might just you know go away you don't wanna do that you've still got their attention make good use of it and then from a Google perspective maybe copying and pasting the tag won't be seen as a terrible thing but if you would put your that the copying your titling that might be seen as a terrible thing but if you were to copy your tags in there that doesn't that just looks like keyword stuffing so doesn't like that at all no they've been very clear about that many times so don't do that you know just because you know there's a listing water feature in ANSI rank that will give you a maybe an extra point it'll bump you up from a seed or B because you put those keywords in there okay that's fine you you win points with NC rank but you don't win points with Google you know be smart about it I mean I know we're all busy we're gonna try and create this stuff and SEO is just but you know take a little bit of time here maybe a few minutes even you know just just to try and win that person over I mean it's like getting the person to walk up to your shop look in the window open the door and then you know and smells like dog or something like that I'm outta here you don't want to do that with your Etsy listing right so you entice them all the way until they're exhausted and and while on that topic again I've seen this a lot too people like to put in some pretty harsh return policies and things like that in there and you know what does a buy if I look at it my go I've got three days to ship this back to the buyer or a ridiculously small amount of time or you know there are all these other terms and conditions that seem really harsh I understand as a seller why you're gonna be harsh but as a buyer they look at that I run for the hills at that point you know to me it's it's like oh I don't want to deal with this person this person freaks me out I'm out of here so again you know get your first sentence beautifully worded you know followed up with things about the item that maybe you can't get from the picture dimensions weight you know it makes you look good restores hair whatever it does whatever it's great get that in there and then maybe the end if you've got to put your tough policies or whatever do that but don't leave with that sort of stuff and don't just copy and paste that's right and I mean you can also be gentle with that execution you know rather than in all all caps putting no returns ever you know you could say unfortunately due to the nature of our products we cannot accept returns and rather than you know putting up that big red flag and leading with that negativity you know you can you can do so artfully and not scare that buyer into thinking that you're just a big meanie um Megan Nichols asked oh I can answer this one just naming your photos with your keywords help not on Etsy because with Etsy you can go into your shop right now save one of your own Etsy photos and you'll see the new name that Etsy gives your photos they do that for a reason they rename your photos some you know some gibberish so if you are actually naming you know your product or your photo sterling silver necklace dot jpg it's just gonna get renamed don't waste your time unless you're doing it like on your own website and then things are a little bit different so um let's see Theresa asked do tags have to be in the same order as the title of it but I you know again I vaguely recall something in the Sailor handbook about it not that it doesn't matter but recently I was I was challenged by someone who really knows the SEO and they said I and that was saying I think it matters so I thought okay well I'll go back to the seller handbook and the help pages and try and find I couldn't find it anywhere so you know I don't like to spread conspiracy theories or something but it I haven't been able to find anything that says it helps or it doesn't help so might as well Nancy I'm on the fence there right so um and then let's see rule rules apparel did I get that right there get your that I see shops with great SEO but zero shop policies about info etc just filling out all of that information make a difference do it yes do it don't skip I mean again it's he being very clear about that so just do it it's it's I don't know what an hour of your time or something like that and it's applied across your whole shop if an SI say do it just do it yeah and I mean it's a service to your buyers because those people are buying a handmade item to connect with you as that artisan otherwise they would be shopping at Walmart you know so the more that you can put yourself into your shop show them your face show them your personality show them your brand image your brand personality you know all of those things I even talked about smile psychology a lot and putting your face in as many little places as you can all of those things can win that person over because ultimately if they're in your About section reading about you and they want to know you know who you are it's not because they care about your life story they're looking for a reason to either love you or to hate you and that is going to serve as that validation of whether they're going to agree with you as a person and the moral values that you're trying to sell in your shop so if you're in there just kind of blabbing about oh my whole life you know I played football and blah blah blah and I have two dogs but you sell hair bows that doesn't validate the product and it's not going to really leave that positive impression so well not to mention even even if it doesn't affect SEO for whatever reason I mean especially with the shop policies like why waste it right well I mean in you gets a kind of a way to cover your butt too like if you sell soap or jewelry like a things about allergies things about returns I mean that kind of stuffs all just gonna cover you in the end anyway right and you know and I think you're already saying this but it's about perceptions and you want to really give the buyer a good perception about your store your professional nature you want to be thorough and complete you don't wanna be seen as someone that takes shortcuts is a little bit sloppy because that may reflect on your well they may perceive that as reflecting on the quality of your workmanship and turn them off yeah do it right yeah and Stephanie Powell asked I think that this is going back to Etsy rank she ask what all counts against your listing grade on Etsy rank what are the factors that will determine that listing grade okay that's a great question I have a slide here which I'll crash up okay perfect [Music] perfect alright so is to be clear about the grades it think of it as other areas of opportunity other things I could be doing on top of what I've already done so far so this listing here scored an A you probably looking at it going why is that so oh I'll go through it so early earlier I mentioned about titles and getting your most powerful keywords into the beginning of the title so that's that's one thing that you know we need to form the habit of doing now when it comes to emphasizing the most important keywords in your listing and I talked about duplicating some of those words in your tags if you have done that so you've got say some keywords here or a tag here that's also near the beginning of your title you've got a green little tick here though you can't you can only fit so many in there right so you don't need to be striving to get all greens across here but try to get your most important tags with a green tick to me that that's that's one of the the first things to do this is a really significant thing that really plays to the the guidance of that Etsy has given us so sorry I was highlighting the wrong column there so if you've got those tags in the title that's great that's a good emphasis if you've got that tag near the beginning of the title that's even stronger emphasis so you know you've got a near the beginning of the title you've got a good book editing of tags that's win-wins you're gonna if you get a handful of those say three or four you're very likely to get a B or an A grade now when I talk about descriptions in here you know let's keep in mind that it doesn't have a direct influence on Etsy SEO it really has more of an impact on Google SEO so you know getting your tags into the description you know it's very easy as some people have done they've copied and pasted them in there that's that's ok you'll you'll take the box here you know you're just tricking a dumb algorithm you're not convincing humans as well so you know get the words in there you know it's it there's no real space limitations that you've got to worry about with the the description is much more generous than the title so get those words in there that stitch it into a nice sentence so if you actually know they'll think about this this may have been a be great but that's what you need to do get those key words get your title right get those strong words and in at the beginning of your title then as you go to figure out your tags figure out what you want to emphasize or double emphasized so find out the best ones get them in there that'll turn a lot of these green and I hear a lot of people where they're like struggling to get from a B to an A you know that really is just nine times out of ten that's when people just haven't put those words into into their description as well you know and they should all be relevant so you should be able to craft them into a nice human friendly sentence there and if anybody has trouble writing descriptions I know that that was one of the things that I had a lot of trouble with starting out I always