Etsy Item Titles - SEO

The title of your Etsy items is VERY important for SEO; perhaps even the most important on-page search engine ranking factor.

SeoMoz Etsy's SEO experts, ran this recent survey taken by 72 top SEO experts. According to survey, using keywords in your title tag holds the most significant weight when determining a page’s search engine ranking.

So, as you can see, once you’ve determined which keywords to target, the title tag should be the first place to start optimizing for those keywords.

Your Etsy title tag is one of the first tags read by the search engine spiders when they crawl your website. Your Etsy item title is used to identify what the page is about, just like of a book.

Where is the Etsy title tag found?

Your Etsy item title tag is simple to find and edit ... it is the title of your item.



When you are editing your item you can view how your item will look in the Google search.

 


The title tag is one of the first tags found in your page’s source code; it is located in the head section, and will look similar to this:


 


Check out the screen shot above. You will notice that this is the Page Source for my Diamond Plate Belt Buckle. I am sure you are starting to see a pattern on what key word I am trying to optimize this page for. Diamond Plate Belt Buckle...

To view your Etsy item's page source just right click on the page and look for the View page source option.

Another reason your Etsy item title is so important has to do with pictures. You have heard me talk about how important alt tags are for pictures on blogs. Well it applies to any site or page, including your Etsy items.

**** Here is why the title of your items have a direct effect on the alt tags of your pictures. When you upload any picture to Etsy no matter what you have it named it will be given a new name or alt tag. The new name or alt tag is the title of the item. So for example all 5 pictures in my Diamond Plate Belt Buckle are named or tagged with "Diamond Plate Belt Buckle".

Here is the Page Source from my Diamond Plate Belt Buckle. You can see that all 5 pics have the same alt tag. (click Pic to zoom!)



Your Etsy item titles can improve or degrade your SEO in two areas... The normal title that Google likes to crawl and your alt tags of your pictures. This is why it is super important to write good titles with strong keywords.

Image Alt Text (or Alt Tags) and Optimization

Properly written alt tags still have a place in SEO best practices. While many search engine professionals have ignored them in favor of bigger factors, they can still be the fractional difference that puts your site ahead of your competitor’s. Fractions count in the world of SEO, so here are some tips regarding how alt tags should be treated.

• Don’t stuff your alt tags. In the past, people used to hide content in image alt tags, so you could hover over a picture and get a paragraph or an extended list of keywords separated by commas. The alt text should describe the image, or simply parrot any words that are embedded in it.

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This is why we have to be careful when writing our Etsy item titles.

Keywords:

When you are listing an item on Etsy and you have found your keyword or phrase you want to optimize for it is a good idea to include that keyword in a few places. First is in the title where Google will Google Spiders will look first. Second is in the description as close to the beginning as possible. You will also want to use your key word as one of your 14 tags, and in the materials if possible.

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