(photo by digtheearth)
 
A few weeks ago I asked Hello Etsy blog readers to submit their questions about search engine optimization and promised to answer them in a follow-up post. I received a great amount of questions and I hope my answers here will help getting you on the right track to be more successful with your online businesses.
 
I have also written a more detailed article which will only be available for conference attendees, so make sure to grab one of the remaining tickets if you haven’t already done so.
 
Below is the list of your questions and my answers. Please note that my answers are not specific to Etsy’s marketplace, but should rather be read as general advice for optimizing any web content. I hope you will find the answers helpful and do let me know if you have any follow-up questions.
 
So without further ado, here we go:
(Questions are ordered by the time they were added.)
 
What’s the most common SEO mistake?
 
There are many, for instance building a website in Flash, which search engines cannot read. Another common mistake is to create page content using overly commercial and unclear language or leaving out highly relevant terms used by potential visitors.
 
How important to SEO are inbound, outbound and internal links?
 
Very important! Search engines use incoming links as a way to measure a website’s authority so you should aim to increase the amount of contextual links from relevant and high-quality websites. Internal links, likewise, are very powerful and should be used for promoting high-value pages within your website.
When creating links (both internal and external) it’s important that you are using relevant keywords in your link anchor texts, and avoid generic anchor texts such as “Click Here” or similar.
 
Which pages you are linking to (outbound) has no impact on the authority of your website – only your internal and incoming links count for SEO.
 
Why can’t web design programs be compatible like Word docs? I have spent a fortune of getting help, and then when I get something done, my website crashes at the most crucial moment. What is your best choice of programs, and how do you learn to do it yourself?
 
Sorry to hear about your issues, I hope you’ve managed to sort out these technical problems by now. There are a number of powerful tools you can use to build high-performing websites relatively fast and cheap. One popular CMS for creating websites is WordPress which incidentally is used to power the www.HelloEtsy.com website. In any case, Flash should be at the bottom of your list of tools for building your website.
 
If I have multiple domain names pointing to my site (e.g. .net & .com), does Google care which I use for inbound links? Or is it best to always use the same one?
 
By having multiple domains running in parallel, you are diluting the power of your links, as well as confusing search engines and your customers. You should generally aim to have one single domain online for your business at any time. It’s a good idea to own domain names with similar names or with other TLDs (e.g. domain.com, domain.net, domain.org, etc.) but you need to make sure they redirect visitors with a 301 Permanent Redirection to your main domain. This way you still own the variations of your domain name, but visitors will only ever see one single copy of your website. Also, by putting in place 301-redirections the power of links to your other domains will be transferred to your main website.
 
Obviously this is an ongoing process; is it one fell swoop of doing it followed by minor add-ons and adjustments?
 
The technical parts of your website should be reviewed first and it would make sense to plan around one major tech-optimization round. Optimizing the editorial parts of your website is an ongoing process and something that you should analyze and experiment with. It can for instance take several experiment rounds to figure out what the best title for your homepage is, based on how it appears in search listings.
 
I’m wondering how important it is that the descriptions in each listing be vastly different from each other? I’m finding it’s difficult when I really make two types of products at the moment: cards and photos. I try to vary my language but there are some components that they all share (ex.: type of paper, size, shipment methods, etc.). Any tips?
 
This is a common challenge for anyone working in e-commerce where product descriptions are often very similar in nature. But looking at this particular example, photos and cards (postcards I guess?) can be used in very different contexts so I would try to think about related terms and keywords for each product category and use them in your descriptions where appropriate, e.g. card, postcard, art postcard, photo postcard, customized postcard, wedding postcard, etc.
 
We hear a lot that Google picks up on “your first three tags.” When making a new listing are those 3 tags the dropdown menu categories or the first three tags that I write myself?
 
This sounds like an Etsy-specific question. In general you should use your most important keywords as soon as possible in your content. A useful metaphor is that of newspapers where the important news headlines are placed at the top of the front page, while the less important items are placed further down and to the back. You can use this metaphor in the context of any web content, whether it’s your product title, description, or tags.
 
We have been seeing a lot of sellers putting a long string of tags into their item title (which we find obnoxious.) Does that kind of title-tagging give a seller an SEO advantage?
 
You should always keep your users in mind when writing text. Over-optimized text can leave your visitors wondering and it can affect your credibility negatively. Also, search engines such as Google don’t tolerate over-optimized text (e.g. repeated keywords) and can take action against your website for using a user-unfriendly and spammy language.
 
Do SEO spiders read content within grayboxes?
 
Are you referring to the image box on the Etsy product page? Search engines cannot read content within images or video clips, hence you should use descriptive image file-names, image captions, img-alt text (where possible), and surrounding text to help search engines better evaluate your graphic content.
 
When I’ve gotten SEO advice for my Etsy shop (from teams who critique shops), I’ve always been told that the first few lines of my listing need to JUST be a chunk of key words for search engines. Nothing that makes them into a sentence, words like “and”, “the” and so on are completely verboten. I understand that it’s good to get dense keywords in there for search engines, but the purpose of that is to get people in to the shop looking at the listing, and it seems to me that it’s off-putting to read “necklace silver pretty beads beaded rainbow pink purple blue elegant fun banana vulture crayon free shipping” instead of, y’know, something that looks like it was written by a human. (Not that those are reasonable keywords, just as an example). So I want to know – are those people right, is it helpful to have that chunk of words at the beginning of every item description on Etsy? Or is it alright to try to stuff several key words in, but have them as part of a real description?
 