recommend buying the book words that sell it's a great book it's not like a reading book it's a reference book with words and phrases that you can use to create detailed descriptions and it's just it's like a dictionary that you should always have open on your desk when you're writing those descriptions that way you can find more descriptive words and ways to sell that product it's called words that sell you can get a used copy on Amazon for like five bucks but that's a really great book to have to highlight to use over and over again so and then let's see Oh what would you how could someone having an issue logging into their account get a hold of you because Morgan has posted a couple times that she's having an issue getting into her account and I don't want her to think we're ignoring her send me an email Anthony it's e-ring calm or stalk me on my Facebook group but an email is better and I my phone buzzes every time I get an email so I'll see you there and I try help anyone that's got logging in itches as quickly as possible yeah you're extremely responsive she said that she sent you an email but she might have had the wrong email address so just make sure that you're actually you know typing that incorrect all right so daisy panda asked I've heard of a technique some people use of copying listings but adding a new set of keywords to get more exposure is that considered gaming the system as well well when you're copying a listing you're not you're not taking the the history of that listing away you know when you copy it you're literally just making a copy that's being perceived as a new listing correct that's how I read it I think it's just a tool to help you be a little bit more efficient I haven't heard anything from Etsy specifically about oh I would highly doubt that the metadata goes along with it right um let's see and then someone says how does this all affect a new seller I don't have a selling history yet uh yeah that's an interesting one so Oh Etsy have stated that new sellers have a neutral quality score I tried to find out a little bit more about that but they're very vague about it so what I'm suspecting is that you're not being punished for being a new seller but you're not being thrown up at the top straightaway and and there are good reasons for that I think that Etsy has a responsibility to buyers and there needs to make sure that you know these new sellers can be trusted it's it's a little harsh but I think it's fair in the long run they do I think Josh the CEO was mentioning that they are giving new sellers and new listings a little boost I don't know how long that is for but it looks like it's true so I think you're getting a little bit of love but not as much as you'd like or an established shop that's you know got a good five star review or five star score over a couple of years so you know hang in there it will get better stellar I cannot hear you can you hear me now mr. more decided to answer a phone call and ran away and then I muted my mic while I ran up the steps that I forgot to unmute it so yeah it's live um anyway that that kind of for those new sellers what you really need to be doing is focusing on that external marketing to get people direct to your Etsy shop not relying so much on that organic traffic and then in time once you start getting those sales and reviews and the things the FCE likes to see those are the things that are going to rank you higher in the long run and help contribute to your shops actual rank on Etsy and you know that's why I tell people don't focus so much on just getting that extra that organic traffic you know really focus on your funnel getting people into your funnel a mailing list Facebook groups Facebook communities just you know where you're spending your money throwing $5 and add you know on social media things like that are really gonna contribute in the long run to your success on Etsy because you're building that momentum so and I think that that's something that a lot of people you know just they want Etsy to do it all for them but it's not what I always tell people is that if you had a restaurant in the middle of the woods would you blame your landlord for not sending you customers no you would want to put out you know flyers and a big billboard pointing into the woods you know telling people that you know my restaurant is this way eat here you don't call up your landlord and blame them for not sending you traffic so that's beautifully important you know just to throw in a bit there work on getting a good marketing mix you know you touched on the social media and so forth keep in mind and this is especially true for new shops but older shops will tell you the same thing as well SEO can be a real slow burn sometimes you know if you get a few a day on the listing or something like that so you know be careful it should not be your only tactic for attracting users you know just because you may have seen something from Etsy that says quit your day job you know don't expect them don't rely entirely on them get your social-media happening you know if you've got merchandise that you'd like to ship up I think to what you were talking about earlier there Stella you know get it out of people that are ready to promote it and review it and hopefully mention it to their fans I think that's that's a great tactic as well and you know paid listings personally I'm a I'm a big fan of paid listings I think that it can be like a floodgate if you know how to manage listings correctly to try and diversify your your tactics for attracting people to your shop and Cindy says um let's see I heard on Marmalade that it was good to leave out dashes and commas in your title is this a good idea or not and I personally I think I use forward slashes in my shop to break up those keywords so is there any benefits or disadvantages to using commas slashes dashes um well I'll get out on you a little bit here I've worked on some natural language processing software and algorithms in the past and I can tell you now the punctuation really helps to break up and understand a sentence so if you were to look at I mean you can go and google this and you can look at embarrassing street signs with bad punctuation you can you can quite literally find a whole bunch of signs that absolutely sound the most ridiculous which I've known that that question in advance because I would have brought a few and put them into my eye I would say that's very risky unless that's come directly from ezio I would treat that very carefully by all means experiment and let me know if it works for you but that to me just knowing how those algorithms work I would think that you run the risk of words bleeding together and suddenly changing the meaning of a sentence quite dramatically right and then um Megan Nick wait Megan Nikhil Nicole's Nicole's Megan Nicole's I can't read the day she asks and I think we both kind of know the answer to this can the algorithm really read the photos and does having the plain background help that Google muffin dog know it can do an okay job but I yet to see algorithms that are perfect I definitely wouldn't rely on algorithms to distinguish the picture and I would be making sure that you use your words in your human judgement to describe your pictures in your items very well and I say muffin dog because there's a couple of images on Google where pictures of muffins and Chihuahuas were put together in a collage and they tried to get the you know the bots to detect the dog and they picked a few muffins I can tell you someone literally sent that to me this morning well I mean I mean when I was in the military we did some stuff with like the metadata that's attached to pictures are just depending on what device it was it was taken with a camera or a cell phone obviously there's metadata in the background of those pictures but I mean I've been high-lead I mean Facebook's just now implementing some good facial recognition software so that's he's gonna be a little pretty far behind on Ematic I think yeah I've seen them the the Bing Labs guys they're getting really good at image recognition you can upload pictures of people and it can tell you how they're feeling if they can actually get to the play tell you the sentiment of the person you know they're sad they're happy I have fun with all sorts of politicians and uploading them and trying to get into interpret what they're thinking right there it's it's definitely not perfect and the other thing to keep in mind is what's in the background of the image your brain will figure out very quickly and easily what the focal point is but this technology may also include things that are in the background so you know bicycles chairs guitars whatever it is in the background just be wary that that that may be in there I mean good oh and what I always talk about because I always recommend using that light or white background whether it be gray you know Ashwood a really light teal just light and that's not necessarily because I'm not teaching you guys that to trick you know Etsy search algorithms I'm telling you that because it's basic human psychology our eyes are drawn to what simple what's clean and what is less straining on the eye so when you're making your product the focal point of that photo without that distracting bright crazy background you know you're appealing to human psychology it's not about Etsy's algorithm it's about appealing to you know general human nature and how humans perceive those photos and I mean you can look up the like the rule of thirds on Google and you know read into that a little bit more when staging those photos