Hello all. I’m very happy to finally be here. I have been planning to open a Folksy shop for a while and am now just gradually creating some listings of my cards and art prints. I have been selling on Etsy and, as others have said, it is just getting too big and expensive. I have a question that I need some help with. I know that we are advised not to copy and paste listings from other platforms. However, I’m finding it really hard to find different tags and descriptions for my items. For example, there are only so many ways of describing a ‘Blue Tit Greeting Card’. I have plenty of tags in my Etsy shop but I’m finding that I am having to use the same ones on Folksy. Will this matter? Apparently it’s really bad for SEO if you duplicate your descriptions. Thank you!
welcome…Folksy is a lovely place to be.
Sorry I can’t help you with your question but I am sure someone else will help…
good luck with your shop
x
Thank you! 
I could be completely wrong (and I probably am) but I thought the tags were about helping you get found within the Folksy site; titles and description feed into SEO for search engines and the like.I wouldn’t want to give you the wrong info, so am happy to stand corrected.
Hello, welcome to the platform. I too am migrating from the dark side although for now I am still there as well. One of the things I love here, apart from supportive members, is that Folksy have a monthly list of key words which help with SEO. Obviously they won’t all work for you but I have found when they match my work and I get featured, I usually make a sale. It also made me think about my tags and I realised I can use more phrases than I had bee, I was using too many single words. If you try and rearrange your phrases that might help with distinguishing from the other listing. eg Card with blue tit. & tags like British birds, brtish wildlife, card for birdwatcher etc.
Hope this helps you. I will come and find your shop and tag you if you are on social media too.
Marion x
I’m currently still on the ‘dark side’ too but hope to migrate soon! Thank you so much for your help! I’m appalling at social media, but do have a Facebook page. Instagram is next…when I work out how to use it.
Yes, I have noticed that we can have longer phrases in our tags which is great. No more one word wonders. I didn’t know about Folksy’s monthly list of key words, so thank you for letting me know about that.
Onwards and upwards.
Catherine xx
As I understand it, the tags are only used within Folksy searches, so duplicating your tags would be OK.
What is important is rewording your descriptions. Shuffle the words about, for instance
“Lovely greeting card featuring a little blue tit…” could become “This greetings card showing a cheeky blue tit…”
I think it is also the case that Search algorithms like Google put a higher weighting on the first 2 paragraphs of your description - if the search phrase that has been typed in isn’t in the first 2 paras they tend to skip over the rest of it, so try to work as many of your keywords into the first two paras as you can. So better still would be
“This fine art greetings card showing a cheeky blue tit is blank inside and perfect fpr any occasion.”
By the way, you have ‘watercolour card’ in your title, and though it’s clear in the description that it is a reproduction of a watercolour original, it’s possible people might assume they would get an actual, painted original card so you might think about that.
They are gorgeous cards, by the way!!
Helen
Thank you for your help Helen. Yes, you have a point about the ‘watercolour card’ description. I need to alter that! Sometimes when listing tags, I just have brain freeze.
It’s interesting to know how the search algorithms work. Thank you again for your help.
Catherine
Hi Catherine and welcome to Folksy! Don’t forget to fill in your about section, people like to know a bit about you and your process/inspiration. Good luck with your shop.
Thank you Bimblebird. Like many people, I find talking about myself and my work difficult!
I’ll fill it out when I have some inspiration. Thank you again.
Catherine
I know what you mean!
Hi, I am new here (about 6weeks) so I really appreciate the helpful advice on here, but could someone please tell me where I find the monthly list of key words to help with SEO, as not too sure if I am doing all the right things with my tags etc! 
Thank you! 
Its the ‘theme of the day’ and you can normally find a forum thread with the list (use the filters top left when you are looking at the forum home page to select ‘theme of the day’) or you can now find the next ones coming up on your dashboard (left hand side of the screen under improve your shop). Theme of the day is not really key words or SEO but a tag to include (where relevant) to get you on the front page on that day or potentially included in Folksy social media posts on the day.
Thank you so much Sasha!