Effective Tagging

[Es]

Is it better to tag with one to two words per tag or stuff a lot of relevant words into each tag.

For example, which is better:

sunflowers, "wedding invitations," floral, pretty, yellow, classic, bright, cheery

or

"wedding invitations sunflowers floral pretty", "classic yellow flowers bright cheery"

[waterart]

I think it's better to tag with phrases that people would actually use such as  "bright yellow flowers"

[lewister · Accepted solution]

Depends on what you want. Option A with phrases or single words might get your product onto a generated tag search page. (Scroll down on different products to where the tags are listed. Anything blue with an underline is a link, which will give you products that used that specific tag. That tag page then can be listed/ranked in Google and is one more way for you to be found.)  Not every tag phrase gets a link and page, however, so you have to do some homework to figure out which ones would work for you. But, single word tag pages - like flowers or fashion or birthday - will still be pretty crowded and not very useful.

I tend to go with Option B, which is to put connected words together into a single tag, choosing words I think people will use to search on. It doesn't matter if the tag is "wedding invitations sunflowers floral pretty". If someone searches on pretty sunflowers, you've covered both those words even though you didn't list them that way in your tag. I also try to use synonyms for words I've used in the description rather than repeating those in the tags. I'm more interested in covering general searches done on the site _and_ giving Google all the words possible to index the page.

[Baylee]

Just an added note: you don't need to use 'wedding invitations' (or any other product) in your tags  .... only use tags that describe the design itself. I agree with the other people who have replied, that phrases like 'Bright, cheery yellow flowers' are the best use of your ten tags.

[WHS_Designs]

I find that long-tailed search terms/keywords (made up of 3 to 5 words) can be more helpful (not to mention more descriptive) in connecting my designs with customers ("romantic red rose", "pacific northwest wildlife").

W.H.

[k8hayes]

I agree. And is it true that if customers search for (as in your example) "rose" or "red" or "romantic" that will be included, too?

[WHS_Designs]

yes, I believe so.

[NPL]

I am always puzzled by this... that's why i keep sticking to single words. When you put frases like 'Bright, cheery yellow flowers' and people search for example just search "yellow flowers" will it still come up??

[Lais]

Yes. It will.

However, I don't know how it affects the position of your design in the search. I'm still trying to figure that out. 

[k8hayes]

Well. I made a Christmas card that says, on the front, “peach on earth.” When I search for that phrase, even put it in quotes, it shows up as three separate words. Period. And then there are a lot of peach colored wedding invitations, and I haven’t gone past page three looking for my design. So does this mean that phrases are ONLY considered as separate words? This is making me crazy.

[ColsCreations]

When I search for ["peach on earth"] it does keep the words together as a phrase and yields 62 results including your card and three other products with the same design.

What's interesting is that "on" is ignored (It's common for search engines to ignore filler words) but all of the results I looked at include peach and earth in that order even if there's another word or two in between them.

If you search with no quotes

you get 1,530 results that contain peach and earth in any order.

Something else to note is that peach for peace seems to be a common typo.  I found many products where the designer clearly meant peace on earth but typed peach so those designs come up for the "peach on earth" search. In one case, it's a Maker product, Mods may want to give them a heads-up.

[k8hayes]

What the...? So why do I get three separate words? I must be doing something weird. Well, I'm glad to hear you're getting "peach earth." I have been getting views, so it must be working. Thanks! 🙂

[Lais]

Keep your tags simple. There's no need to use "wedding invitations" if your product is a wedding invitation. You could use words similar to "wedding" that people would use to search, though, like "matrimony". But it's not needed to use "wedding". 

I'd use the first option: sunflowers, floral, pretty, yellow, classic, bright, cheery.
In my experience tag stuffing is not good. Even though I haven't made many sales yet, the products that I sell the most are the ones with the simplest tags. And most of the products for which I "tag-stuffed" got no views for months...

[k8hayes]

Zazzle Help says that stuffing a bunch of words in one tag is spamming, that we should only use phrases that make sense, e.g., "pretty wedding invitations" but not "floral pretty yellow classic bright" (five words is the limit). 

[Birdycoconut]

I think the tags requierements are very confusing. I get it that using the product name is useless (and now need to change all my tags, and that makes them look so poor and uninspired)  but Zazzle also says to not use words like "gift" or "present". But then, I just looked at another shop's tags, and the store owner uses : "bridesmaid gifts" and "valentines day gift" and both appear in blue in the tags list, and are clicable links. So they seem positive to use. Have things changed since Zazzle people had given their advices about tags ?