for your marketing and things like that it all plays into a bigger picture not just you know SEO SEO is just one slice of cake out of this big huge cake so your your product should be the focus like there's nothing wrong with having you know one of the pictures in the gallery being you know let's say you make pillows your pillow is on a couch and a log-cabin nice pretty background but then obviously shouldn't be the main picture that you're using to show off your product you want your product to be the focal point of the actual setup right and it looks like Jillian Clemens asked I will say that now you can make your shops a one-day ship it will increase your sales because yeah you're in this Amazon environment now people want it fast we're willing to pay for that shipping good god I know I kind of here's the thing about that I feel my personal opinion about you know putting that on there um if I want a product badly enough I don't really mind the weight and that's kind of the difference between Etsy and we'll even say handmade at Amazon is that people kind of know what to expect of Etsy and when it comes to like the free shipping the next day shipping things like that I don't think that that's really going to alter unless you have a very close competitor who's offering nearly the same product and but that shouldn't be the determining factor whether someone should buy you're determining factor don't compete in pricing don't compete and shipping compete in the over all quality of your shop your products your branding because ultimately that branding you know not just the visible branding but the invisible branding in your shop is what is going to determine your rank in that marketplace and we're not just talking about where your position you know SEO is we're talking about actually gaining that status of being that Alpha brand or people are turning to you as the number one shop in blank industry you know there's no other sellers that do what I do right now that have the reputation that I have in fact the one that we had we actually unintentionally ran out of business because we had all of those aspects of a positive brand so you know when it when it comes to the one-day shipping and all of that if someone wants your product badly enough unless it's a time-sensitive item or holiday time I don't think that it affects people that much and that's that's one of the one-day shipping I mean you're making a pretty hefty commitment with something like that like if somebody places an order Friday night at 11:50 in the evening and you had plans for Saturday well now you're gonna have to pack up that order and get it out or somebody like us where we live in an area sometimes it snows so much that there's no way we're gonna get to the post office and now we're screwed because they were stuck to a commitment on one day shipping and it's not like you're ordering like a car part that you need like tomorrow because you got a road trip or something like that you're buying so peanut if you're the kind of person that's buying you know the the Valentine's Day presents a day before Valentine's Day you've already got a problem yeah do you have any opinions on that Anthony I know we went on a tangent there it's an interesting one I'm I can only talk from what I've observed with the feedback that my wife gets and she'll get one person a week maybe asking about that and you know I'd say it's probably one or two percent of inquiries where people will just say I need this by Friday and you know they're ordering you know Wednesday or Thursday it's a very small percentage so I wouldn't turn yourself inside out and especially you know if what you're making takes time you know that's it you know people should be understanding that Etsy is you know about handmade okay there's a lot of reasons they now - but I would certainly hope that they get it he's losing his mind over here because one of the one of the comments I don't know if you saw it says keepers at Homestead said what do you mean the right keywords anyone selling a necklace is going to call it a necklace not a chain for decorating in that I'm gonna start calling it for this I love your chain oh I need to put up a listing with that chain for decorating a neck how about we will test that theory for you know homestead yeah I would I would not do that I mean if you've got the the mean the meemers out there would buy that alright um Ken cats asked how can you have a long or have long tail keywords when you're limited to 20 spots and your tags that is not good for long tail keywords yeah hey can I recognize that name yeah you're gonna struggle a little bit there and I would say you need to split those long toe keywords into two tags right and that I that's what I do you just put them in order like if you have a through a three word tag you just take the last word and make it the next thing I mean what makes sense right I think I mentioned it earlier about the word combinations if you've got that long tail keyword you put it in your in your title if you like you put it in the tags it's he's gonna look at all the words in there and it's going to assemble them reassemble them jumble them around and and find all those combinations i I still think it's worthwhile splitting I don't see any harm in that like for instance chain for decorating a neck you do chain for decorating a neck I think that yeah chain chain for decorating and then a neck you know that way you can split it up when you're selling your chains for decorating and let's start a shop where that's all I sell chains for decorating necks neck decorations Amy prophet asked late coming in to chat that's okay if this hasn't been asked yet for the free service do you get just three keyword lookups per week or per month I think is that marmalade that you're thinking of what I don't know about those guys but you can use you can use the keyword tool as many times as you like yeah I've never seen I've never seen using the tools yeah I've never seen you limit the amount of times that someone it's unlimited use but you know please don't abuse it either you know we've all got to use it all right let's see Nana's gone loopy craft and crochet arts whoo that was a mouthful in terms of SEO just before they buy should we niche down to adding colors of things so I think she means like um I don't know if she means out in colors of products to her shop or if she means adding those colors into the keywords hmm I know adding colors into the keywords obviously you know what would help a bit for people searching for that specific color you know of the product so I think there's a couple of things that come to mind I hope this answers the question but I know that in some of the attributes now you you had the option to pick a color it's usually fairly general it's probably blue or red or something like that I would I would suggest picking that but then in either in your title or in your tags get into the more specific color so akram aquamarine or any other sort of subtle variation that that looks like that I put those into into the tags or descriptions right oh you're fine and then um let's see Mont or wire I hope I pronounced that right said it's been said the description should be written at a grade school level is this correct like descriptions like your descriptions like dumbing them down to like a grade school level and making them like really simple for the sake of translation I would say maybe no I I would probably on the simpler side just because there may be people that are watching that or looking at the listing that you know not native English speakers so right you know I think you can convey it in Nice simple words obviously if it's a technical product or there are some specifications you probably want to get specific there I think it may slightly help and there's illiterate people in the world and there are illiterate so that is true that's very true just hop on Facebook and I'm sure that everyone can agree with that but I also wouldn't just put it like you know this is a necklace this is a filmer necklace this necklace is fk1 like kindergarten you one toy you probably want to get a little bit higher than that yeah Jennifer neck change for next and then Sandra McDonald asked does renewing a listing really help us or does that these algorithms actually look to see if there was a sale that resulted in the renewal that's a brilliant question and I suspect that it has changed lately I ran some tests last year and you know various times throughout the year and I was seeing clearly listings jumping up to the top of page one after a renewal but and there's a big but here they don't stay there for very long especially if it's a new listing or if it's a keyword that you're not very relevant for so treat it carefully you can burn a lot of $0.20 that way but last time I checked you were you were getting a little bump but you know my wife's tried that and I think that that tactic is becoming less effective by the day I think more and more people are using it and I think that possibly Etsy have maybe softened the recency favoring in the in the ranking a little bit but and that reminds me I have another SEO expert that has asked me to run some tests so I'll run though she's giving me some great keywords so I'll run that test over the weekend and share that share the results back with you soon that's an excellent question yeah that would be awesome and you know one thing that I tell a lot of people is that you know for me it's easier because all I sell are skeleton key necklaces that's literally all that's in my shop you won't find anything else there