A couple of weeks ago, I posted an article about some of the differences in how your handmade items from Artfire and etsy appeared in Google results. You can find the full text of that article here .
Etsy has since listened to it’s particularly angry seller base and updated the title structure in our item pages. This title structure is important as our items are listed in the google search results in the fashion that etsy has enabled the set up.
If you remember previously, etsy’s title structure was:
Handmade <Category Name> on Etsy – <My Item Title>, <My Shop Name >
This was problematic at best for sellers, because Google and other search engines return results titles that range from 60-75 spaces. The Etsy model added about 30 characters with the “Handmade (category) on etsy bit”, my shop name adds 15 characters, which only left 15 to 30 for my actual item title.
The new etsy title structure was rolled out around June 18th. It is
<My Item Title> by <My Shop Name> on Etsy
Since that date, I’ve been testing Google search results to see if my items started to appear with the new title structure. Some have, most still have not. Items that I haven’t renewed lately are still appearing in the old etsy title structure. Recent items I’ve added or renewed are finally appearing in the new structure. This is frustrating as it appears I will need to renew, at 20 cents per item, all the handmade jewelry in my etsy shop, in order for it to be updated in the Google listings. This isn’t the case with my Artfire listings, however. I updated ALL my listing titles in both locations at about the same time. Meaning, I edited the titles to ALL my etsy listings and almost all of my Artfire listings. Guess what? The Artfire listings I updated are already appearing updated and correct in the Google search results. Rock on Artfire technical crew. 
Here is an example from my etsy shop: These earrings used to appear in google searches as:
Handmade Jewelry on Etsy – Handmade Aqua Teal Peruvian Amazonite ……
(Note: Google inserts …… once the character limit has been reached in a title)
I renewed them last week, so now they appear as:
Handmade Aqua Amazonite Dangle Earrings – Amanda by …
Not perfect, as my name still doesn’t appear in the results title, but better. Looks like I still need to work a bit on the item titles. One thing to note. Having the ‘on etsy’ at the end of the title effectively cuts in out of the results title all together if you item title and shop name are 60+ characters together. Keep that in mine when editing your item titles to make better use of the available character space.
Unfortunately, my shop name is long. If I had suspected how it might impact SEO down the road, I’ll bet I’d have chosen a shorter name in the beginning. Live and learn I guess.
So what do you need to do?
- Find an item in your shop and perform a test search using the title in Google to see what appears
- Review your Google analytics to see what search terms are bringing buyers to your shop
- Ask yourself how YOU would search for that item if you were a buyer. Use those terms in your item title.
- Count the number of characters in your shop name. Add that number to 4 (The number of characters, including spaces for the word by, which is included in the title in Google results). Subtract that number from 60. The result is more or less the number of characters you have left to use in your item title. For instance in this item from my Etsy Shop:
Handmade Gold Fill Labrodorite Earrings -Stormy Seas
There are 52 characters including spaces in that title. I’d expect the Google search result to be:
Handmade Gold Fill Labrodorite Earrings -Stormy Seas by ……………
About 55 characters total because Google won’t cut the ‘ShinyAdornments’ shop title in half. It just excludes it all together if it exceeds the character number limit.
If I want my shop name to appear in the title, I need to make the overall title shorter. Perhaps edit out the Stormy Seas name from the title all together. If I edited out the “Stormy Seas” part, which, less face it, potential buyers probably aren’t using in the search criteria, my title would most likely appear as:
Handmade Gold Fill Labrodorite Earrings by ShinyAdornments on …..
about 61 characters
Hope that helps a bit. Feel free to email me, or you can find me on plurk, if you have questions.
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great write up – love the examples. I have been playing with mine a bit since your last post about the SEO structure…It has helped.
I agree about the “stormy seas” part…I equate it to the names I give my bags…no one is going to search for that specifically, so I may take it out all together …I think. And just put it in the description & tags (for those that actually know the names)
Good to know Kristy! Have yet to set up on Artfire or Etsy (too many other things on the go right now) but knowing these things will definitely help when I do get stores up. Thanks for the info!
Excellent post! I’m redoing most of my item titles to fit in that space, kind of annoying but worth it – my views are already back up, and some are even higher than before
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