Search engines dislike content that’s been created without the visitors in mind. I would hence recommend avoiding repeating keywords which has a negative effect on your credibility, and potentially also on your search rankings.
 
Why Etsy Search box not working as good as Google and other search bars I usually get irrelevant results which is not good for me as a seller and for buyers to find my stuff?
 
Sorry, but I don’t work at Etsy and cannot answer this question.
 
What are other ways we can do to get more views beside Twitter and Facebook?
Starting a blog is a powerful way to spread the word about yourself and your product(s). It’s also a great way to drive more traffic from search engines for relevant keywords which can later be channeled to your Etsy shop.
 
Should I periodically change/rearrange the words in my Etsy Shop Title and the first line of my announcement? I’ve heard that Google will see that as new content and rank it higher.
 
Offering new and fresh content is generally an effective way to improve your rankings. It’s however not sufficient to simply reorder your words, rather you should experiment with different titles and keyword combinations to see which combination drives the most amount of converting traffic (=buyers) to your shop.
 
From Google Analytics I can see that only 10% of my Etsy shop traffic comes from Etsy site search. Is that considered low and I should (further) improve my SEO techniques? Does it depend on my niche?
 
I can’t comment on whether 10% is a “good” rate, you should try to analyze which segment of your traffic converts the best and try to further optimize that channel. For instance, you might find that visitors coming from your Facebook page are highly interested in your products and consequently convert better than traffic from Google. Based on this knowledge you can try to increase your activity on Facebook and measure the results in terms of improved sales or visits.
Depending on your niche, you might also find that it’s much more cost-effective to generate traffic from social media channels compared to Search traffic (SEO) where the competition can be very high.
 
Again from Google Analytics I can see only the search terms that people used successfully to find my page. That’s not very helpful because what I really need is the keywords that people use, are relevant to my products, but are not present in my shop right now. Is there anyway to get this information?
 
Try using the Google AdWords Keyword tool which helps you find related terms together with data about their popularity.
 
I think I have followed all the suggestions I have read, tweaked my keywords as much as I can figure out, used the Google key word search thingy to find out what are the most popular words and still I can not find any of my items or my shop when I do a Google search. I have also started adding backlinks from within my shop and my blog and nothing seems to work. I have succeeded in moving my page rank from “not ranked” to “1″ but that was a month ago. I am so frustrated because I can’t seem to understand what to do. My competition comes up on my searches but not my store or items.
My questions are:
- what is an absolute no go for Google and will bring down your ranking?
- does it matter how many times my particular keyword is named in an article or on the whole website? What are the ‘rules’ for being found on a specific keyword?

 
I can understand your frustration, but you need to keep in mind that SEO is a long term activity and often you’ll only see the results of your efforts after an extended period of time. I don’t know enough about your project to offer any specific advice, but you could perhaps ask yourself why your page should rank over other websites in Google? You could for instance find that your competitors might have been around for longer, are using more targeted content, or have accumulated more links and a higher authority which gives them a competitive advantage.
 
This is a bit of an AdWords/SEO question, but what is an alternative approach if keywords and phrases in your niche rank high in both relevance and competition OR if alternatives show up practically non-existent in the Google Keyword tool? This makes me just want to just give up.
 
Could you provide a specific example of this? It’s difficult to give any useful answer otherwise.
 

We run two sites, example.org and example.com. We use the .org for practically everything except the project promotion that’s being done on .com.
Using WordPress, we are considering enabling “network mode” (multisite) on example.org. It would then make sense to move the .com website to some place like tour.example.org. However, what should we do about the example.com domain? It’s got a pretty good ranking and a great deal of incoming links. Way I see it we have two options: Redirect or domain masking.
Redirect is straight forward enough, but what would it do to example.com’s ranking? Domain masking is a little more finicky. When people link to or visit example.com, which domain will get the stats? example.com or tour.example.org?
 
It’s a great idea to consolidate your content under one single domain – avoid using subdomains though if possible, instead use subdirectories which are much more search engine friendly.
 
Using 301-redirections is the way to go if you’re worried about your rankings. It may take up to a few weeks (often much less) until everything is settled, but soon you will get your rankings back again with the new domain.
 
Most, if not all, of our clients would rank SEO at the top of their ‘must have’ list. We’ve been building accessible sites for quite some time and am convinced this plays a key role in search engine rankings for many of our clients. However, there is an on-going debate in our office about page titles. Titles that are good for SEO are not always good for accessibility. Generally, as the developer, I have to relent to the wishes of marketing and the client.
 

I agree with your logic: over-optimized titles look spammy and can be ignored by users even when they rank high. They can also be confusing and can affect the credibility of the website owner in a negative way. Titles should therefore be optimized for search engines, but to aim for a high CTR in search listings is just as important as your ranking.
 
Another feature which helps improving a site’s CTR in the organic search results is Meta Descriptions. The content in this Meta tag has no SEO effect as such, but users tend to rather click on listings which have a pretty and clear description underneath them, than those showing a random snippet from the page content.