and I put it in all of my listings it's in my you know all over the my storefront itself it's even in my About section so when I have this listing that usually sells every single day that is usually on page one and I renew that listing if it you know say it hasn't sold in three days and it drops I can usually renew and get that listing back to page one but you also have to consider that that listing has hundreds of sales that listing is kind of standing as the number one item in my shop that Etsy is recognizing for those keywords so I I think that it kind of just depends because like he said if you're trying to rank for you know baby girl hair bow but you traditionally make diaper covers and you just have one hair bow that you're really trying to keep on page one you might be able to get it there but do you really want to pay that twenty cents a day to renew constantly just to keep that one listing there so usually what I recommend is that if you have a best seller that's selling a lot and for some reason you go through a dry spell where that listing Falls that should be the listing that you choose to renew and monitor it watch it because it can fall in a matter of hours for my listing personally the one that sells almost every day I can usually keep it in position one for you know several weeks and then if those sales drop on it if I go three or four days without it selling it will drop back down own but then I renew it and it floats back up so I think it really just depends it depends on the new algorithm changes where Etsy's gonna put it for me personally though and checking both in an incognito window and things like that trying on multiple computers multiple desktops I can usually get it close to position one page one but like I said I've got momentum behind that listing so I think that that kind of contributes to so yeah let's see and then do renewals still help after you update tags and titles to get the to check you out sooner basically she wants to know if the bots are kind of scoping you out sooner okay so there's two parts to that one first of all when you change your titles and descriptions and tags I ran some experiments on that and so did a couple of other SEO experts that I chat to and Etsy seemed to be picking them up almost immediately now there is another problem that you need to be wary of though you may you may have nailed a certain category where you're number one you but if you change your keywords remember that it's like a new listing for that term if you've not used it before so you may get back to a neutral score for that that term so just be careful when you change your tags around you may suddenly see a drop in views because of that when it comes to renewing same deal you'll you will be bumped straight back up for a brief period of time and again I'm gonna validate this over the weekend to make sure it's still true but that's what I was seeing up until recently so you know theoretically it would work you could change the tags get a bit of exposure I like what you said a few minutes ago style or about your you know your best listings your best sellers the ones with the highest conversion rates I think if you were to look at which listings to renew I'd want to I'd want to back those ones as having the best chance of staying on page one the longest I think there are that's a smart choice when it comes to picking which one to bring you free and that's because FC is favoring those listings you know Etsy is getting a portion of that sale they're gonna promote the items that they know are selling or that have high reviews the items that are more likely to generate more sales because that means more money for them you know they're a business - they have to make money - so and then let's see Megan Nicole's asked does changing your banner and photos in your about sick or section help show Etsy that you're active I've heard that a lot that like changing you know tweaking your your actual shop itself shows Etsy that like you're active and that you're an active seller because you're changing that frequently have you heard anything about that or is that kind of just just speculation nothing yeah yeah that's that's what I've heard too so I mean I'm sure it doesn't hurt always polish those things when you can but if you don't need to change them you know don't change them Janet said I post fictional stories created about the product my gems are in the fantasy realm is this a good idea or a bad idea and for example she did like a collection launch that had this whole story behind the marketing and things and she created all these really great graphics and she writes the descriptions to go along like in this neat little story so it I mean as long as you're using keywords and you're describing what that product is I don't yeah I mean I mean you're I mean yeah if it's appealing to your target market I guess that because I mean I've seen big shops that do that big you know not Etsy shops but actual you know websites that do that where they tell like a little story but it just depends you have to consider the organic market too if someone's clicking on your shop for the first time they click on that listing having never experienced your marketing before and they see that there's a story yeah sure it's not cringy that's I think that would be the big thing just make sure that it's not cringy to read through right and lengthy lengthy yet the other bit I'd say is make sure that it's it's clear and obvious what you're selling upfront but I like it I think it's a very interesting tactic it sounds like it appeals to the human side a lot but that sort of stuff I'd let your shop stats tell the story you know maybe create a similar listing with maybe a more contemporary sort of description and see how that goes you know do a bit of an a/b test and see whether it works or not I would I know it sounds very interesting it to me I think it would be something that I would personally find appealing and interesting but yeah that's just yeah and it stands out you know it's gonna be if someone's reading a hundred listings you know trying to go shopping you know picking this product and they notice that this seller took the time to write this really neat little mythical story that gets them in that shows that they care about their products right putting that attaching the message behind the product you know so it's a perception thing and if it's getting the views and hopefully you know your condition rates pretty good right and then let's see moon lovers jewelry asked what time frame does the best sellers report cover under seller reports will you be adding a full conversion rate report maybe all time items or all items and for all time okay that's a great question and you know I've been playing around with that report it's it's very cool and a little bit buried an Etsy ring but what it does this is at the moment it only analyzes your active listings but I like what your what your asking there about all-time listing so I'm gonna take that away and see see what I can do I'm doing were there any other asked him that question oh no I think I think that that was it um let's see getting the keys for next let's see is this a question thank you I think this jumped down I think you need to scroll back up I know that's why I was someone hate get going here you still got a while to go oh my goodness it's all up we're okay we were right about here sorry everybody mag M said I reopened my shop after a couple years of inactivity started by renewing listings our renewed listings showing less than new ones I have a five-star rating I think that we kind of already answered that but we do hear that question a lot I you know I've been at inactive for a while should I just create a new shop or you know maybe you've been like off for two years is it a good idea to create a new shop and start fresh or should they keep that you know that sales number and kind of you know just tweak their existing shop that way they can you know keep that little tag been around since what 2012 or something I think it I probably keep it but I haven't seen anything from from anteed that encourages or discourages either way there but I look at it and I think you know you've got a bit of history there as a buyer if I to go in and look at a shop and see zero sales and maybe one sale I'd be going yeah maybe I'll trust this other shop that's been around longer and you know has got a hundred sales right yeah I do that too you know when I'm shocked I I see a shop that just opened up and they're you know no buys are only a couple sales in that shop I usually you know I'll put it aside a while and wait and let because people ultimately going back to that psychology thing people avoid anything that has a risk attached to it and minimizing that risk in any way that you can is what is going to make someone make that purchase when they realize that there is no risk attached to it that you know that goes right along with having things like return policies and all of that so any way that you can minimize a risk and showing that other people are buying the products reviewing the products that you've been there for a long time it kind of shows buyers that someone else took that initial risk for you and you can trust based on the reviews that they've left so I don't think it hurts at all I hear that question a lot though um Chelsea Barden asked how long should I test a keyword to make sure it's bringing in traffic so like what what's the timeframe that someone should be testing a keyword before they change it I can Wow good question how patient are you and what time of year is