Sep 27, 2011

Choose Your Words Carefully

Wyandotte Pressed Steel Toy Truck offered by queenofsienna


One of the oft overlooked and unsexy parts of selling vintage on Etsy is keywords. Almost everyone lets out a inward grown when it comes time to fill them in. What to choose? What will draw eyeballs? What is the magic formula? 


Vintage Red Hat with Fruit offered by alexsandras


The trick is crawling into that searchers head. Once you've figured out what the item is and who made it, you can start to put together a tag. A McCoy bowl from the 1930s would have tags such as: McCoy, bowl, mixing, kitchen, baking, etc. Now if the bowl is blue, don't use blue as a tag. It's far too general and clogs up the search. Instead put blue in the title where it will also be picked up. Using blue bowl in the tag would be a good compromise. 


Wood Fruit Crate offered by CheekyChicVintage


Study your own behavior: how do you try to find items? When you're making treasuries, how do you search for specifics? For example, when I need to find items for a farm based treasury, I often search under: country, farm, farmhouse, kitchen, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, baking, etc. 


Vintage Toy Telephone offered by ArtfulVintage


Be thorough in your titles & keywords. Be sure to include information in both, to increase your odds in the Relevancy search. For example, if I'm selling a 1940s Dennison Halloween decoration, I'll be sure to put Dennison, Halloween, 1940's, pumpkin, etc in both places. Then in the tags I'd continue on furthur including: vintage, holiday, denison (spelled the wrong way to grab those searchers!), etc. 


1970s GlasSnap Tumblers offered byVioletQVintage

Don't forget the Materials tags. Is your item made of pottery? Then in the Materials tag put in: pottery, clay, ceramic, etc. Try to include different names for those basic materials. Brass=metal, Book=paper, cardboard, cloth, Silk=fabric, etc. etc. 


Angel Christmas Tree Decoration offered by EmeliasCupboard


Try and see if your item is a cross collectible. For example, if your book is a ratty falling apart copy of Alice in Wonderland consider marketing it as a book, prints, baby nursery decoration, etc. That would produce a very different set of tags than just a book would. 


Wood Buddha Statue offered by kricketts17

Capturing the eyes of the searching public is no small task. We want our items to be found via Google, Etsy, and any other search they might be using. By narrowing down your search to the essentials, you'll be found by the right audience who is looking just for what you have. 

4 comments:

Sue (Vintage Rescue) said...

This post is an eye-opener for me. I tend to drill down on the SPECIFIC and logical keywords. You've shown me the light. I cannot thank you enough!

ArtfulVintage said...

Great suggestions, Heidi!

Kari said...

I didn't even think about piecing books out as individual illustrations, let alone tagging them like that. Great post!

Nora-transient*treasures said...

Super advice as always. :~) Thanks, Heidi!