Tag advice wanted

Now Im confused. I typed bridal necklace set and my necklace set didn’t show. I then typed bride necklace set and it showed up, yet the words bride and bridal are both in the info of the listing.
Seems harsh for an item to not show up when the words are in there, neither word as a tag.

Stevie, I like your honesty, and honestly, I am happy that my items are in the 1st page whenever I go searching for them, so I have achieved the aim of the game.
Like all things ‘computer’, I learn what I need to know, and I am guessing you are saying ‘do I really need to know ‘why’’! The competitive side of me would like to say ‘yes I do’ , but the other technophobic side says ‘never’, my brain isnt wired that way, thats why I do what I do and leave the computer stuff to those who can!
Anomalies happen. Frustratingly.
Sadly coffee drunk, must get on,
Suzzie

Mmmmmm,
now if I tag that would I have to use
Crafter, Computer programmer, Crafty computer programmer, Active Procrastinator, coffee drinker!

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Bother only 5 tags, need to reassess to include Multitasker!!!
Work on a Friday afternoon, need to reassess job title!

Amberlilly, From my experience, descriptive phrases are the best. For instance, pink bead bracelet in one tag, beaded pink bracelet is the next - that sort of thing. Use what you think people will search.

I know it’s a PIA if you have a lot of listings but I start with my tags with what phrases I think people would use then I craft the title and then the description. I believe you need to tie all of this together.

I always thought that Google only searched the first few lines of a listing but I have recently learned (from a Google SEO specialist), that they scan the full listings. I still find it easiest to have the tag words in the first few lines but they can be placed anywhere in the listing.

When I reviewed the search terns used in my other shop, out of the thousands of terms used, all but a very small number used phrases such as “house sign in mosaics” which makes sense to me. Would a buyer just input house or sign or mosaic? I don’t think so. They would have to go through pages and pages of results to find what they wanted.

Hope this helps

OK thanks @ManiacalMosaics will do what you suggested. X

I have just looked at a listing that has 19 tags…how can that be?

Sneaking in extra tags seems kind of dishonest to me…if Folksy wanted us to have that many tags they’d have set it at that level themselves.

Thank you Stevie for ALL your help,advice and encouragement.
Suzzie x

Just to clarify, internal searches within Folksy currently give the most weight to tags BUT this might change in the future and your titles and descriptions still have a big impact on Folksy search result - plus the words you use in your product titles and descriptions are the ones Google (and other search engines) use for their search results.

On a related note, it’s crucial that the descriptions you use in your Folksy shop are different from any other listings you may have elsewhere, otherwise Google will read them as duplicates and may not even rank them.

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@JamesB has just written a reply on another thread about tags that might be useful…

Just out of interest - how different do listings have to be - does changing a couple of words or the order of the sentences make them different enough for google to recognise them as separate listings or does it have to be completely different. Does it matter if the titles are the same/similar if the descriptions are different and vice versa. I do tend to copy and paste my listings to various platforms but then try to change them slightly.

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I always wonder about this too: my descriptions are all different but then at the end of them I usually have a bit about how they will arrive, in what packaging etc and I usually just copy and paste that bit across because it’s hard to word the same information differently every time! The same with my hallmarking info. I’m just wondering if those few lines of copied text are enough to stop Google ranking them?

That’s a good question @Rozcraftz. Google says it “tries hard to index and show pages with distinct information” so if it sees duplicate content it will filter it and choose to only show one of them. It may also read that duplicate information as a “deliberate attempt to manipulate search engine rankings or win more traffic” in which case it will downgrade the ranking or not show it at all.

This is what Moz says about duplicate content:

Duplicate content is content that appears on the Internet in more than one place (URL). When there are multiple pieces of identical content on the Internet, it is difficult for search engines to decide which version is more relevant to a given search query. To provide the best search experience, search engines will rarely show multiple duplicate pieces of content and thus, are forced to choose which version is most likely to be the original—or best.

I’m not an SEO expert but from what I’ve read it’s important to rewrite every product description and possibly the product titles too (although I’m not sure about that) to make sure they are different across different platforms. It can help to replace a few words with similar ones (think about all the words people might use to search for your item - eg not just ‘dog’ but also ‘pet’, ‘puppy’, man’s best friend’ and ‘animal’) and include extra info in your Folksy listing that you don’t have elsewhere too. This way you will make sure your listings meet Google’s criteria of offering ‘distinct’ information.

We’re running a #folksyhour tonight on the topic of SEO so it could be a good question to ask the experts there.

This is the official advice from Google: How to Specify a Canonical with rel="canonical" and Other Methods | Google Search Central  |  Documentation  |  Google for Developers

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I’m not actually sure Claire. My guess is that small sections of repeated information like that will be fine - it will be the same for a lot of websites. Google wants to make sure it’s not showing users duplicate pages because that’s a poor user experience, so if your page is significantly different from another, I would imagine that it’s fine.

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:frowning: no more copying listings then!

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This is why I need to look at the forums more often :smile: Didn’t know anything about this. Thanks for all the advice.

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All this means I have quite a bit of work to do adjusting my listings. Thanks for all the advice, I hope it makes a difference to my sales as they are extremely slow. I have new products to add but find it hard to find time to take photos when the light is good.

Thank you, that’s helpful to know. I will carry on what I’m doing then!

I know the Americans spell it as Jewelry. And the majority of people in the UK would spell it has jewellery which is the correct English spelling. They have their own American English.