it because if you're testing letters in the middle of summertime you may be wanting to test that for three or four months yeah I don't think there's a right or wrong answer there if it's an evergreen product I'd be saying you should see a result within maybe 14 days some people have been speculating that it takes Etsy 30 days to give your listing a quality score so maybe you want to wait out the full 30 days and maybe a few more but you know if you're getting into maybe several months that's that's probably enough to say it's time to try a new word right and I usually when I test a keyword that I think is really gonna do well I apply it to a few listings and I test it for you know I usually test it for about two months but also keeping in mind that I've been selling for six years so 2 months isn't really a long time for me and I don't do it to all of them it's not like I go and change all my listings and then I wait for two months you know I do just a couple at a time and watch them so it really just depends on your patience I think right and I think we're just doing regular analysis here like after the initial process a you have a product launch after the initial launch you let the the lust of the new launch get out of the customers mind that kind of thing and you have say five or six in your inventory and say yeah say after that initial outburst of sales from your launch goes by and it takes you I don't know maybe it's been two months and things are calming down and say it takes you you know maybe every ten days that product sells on average and you change that listing and you don't see a difference then maybe it didn't make a difference if it's starting to sell every five or six days on average then you've done something good with that listing or if it's selling 15 to 20 days then you know you've done some damage just regular analysis right just time-based analysis and let's see domestic platypus asked oh this is a good one assuming common a little bit of meth assuming common connecting words of two and three letters like a the and of aren't really included factors in SEO is there any advantage or disadvantage to including them in tag so maybe I can't even think of a good decent example of that like like you throwing in the word like the mate not that you guys should be making her using Game of Thrones in your tags because HBO will come after you but that would be like an example of should you put just game Thrones or should you put like the full thing Game of Thrones even though of might not actually be looked at so I can tell you how search engines work in general I can't tell you specifically about it because I don't know but the the general practice that search engines go through is they will break down the words in the page and the words and the query into tokens and words like off and thee and a they're considered stop words and they they're thrown in the trash they're not considered any any more those words that left over they're the ones that they really put focus on so from a Google and a Bing perspective you know it's gonna make no difference whether you have them in there or not in your descriptions you still want to make sure you've got well-formed grammatically correct sentences so make sure they're in there but I think in your tags at least from a Google perspective you're safe and if I'm not mistaken Etsy does perform that way as well but I need to run a couple of quick tests to confirm and I doubt anybody's doing any in depth like specific boolean searches for Etsy products I don't think the just like he said I don't think they matter that much yeah and let's see lucky Stamper said when doing a description I use a friendly description to start and even how you might wear the jewelry and with what then under that bullet point then under that bullet points for a specific description is this a good or a bad idea so I think the she writes a like a paragraph about how she might pair that piece of jewelry with you know other outfits and the fou-fou description and then she puts just bullet points with like the necklace length and the supplies used in things like that you know absolutely I don't think of a better way to do it you know you you get them in enticed with a nice warm up sentence and then you get into the specifics which is a very easy to read format with the bullet points I think that's a great way to do it right and you know that's gonna help a lot too with people who are there there are tons of different learning styles reading styles a lot of people want to read a paragraph a lot of people want to skim and just get to the basic points you know there they might be reading that long fufu description that you write and the whole time just saying okay yada yada yada and get on with it because they just want to know how long is this frickin necklace they don't care about the foo-foo so I think that you're appealing to two entirely different types of people when you do that so yeah I would say that also is definitely a great idea um let's see I was finding that I couldn't okay this is joke earner I was finding that I couldn't find my listings when searched even with the comma and space afterward but I had my keyword repeated in so I went back and added a comma a comma there too and it came up so they're saying that they added that they weren't finding things for a search result and they added commas and that helped they were able to find themselves after doing that so I mean if you test it and it worked you know that just that's your may be tested again you know if don't don't change everything based on one test test things multiple times because you know things could just be coincidence you make sure that you're actually testing multiple listings before you go and make a big huge change to your shop that you might have to go back and spend hours changing back later so yeah that kind of goes along with what we talked about earlier let's see Oh Cindy I think we kind of talked about this before but Cindy Martin asked I had a listing in the number three position on page one for almost a year then suddenly it died - page - I changed nothing on the listing any ideas that kind of goes along with the the changes in the search algorithm and you know think about all the other people who are renewing their listings you know if they're diligently renewing their listings that might pop up above your so there's a million factors that could determine that it's you know if it's just if it's a best-seller and it's already doing well you could try the renewal technique to see if it bumps you but right now there's really no saying exactly what could have happened do you have any comments on that or I probably wouldn't panic immediately if I can't see my listing on page one because again you know it's your tailoring the results to what they think I'm gonna buy and I'm not gonna buy my own shop item so I initially at least I wouldn't panic with that but I would go in and check the stats and see if there have been some if it poorly you know some sort of correlation between the drop in page you've seen Anna drop in sales or a drop in views hopefully use a fairly consistent in which case business as usual if the views have dropped as well and you know maybe you need to have a look at what else has changed is it is it that specific word I mean are you looking at the right search term that drives most of your traffic so if you can get that from your keyword stats you know make sure you're focusing on the right word there are other factors as well as he's got a I don't know how many people have seen this but they've got a article in the seller handbook about what to do when sales drop and you know they talk about all the other possible factors that are out there as well you know maybe something isn't as cool as it was two or three years ago maybe people started discounting and things like that it's really hard to say whether it's it's something to panic about but check your stats first we had it and then we had a couple of questions between vintage and one-of-a-kind well yeah David Wolfe asked most of my items were one-of-a-kind do you have any advice for those of us who sell one-of-a-kind items that's like a big topic everyone freaks out you think onto that mag saying that you know vintage sellers are they at a disadvantage to people that are you know crafted items and I mean I would have to say definitely as far as SEO comes because you don't have repeat right you don't have repeat sales of one particular listing that listing isn't building history yeah sales and reviews and things like that so I mean it's gonna be the same concept for one-of-a-kind you don't you don't have a product that's gonna sit there and build and consistently add onto itself agreed I think the living the living rock the playing field levels when you are deeper in in the vintage category once you're in with other vintage listings and I think the keywords will start to have more of a play here but you know I don't know enough about being teaching one of a kind how as he handles those two to really give any great advice there sorry guys well and that's fine you know when you're making vintage you know selling vintage products selling one-of-a-kind products I think that for vintage what you really need to keep in mind is that if somebody's searching for you know vintage Pyrex dishes they're going to be using those keywords so just get your keywords as close to what you're actually selling with vintage there should be you know things like product codes sk use and you know just anything or what am i thinking of what's the number the number