In my last post about critiquing each others Etsy shops I mentioned that I traded critiques with Susan from gentleadornments. When I first looked at her shop she had a very nice, and nicely short, shop announcement and shop title. However, I noticed that they didn't contain any of the keywords she really needed for her shop. Looking around at other CAST Team shops I've noticed the same thing.

When you are writing your shop title and shop announcement you should know that keywords in your shop title and first 150 characters of your shop announcement are how you get found on search engines. It's not something that is intuitive, unfortunately, so most of us don't realize this. When I Googled Susan's shop name, her facebook, blog and twitter came right up on top of the first page, but her Etsy shop was no where to be found--even when I added "etsy" to the search. She changed her shop title right away to contain a few keywords and before she could even change her shop announcement Google indexed her shop. I checked again and just that one tiny change brought her up to the top of  page three in the results (a few days later and it's on the first page where it ought to be). That's how important a good shop title and announcement are!



The same holds true for each and every item description and item title in your shop. Using descriptive keywords in the title and first 150 characters of the description will help people find your items from Search Engines. Your Etsy tags are mostly for Etsy searches. Your title and descriptions are for Search Engines. That's also something that is not intuitive. I've recently started to pay more attention to that in my shop (I had really good sales in May by the way and I'm only starting to change them).

by Sue of SueRunyonDesigns

Recently Susan from gentleadornments and I traded critiques on our Etsy shops and I think it worked out very well for both of us. We both make jewelry so we have the same type of issues to deal with:  how best to photograph small shiny objects, shipping costs, jewelry pricing and so forth.

We traded several lengthy convos giving advice and bouncing ideas off each other. It was so beneficial to me to have her input on various things, but especially on my photo backgrounds which I have been struggling with. I needed her fresh eyes to take a look and she had an idea that I'm really excited to try. I gave her advice on her shop announcement and International shipping costs and starting an e-mail newsletter. Susan tweaked her International shipping costs in the evening and woke up to a sale from Australia in the morning--her first International sale!

I'd like to encourage other CAST members to get involved in giving thoughtful critiques to each other. If you are interested in finding another CAST member to share critiques with, you can always invite someone from the team to participate with you, or leave a comment on this blog post to let everyone know you are interested.

There are some etiquette rules to remember when giving a critique. 

* If you are the sensitive type, let your partner know up front, but remember you may not get the best critique if they are trying to spare your feelings.
* CAST Team members tend to be VERY nice, but that doesn't mean you can't also be honest and thorough.
* If your partner doesn't take your advice, it's totally OK. They may have a completely different vision, artistic sensibility, time and money restraints, etc.
* Take your time. Look at everything:  photos, descriptions, shop announcement, shop title, banner, avatar, policies, shipping, tags, bio, EVERYTHING.
* Tell them what they are doing right too--that's a critical piece of the puzzle.
* Tell them what you'd like to see in their shop they might not have now.
* If you are struggling in a specific area, let them know to spend extra time on that.

Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else.

We have an official CAST Blog Team, but I would like to encourage other CAST members to submit relevant articles to our blog. Contributing to our blog will give you a link to your shop which helps with your Search Engine Optimization and promoting your business. It also helps drive more traffic to our team blog and helps us promote each other.

Please keep in mind:

 It doesn't need to be a theological dissertation or in-depth business post. We take recipes, business success ideas, tutorials, how-to's and more.
* Because our team is large and diverse, articles must not be political or "judgmentally" denominational in nature.
* Copyright laws must be obeyed.
* Pictures are always good!


Sue at SueRunyonDesigns


Also:


If you know of any CAST team noteworthy event such as team members who have gotten a chance to meet in person, someone who opened a brick and mortar store, gallery openings for team members, etc. please let me know. I'd love to announce them on our blog!


And:


Occasionally we need to fill spots on our blog team. If you are interested let me know.


Thanks!

Sue