UPDATE: Join us for the first in a series of workshops with Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, a well-known search engine optimization consultancy. Rand will provide an understanding of SEO tactics, give tips to increase your Etsy Shop’s visibility in search engine results, and take questions.
When? August 14, 2009 at 4 p.m. ET
Where? Etsy’s interactive online classrooms, the Virtual Labs.
[The following was originally posted on July 21, 2009.]
We are pleased to announce that we have hired SEOmoz, a well-known search engine optimization consultancy, to assist in helping Etsy and its sellers to increase their visibility in search engine results. SEOmoz will work with us in the coming months on a comprehensive SEO strategy as well as an implementation plan.
Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz’s co-founder and CEO, is a renowned SEO expert and has spoken around the world on SEO topics. We wanted you to meet him and hear from him directly as he begins his work with Etsy. Without further ado, here’s Rand.
A few weeks ago, I was contacted by some of Etsy’s staff, asking for my assistance. They explained to me that a lot of folks in the community have been thinking about search engine traffic and how Google, Yahoo!, Bing, & Ask.com can help drive business to their stores.
I was only too happy to help. After all, Etsy had been a crucial resource in one of the most important days of my life: my wedding. My wife’s headpiece, the fascinators that her bridesmaids wore, and even her garter were from Etsy. She told me that she wanted something special that she could pass down to our children — not something mass-produced and sold at the mall. Etsy was her answer. Her experience was incredibly positive, and since then, Etsy’s role in our lives has grown — from birthday presents to thank-you gifts to the holidays, Etsy has helped us time and again.
I know the value of Etsy, and all of the amazing creations that are offered on the site. But how could I get that message out to the millions of shoppers on the web? More importantly, how can I empower Etsy sellers with the skills they need to get the message out themselves? I’ve faced some of these same struggles myself — I started my SEO company with my Mom, out of a tiny office in Seattle. We were responsible for everything — managing finances, making sure we had satisfied customers, and having a steady stream of business coming into the company. It’s very similar to what a lot of Etsy sellers have to do.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some Etsy sellers are very familiar with the term, and others aren’t. My goal is to help everyone. There’s a lot of misconceptions about SEO — some people think it’s black magic or random luck. But like my friend Susan’s perfectly knitted creations, it’s more of an exact science combined with a dash of creative marketing. You start with some raw materials, and bit by bit, intricately weave them together to create something amazing — you just need to understand how all the pieces come together.
In order to do that, you need to know a bit about how search engines work to rank documents. The process can be complicated, but there are a few important things to remember:
- Search engines rely on the use of keywords — the words and phrases people type into search engines — as indicators of relevance. Employing the right terms in the right places is a basic tenet of good SEO, but it’s important not to go overboard or appear manipulative.
- What you say about yourself is valuable, but when Google was conceived in 1999, they realized that what others say about you is both more credible and more useful for producing relevant results. Thus, the engines in the past 10 years have turned to links as a huge part of the algorithms they employ to rank the search listings. If many unique websites link to your page, you’re viewed as a more credible, relevant result.
- The engines don’t just look at individual pages, they look at entire domains. If you’ve ever noticed low quality, half-empty pages from Wikipedia taking over the top rankings, you’ve observed this phenomenon in practice. Search engine algorithms have evolved to measure “trust” and “reliability” on a domain-wide basis, and thus, Etsy.com is a very exciting opportunity. Every member of the Etsy site who points a link to their shop and every news article on the web that links to Etsy.com helps every one of us rank a little bit better. In the SEO world, we call this phenomenon “the rising tide lifts all ships,” and it works in precisely this fashion — the rising tide of Etsy, through the traffic that comes to the site and the links it earns, means that every page has a better opportunity to earn traffic.
So, as an Etsy seller, what can you do to optimize your page and get more business? There are a few quick tips I’ll share now, but it’s my goal to get a comprehensive “Etsy Guide to SEO” online in the weeks to come.
Research Keywords
Google offers a great tool for researching terms and phrases that people are searching for in their engine. By typing in a few words and phrases that relate to your products, you can see what keywords have higher and lower degrees of search volume. Remember that high volume keywords are going to be harder to rank well for, so taking advantage of the “low hanging fruit” can be a great tactic.
Get Links
Many of us have personal websites or blogs and networks of friends, colleagues and family who operate websites as well. Creating links to your products and stores is a terrific way of boosting your rankings and it also encourages direct traffic who will come through those links and see your work.
Read the Ranking Factors
Every two years, SEOmoz runs a survey of the world’s top SEO minds, asking for their opinions about what factors matter most for high rankings. This collection of data is available here — SEOmoz’s Search Engine Ranking Factors — and a new version is only a couple weeks away. If SEO is important to you, take a few minutes to browse through — while the engines use hundreds of factors to determine rankings, only the top 10-20 are really important to worry about.
Great SEO doesn’t happen overnight, and the constant evolution and myriad of issues make it a challenging subject to master. But over the weeks and months to come, I (and possibly a few other staff members from SEOmoz) will be participating in the Etsy community and working hard behind the scenes to give us all the best possible opportunity to succeed.
What’s impressed me most about Etsy is the sincerity of the site. Everyone puts their greatest creations forward, and stands behind their work. It’s something I intend to do as well. Etsy has been a great part of my life, and I can’t wait to spread the word to even more people through the power of SEO.
Sincerely,
Rand (a.k.a. randfish)
Thanks to Rand for his thoughtful contributions to the future of SEO here at Etsy. As Rand noted, a comprehensive “Etsy Guide to SEO” will be available in the coming weeks. We will provide further details here in our blog once this is available.
As always, we appreciate your feedback and suggestions. We’ll close comments here so we can follow discussion in this Forum thread.
Kind regards,
Sara (a.k.a. saralouhicks)