of the product number on the sticker for original products do your research on that product that you're reselling try to find you know the product number for that item because yeah serial number darn it I knew that brain just totally we were both serial no you asked me to quick find the serial numbers for those products because someone who is you know we have a friend who was just crazy about collecting Pyrex old vintage Pyrex and she knows everything about Pyrex and she Scouts for Pyrex so if there was a piece that she was looking for and you had that serial number in your listing you know or the mark I do that with guitars nobody sells like an old-school guitar and they're like oh I'm only cylinder for three hundred dollars and it's like a five thousand dollar old-school guitar like knit yeah I can I have the serial so I can contact the manufacturer and ask if it's legit right so I think that those things help a lot because then you're actually finding the people who are searching for your products I don't think that one-of-a-kind sellers you're a kind of a disadvantage but when it comes to SEO but that just means that you need to work on your external marketing if you can't if you can't win with SEO then bump up that external marketing really be a public figure on social media and position yourself as that artist that people want to follow and that people want to go you know visit their shots that's why we say like with your the course like there's a reason why one of a kind of vintage we don't recommend you guys getting the course because it's a whole different ballgame it's a whole different part of Etsy that you're fighting against different things because you're not the only one of a kind' sellable that's at a disadvantage compared to us with SEO they all are right so so you're just have to fight in different ways and he's talking about the handmade Academy which is the course that you guys begged and begged and pleaded me to start working on for you so we have and there aren't any details on when that will be available it's gonna be a while we're still working on it but that's what he's talking about because it's not gonna be for one-of-a-kind sellers I will be creating something later for one-of-a-kind sellers but this course will not be is so alright so it is 135 do you have a cap like a time limit cap that you'd like to I mean because honestly we would be we know almost oh I guess we are artists because we'll try to kill this pilot maybe like 15 more minutes we'll try to we could try to get this done you you want to try to finish in like the next 15 minutes and get the last of the questions finished up or do you have that kind of time I I think 15 minutes will be fine okay alright well we'll give it 15 minutes then guys and you know if you have any like last-minute dire questions that you need to be answered go ahead and post them but other than that we're gonna try to finish what we have so far so that way because we've been here for quite a while so um sandy barn-door design studio asked so let me understand the grades on FDA are based on keywords I have so many low grades yeah hello I mean if it's a B I wouldn't worry too much if it's a C probably you can get good sales with C's as well if you've got an e you're probably missing some tags so that that's a quick win and an easy opportunity for you to go and correct so you know I probably need a little bit more detail responding questions that there feel free to shoot me an email and I take a little bit field listing here and there yeah alright let's see here and then um well digital mayor asked and this would I actually have a video on this I sell a lot daily but my sales don't reflect the number of feedbacks I receive is there a way to even the numbers for feedback I have a video called the four messages that you should be sending your Etsy customers and this video covers almost a warmup period where you're actually messaging that customer right after they place that order to let them know when you're gonna be shipping the product you're creating that positive connection you're sending them another message it letting them know when that product was shipped that way they know to expect it rather than just letting Etsy do the work by sending you know that automatic message that they send and then when that product actually arrives to them if you need that feedback messaging them and just saying hey you know I saw your order arrived just wanted to pop in make sure everything's okay make sure that there was no damage or anything you know if you have time leave me a review if not you know no biggie so that video you can find it in my past videos that's not really a SEO question though so joy Roberts does have a good question though she asked with tags do I use I assume she makes candles do I use Rose candle flower candles scented candle or just candle once as a tag is that keyword stuffing I don't believe it si have our own record as saying this is our definition of keyword stuffing so I can't say conclusively one way or the other to me I it seems reasonable but I'd be more concerned about is that relevant to the to the listing so if it's a rose candle it's a rose candle if it's rose-colored or red those variations might be fine as well so I'm not hearing alarm bells but just keep it relevant don't try and put too many candle variations in there just for the sake of it make sure it's relevant to the listing so I'm sitting on the fence there a little bit but I hope that helps a little right and then Sarah Bergman asked should we always have occasion themed and holiday fig or filled out does it limit our reviews anywhere by selecting specifics there are not always the best selections wonder of choosing one versus leaving blank you know for where Etsy kind of updated all that worry we have all those niche down things and what I've heard is that it can only help but it can't hurt have you heard anything similar I I'm with you I believe that it would only be beneficial and to be honest when people I talked about that journey that purchase making journey early on when you're researching when you're comparing more often than not what I've seen when I was the manager of being shopping was when people started using filters they were getting close to making a decision so I would use them because you want to try and catch those people they're they're serious buyers hmm yeah they getting ready to buy so if it's if it's appropriate if it's relevant put it in there right okay and then let's see Theresa asked I think that she means she went on vacation but she asked I took a two-week break and put shop on vacation mode yeah and I haven't been able to get my or get back to my average visits and I've seen a lot of clumping as you explained earlier there's a lot of people who ask about if vacation mode hurts you or you know because some people say that they're just shop has bumped off the face of the earth when they went on you know a short vacation do you have any insight on vacation mode or how that affects your ranking well I can only speak from when my wife's gone on vacation she's noticed when she comes back that there is a little weird period where sales just unlike what they used to be but she's always bounced back every single time and so you've just got to you know suck it up for a few days maybe a week I don't know Theresa is still messaging there but that that's what we've noticed about a week maybe two at the most and then it you should be getting back to normal the only other thing to keep in mind is when you went on vacation so if you went on vacation at the end of December and came back three or four weeks later well you know you just you've just left at the end of the prime shopping season so you will naturally have a slowdown so if that's happened to you I probably wouldn't panic that's normal seasonality but just the reiterate I know see why shop come back from vacation back to normal sort of sales volume within about two weeks right and you know if anybody has any doubts about where their ranking things like that if if the rank has dropped I mean it never hurts to renew those listings just to see just to try to see if it helps you you know to remind Etsy like you know I'm back I'm here everything's renewed everything's ready to go um but you know I don't think that there's any significant evidence that you know will actually say that your shop is gonna fall off the face of the earth I think it's just all about the work that you put in after you get back rather than just opening the shop back up and sitting there you know keeping up with marketing and things like that you actually reminded me of something that I I've observed I don't have a lot of data on this but when I mentioned earlier about the the testings that I did with the renewing way back and I would see this short spike where people who jumped up to page one keep in mind if you're renewing you may want to experiment with renewing listings around about the time when people are at their computer so if you're in a panic of 1 a.m. on the west coast and going oh geez I've got to renew everything probably not a good time to do it you know wait till you know the next day and try and catch people on the East Coast as well you know try and it looks like as a short live benefit so try and pick your time wisely during lunch breaks when people are on their computer after dinner something like that but not too late in the evening when right and there's tons of like info graphs and things like that that you can just do a quick google search to see what times in certain areas that people are