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Promoting Etsy ShopsURLs, SEO & BrandingCrafty Tips presents another of our series of articles on Professional Crafting and Selling Crafts on the Internet. |
Promoting Etsy ShopsJust like any website, there are tons of ways to promote an Etsy Shop. While listing them all would probably make for a good book, I thought I would just talk about one that I see quite frequently with submissions made by Etsians to Crafty Tips.
CanonicalizationA big giant word to discuss what is hopefully a simple concept. The first page of any shop on Etsy has three different addresses. There's the two versions that includes your shopname - shopname.etsy.com and www.shopname.etsy.com. And the version - www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=######## where ######## represents your account number.
Using any of the three addresses will get you to the same place. Etsy seems to prefer the version that includes the user id and most frequently displays that address in the address bar; unfortunately it also displays the shop name version from time to time as well. The trouble is that Google, Yahoo and all the other search engines see those the shop name and user id based addresses as pointing to as many as three different pages. The mistake many Etsians are making is when they promote their shops and use either the address with the user id or switch between the two falsely thinking it will gain them more traffic. Two addresses, half the links.When it comes to search engine optimization and ranking well in the search engine results (SERPs), much depends upon links from other websites, which are called backlinks. While not the sole consideration, quite often the site with the most backlinks vaults to the top of the SERPs. If you promote you Etsy shop using both the URL with your shop name and the URL with your shop number, your are in effect competing with yourself. Instead of having say 450 links to your shop, you end up with 150 going to shopname.etsy.com, 150 going to www.shopname.etsy.com and 150 going to www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=########. What that means is your competitor, who maybe only has only 200 total backlinks to their shop, could end up outranking you if all of their backlinks are going to the same address. Branding Etsy Shops with URLsNow that you see why linking to both types of addresses for your Etsy shop can work against you, let's talk about which URL you should use. It should be fairly obvious which address would make a better choice. Let's look at them together, www.shopname.etsy.com, shopname.etsy.com and www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=########. The last one does more to promote Etsy than it does to promote your shop. How easy will it be for a potential or repeat customer to remember your 8 digit shop number? So, that leaves www.shopname.etsy.com and shopname.etsy.com. Both help promote your brand and both are much easier to remember. In the long run, it doesn't really matter all that much which one you choose as much as that you are consistent in your link building efforts. My suggestion would be to leave off the www and just use shopname.etsy.com. While the www did at one time have a purpose, most no longer bother with it. Dropping the www also looks cleaner and helps to make your shopname the focus of your online address. Promote your Etsy shop for FreeNow that you know which URL you want to use to promote your Etsy shop, why not start using it right here on Crafty Tips? |
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