Are You Relevant? Am I?

These beads are not relevant to this blog post. They are a gratuitous splash of colour and texture.

Of course we are all relevant just because of the beautiful, lovely people we are. But are you Etsy relevant? This is a new concept to me. I kind of stumbled across this when I noticed all of the changes to how you list items. Thought it might be time to do a little investigation of what that was all about.

Now I will be the first to admit that I am not all au courant Etsy. I spend zero time over there except to mind my own business, so to speak. I am not an Etsy team player. I dislike the forums and  all things SEO make me yawn.  In fact I am so so Etsy lazy that I didn't even know they had changed the way searches are made until a month later. But if you sell online and on Etsy in particular, you do need to pay the tiniest bit of attention to what is happening.

Remember all of that re-listing to get to the top of a search? Not anymore. Which is really good for me, since I didn't do all of that re-listing anyway, lazy, slothful, Etsian that I am. Remember trying to come up with arty, witty, eye catching titles? Nope, not anymore. Which is also good for me because I tend to be completely uninspired when it comes to titles. In fact my titles are down right boring. Bronze Dragonfly Pendant ---boring.

Now you may know all of this already. It would not be the first time that I was the last to pick up on something worthwhile knowing. But if you didn't know, in essence, Etsy has changed the way items come up when shoppers search so as to provide the best match to their keywords. They've aligned it more with how other search engines like Google work. Nifty. Personally, I think this is a great idea and think that it ultimately will make everybody happier. Because, really, who likes wading through all of that other stuff when all you really want is to choose from a selection, of say Bronze Dragonfly Pendants. And if you are selling stuff do you really want your shoppers wading through masses of Etsy items?

But its a bit of a mind shift when it comes to how you list your Etsy items and all of that old Etsy listing wisdom. I'm not going to go into all of that. Others have done that for you. If you google Etsy Relevancy, you will find a mind boggling list of links to discussions, strategies, rants, raves, and that sort of thing. Fascinating that this change could generate so many ways to spend your time on the internet.

Anyhoo, just in case you haven't whiled away the hours browsing all of the links out there, here's a list of three that I found to be pretty good.  ( I whiled away some hours for you :-)

1) First up there's the Etsy Blog link. Good to go to the source first, right?

Make Your Shop More Relevant

2) Over at Handmadeology, they've got a nice 12 page PDF explaining the changes to Etsy's search engine and some pretty good suggestions for how to change up your listings so that your shop items have a better chance of being found among the gazillion sellers on Etsy. Warning though, you'll be asked to give up your email and this might get you subscribed to Handmadeology. I don't actualy now if that's what happens. If that's not your thing, you can easily unsubscribe if you get more emails from them. They are also selling stuff here like an Etsy Relevancy Strategy e-book. Good purchase? Don't know. But the free PDF is a good summary. BTW, they have all sorts of quite good information and you can spend quite a lot of time there absorbing all sorts of stuff related to selling online and on Etsy in particular.

The Etsy Relevancy Breakdown (free)

3) Saving the best for last, my favourite link of all from Sparrow Salvage. Read this one if for no other reason than you would like a bit of wit and humour. It's also got some really useful advice in it.

Relevancy-Taming the Savage Beast

So are you relevant?

Have you looked into the flutter around the Etsy search changes?

Am I truly the last one to know about any of this? (I'm OK with that)