online and if they're on their phone if they're on a desktop there are tons of you know different websites that can provide you with that information based on where you're selling at um no I'm actually not sure what this acronym stands for so you might school us if you know what our TJ is asking we use we use USPTO quite a bit are there any plans to make USPTO search from within ranked pro with the term being looked for versus leaving the page to type in the question the trademark lookup tool [Music] you know I looked into that a while ago I didn't see a API that looks friendly I didn't actually I don't recall seeing any API at all but I'm not sure I would do that I mean if we suddenly get a whole lot of comments saying yes yes and do it I can certainly investigate that I think it'd be neat but at this stage just linking off there it is okay um let's see and then um let's see Roya asked me if I can keep the chat with the video because Renee Christina done that in a few of her video somehow that's actually not a YouTube feature Roya so I'm not quite sure how Renee would have done that but I can't keep the chat for reuploads of q and a's but I can ask Renee about that definitely if there's something that I've missed um let's see Cheyenne it is it Cheyenne Cheyenne Garcia asked hi guys I'm wondering if you're going to bring back shop critiques on Etsy rank it helped me as a new seller having a guideline um shop critique on Etsy rank removed sorry you ruined her life I actually removed that about two months ago there weren't many people going in there but look you know it if I must say oh I honestly thought that people weren't getting much value out of it so away I took it down so uh I apologize I'll bring it back yeah I think if it's missed and for sure okay perfect like another this next one will probably be our last question and we'll just get into final comments yeah okay and then let's see Deb asked can you comment on the use of LSI latent semantic indexing word usage and trying them to our main keyword or maybe using a longtail keyword string I think I know that did so the last nine beginning with it yes she's in your group I did what yeah that was a mouthful using latent semantic indexing word usage yep and tying them to our main keyword or maybe using in a longtail keyword string we're all just sitting here like this is one of those questions that we needed before the stream so we could like we need a dictionary and I think you actually prepped me for this one so I should know it'll be better you really caught me off guard it's alright my head's fried how about how about um ah let's see what that's more of a private message question anyway because most of the other people in here aren't gonna understand any of what that means regardless why don't you go ahead and post that in the Sen group because I know you're in there and maybe give us a dictionary definition of that acronym to make sure that we get that right um so I'd answer I'll go ahead she's pretty awesome she's one of the top current contributors to the group and I'm so embarrassed now but unless I'm mistaken she's got her hands on a very interesting Google course on AI and LSI so and apparently for all levels as well so I'm gonna be checking that out it sounds like dibs already benefited from that greatly awesome I believe Deb is the reason that I actually messaged you for the first time she's the one who told me to message you she said will do okay so since we couldn't get her question I do have why I'm gonna go ahead and do this one we'll go ahead and do this one since we couldn't answer Deb's because I think it's a good question and it's been repeated a couple of times what are the three most overlooked features an Etsy rank Pro that we should be maximizing its you so what are like three like top Etsy ranked Pro features for anybody who's thinking about joining Etsy ranked Pro which if you want to talk about the price point of that like it is an amazing tool that you don't have to pay a whole lot for um okay well that's a great question thank you for asking so I think the top feature for me is the competition section there is a sales report in there and this is something that my wife had used for a long time just to understand how she was going and benchmarking her shop with her competitors so you know she'd have a good run maybe five or six items were sold you know every day for four or five days in a row and then it would drop down to one and she panicked could be like what's going on and that's what this feature does it allows you to pick up to 20 of your peers or competitor shops and you can then each day see how many sales they've they've had once you've added them in there give it about 24 hours and then it will update real time for you so you can go in there and see at 9 a.m. you know and we're having a crappy day or am i doing really well you know and I love this feature I get a lot of great feedback from it because people go thank god it's not just me that's having a bad day or I'm having a great day and everyone else they're tanking so you know I'm king of the world for a day it is a great benchmarking feature and it it really helps I think avoiding panic you know if you think that your sales are tanking because it's you know the 30th of December and you start doing crazy things with your listings your upper 3/m tweaking your your tags renewing and doing every trick you've got at your disposal you may not need to and that that's why this feature I released it out for everyone in the program to have access to so that they can go in there have a look at it see what the competitors are doing and go oh it's alright today I don't need to panic that's that's the key thing there the other benefit is if you see one of your peers doing really well you know going a little bit of spying you can go check out their shop on Etsy and go hmm what are they selling lately what are they renewed lately are their new products I should be considering adding to my line of products and things like that so that that's probably the one that I really liked the most and get the most positive feedback about yeah and I love that school too because I mean you know when he said you can see what your competitors are doing a lot of people are like oh I don't want to copy my competitors but you're not necessarily copying you're just taking what they're doing and making it like a gazillion times better and I believe that I believe it was Picasso who said and I've used this quote a million times and I still haven't fact checked it but I believe it was Picasso who said good artists copy great artists steal and it's not necessarily that you're stealing what exactly what they're doing you're stealing their idea and you're making it a gazillion times better to climb the marketplace so I think that that is a great tool that you guys should be using you know on a weekly basis especially if you don't know why today you're doing great or you know why tomorrow you're doing terrible it's gonna show you if everyone's doing terrible within your industry so and then are there two more tools that you want to add to that list so the keyword tool I love this because you've got so much extra information now and then you've got data sources from Etsy from Google and from being so you you're getting diversified opinions on search volume and popularity and trends in there now so just the other day I launched the the longtail graph in there which will tell you whether you've got a whether you've found a keyword that that sits in the longtail and where it sits in the longtail I love longtail words because I feel that there is a higher chance that a longtail word is that sort of searched and that people are entering when they're about to buy but they're also bad longtail keywords as well some of these ones that never gets a store gets searched ten times a year you're not gonna get rich on on those sort of keywords so it'll give you an idea some sort of perspective around around that and you can look at the graph there and and get a sense of whether you've picked a good good word or not if you like I can share my screen actually probably a good idea with the dinosaur yeah he's not on this onebut oh no I love the dinosaur Hugh Disney let me do this feel like I'm doing a sales pitch and I'm not a good sales guy so bear with you no you're totally fine I think everybody everybody is more than eager to yes I'll give you a peek into it so this is the long tail graph that I'm talking about so I just did a search for gift for Mom it's three words you'd probably say it's a tail a long tail keyword generally but it's you know it's if we're talking about the dinosaur we're probably right around the shoulder right here so he gets a fair amount of searching that goes on we also have the the search trend and this is this is coming from from being and it gives you an idea of how often it is being searched by people out in the wild and you know being I don't know that many of you use being as a search engine but the people that do they have the same searching habits as people on Google and on Etsy so if you see something that's doing well here it should also apply to Etsy and Google when you can use this these keywords and this data to do things beyond just Etsy as well so if you've got a blog where you've got a Shopify site you can do your keyword research here and then go and apply it to those pages as well but my my point here is you've got a trend you can see when it's peeking around here so what do you know give forum um in in in May peaked last year I'm guessing that's Mother's Day and you're probably on another peak around December so you can sort of see when search terms are hot and when they're not the other thing that I like to show people is you get full analysis of the tags or related tags that are found in the listings that we analyze so you can see a whole bunch of tags and we give it a grading and competition you know so if you if you decide to avoid competition you may want to select something that's that's maybe more of a medium level of competition and same with demand demand is really how much buyer demand is out there again we base this on on being we've we've done a lot of statistical analysis work and we try and figure out where those words reside so you know you want to try and get something that's got a little bit of demand in there when it gets very low you probably have a word that could be a little weak not necessarily bad it could still have good words that matched with other words and your tags could could turn into a great success but yes it's a little warning there's also engagement which tells you you know how likely people are to engage with those key words and we've also got this little long-tailed indicator now as well so I can say okay well show me all the gift mum related tags that are also longtail keywords so these are the sort of tools that you know I'm thrilled to give the pro members access to to really help them figure out you know what's the right keyword for me I'm down to one tag left which one should I choose should it be this one or that one you can go into the tool and figure out what has the higher probability of attracting users and buyers and and this pro membership that we keep talking about it's it's like $600 a month right just on up actually 99999 yeah I try to keep as cheap as possible for people I know that a lot of you out there you know really struggle I've had so many people tell me you know about the the tough circumstances that had to endure and how they've had to turn to Etsy to make a few extra bucks and you know to be honest I I feel for for everyone that struggles so you know it took me a long time to actually introduce a paid product and I'm trying to price it as fairly as yeah guys and this I mean honestly this is one of those tools that I think that everyone should have I mean it's only ten dollars a month and you're gonna find yourself using it all the time any time you have that question of why is my shop not doing so great today you can just go and find out why you know it's basically all of the answers that you guys constantly ask in our Facebook community in our Q&A s you have a resource now and Etsy komm is linked down in the description that pro membership $10 a month it I mean it's totally worth it you guys I'm not an affiliate like first of all I want to present for the sake of transparency like why not affiliated right we're not guys right we just we genuinely love the tool and that's why we keep making videos about it over and over again so oh and one more feature if you wanted me to know you're fine I am gonna head upstairs though I get a go preserve kids oh yeah he's got to run and grab the kiddo off the bus but we have time so there's another one in here again this is the pro this is really to help you research and you know like I was saying if you see a shop that is is doing particularly well and you think there is a competitor tag analysis tool so you can get in there and see what they use do you mind if I show your shop oh no go ahead look at the name right there it should yes art by Starla more yeah okay so just do something else on that and you know it's what it does is it looks at the shop that you're interested in and says okay give me a breakdown of the the tags that they're using so you know Starla here I unlike stylist tagging strategy actually cuz she's chasing some very high competition tags and I'm a fan of those because you know sellers tend to figure out what's working and what's not so I think that's smart there and that probably is a reflection of your success there so you've got good healthy competition there you're not not afraid of you know being competitive alright they're keeping in mind for the new sellers out there that it's easier when you have that you have quite a few sales under your belt I wouldn't aim for those high competition keywords like early on like first day on Etsy completely agree that's that's a that's a great point and you know you can also look at demand and so forth as well and you've got some really good healthy demand here which again tells me that buyers are interested in in the tags that you've use so that's that's a great thing as well and then further down we've we've got more information here the tag so you can see individually each tag in in more detail that you use we only analyzed a hundred listings from the shop but I think that's that's enough to get a good idea of of what's going on and with a lot of the other reports on Etsy as well it's a rank you can also download these into Excel or PDF and play with them more and analyze them you know in your in your spreadsheets they've been the three things that I'd really call out there yeah definitely and I mean a lot of people I mean I've been avoiding this question over and over again it's it keeps being asked in the group sorry mark just disappeared but everyone keeps asking and I've been avoiding it how is this different than marmalade and honestly guys that's up for you to decide I personally have noticed an overwhelming a number of alphas and you guys can post down in the chat for those who are asking that question why don't you guys answer it what are the things that sets Etsy rank apart from marma lead you know I can't speak for more on the lead because I don't have a marmalade membership but I will tell you that a majority of handmade alphas who have used both tell me that they prefer Etsy rank and that's why this is the tool that I promote I listen to you know what what you guys are saying so that's all up to you to decide and I know that you have a lot more tools than marmalade does I think that you have a lot of unique tools that are very different so yeah I I don't use their software obviously alright say anything bad about the guys yeah no but the key difference that has been made clear to me over and over again is the vast amount of free features and tools that are there and you know I'm very much determined to keep that going as long as possible and I'm always very willing to listen to ideas and suggestions as well if you've got a problem at the end of the day I'm a developer I'd like to solve problems so perfect all right guys this has been super duper fun this is like our first guest star so down below we have links to Etsy ranked calm if you don't have that pro membership yet I highly recommend you go get that ASAP go start playing with those tools test some things also down below we have the link to Renae Christine and I are doing a big masterclass on March 10th if you want to save your seat for that get in on it as soon as possible because I'm not sure if she'll be putting a cap on it but you want to save your seat just in case that's linked down below and we finally got our p.o box set up so if you want to sand this fan mail there are some guidelines down there our Pio boxes down there you can send us your handmade products just make sure that you leave us a note in the box with your shop name or your business card so we can give you a proper shout out on the channel other than that do you have any like final where is any any last farewells to the Alfa's I don't want this to be the last time that we have you live so I don't want it to seem like we're saying final goodbyes but do you have anything that you want to leave everyone off with just go in there use the site it's free to use for everyone you're welcome to go and play around give me feedback every bit of feedback that comes through I read I tried to respond to every everyone that I can I know I've got a few notes here to follow up with a few people and a few ideas there so yeah please try it out and it was great to chat and dip I'll figure out how to answer your question later on awesome and what's your Facebook group that way they can join that and chat with you more with their ideas and things anti rink facebook.com slash group slash it's your a perfect all right in the yo check um I'm it might actually block you from posting links in the chat the chat doesn't like links but if you if you hop on Facebook and you just type in Etsy rank you can you'll see both his Facebook page and his Facebook group that you can join and he's pretty quick about responding to people who join his group because I think I just now joined what like this week I think I just now join the group and you approved me like immediately all right guys this has been super fun thanks for hanging out Anthony thanks for everybody who joined us for this grueling what two and a half hours I think that everyone really took some great notes everyone's really happy so hopefully we can have you on again sometime yeah have a great weekend everyone awesome thanks Angela bye

Channel: Starla Moore

Views: 7,152

Keywords: etsyrank, etsy rank, etsy rank pro, etsy rank review, how to use etsy rank, etsy algorithm, etsy SEO, how to make sales on etsy, make money on etsy, etys tips, how to be successful on etsy, not making sales on etsy, etsy seo 2018, etsy seo tools, etsy seo tips, etsy seo help, etsy seo algorithm, etsy seo changes, etsy seo tags, #hangoutsonair, Hangouts On Air, #hoa

Id: 22tdl-W_m-4

Length: 133min 50sec (8030 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 02 2018