Linked Tags

[KayeCee]

I’m trying to figure out how tags work here. I notice that there are two sections… one says Labels and one says All Products. I’m assuming labels refers to the tags we add, correct? 🤷🏻‍♀️

Can anyone explain why some are linked and some aren’t? Even between the two sections, one may not be linked in the Labels section, but the exact same phrase will be linked under the All Products section. 

I’m just totally lost on this and didn’t find any info when I searched. Thank you! 

[Windy]

I have learned a little bit about what those tags are by clicking on some of them and seeing where I land. But even so I do not feel like an expert. I call the blue ones "hot tags" because they are clickable. Are you trying to use words which are hot tags? 

[KayeCee]

Thank you! 

Actually? I have no idea what I’m trying to use yet. 🙃

I’m a blogger, so I’m used to targeting long tail keywords, but I like to research new things like social media and other platforms before going whole hog on something.

I’ve had a hobby account here for years, but took an early retirement from teaching this year. I really like the platform and ordered several test products. I was pleased with the results, so I’m in heavy research mode to see what I need to do.

Normally, if I were trying to target pit bull t-shirts, I’d hit terms like “womens pit bull t-shirts” or “gifts for pit bull lovers.” Here, I’m seeing short one word tags like pitbull and dogs. 

Then I realized that some of the Labels are not “hot tags” while they are “hot tags” under All Products, so I’m completely confused as to why. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m also confused as to whether or not I need to abandon long tail keywords for tags in favor of the short tags. 

[shellifitz]

 A long time ago someone explained the hot link tags to me and what they said boiled down to that they are landing pages for ads that zazzle places and act kind of like categories. 

I was complaining because they are links off of our page but since they are down at the bottom of the page it is probably rare that someone would even see them let alone click on them so I am not as upset by them as I used to be and especially since I learned they have a useful purpose for us. 

Hope that helps. 

[KayeCee]

Thank you!

Hmmmm… I shall have to explore that angle a bit more. 

I can see them using landing pages for advertising. It makes sense with all the Google ads I see on here that they also advertise on Google and other platforms. Those leaks were one big reason that I’ve hesitated putting any effort into Zazzle though.

I generally try to keep a lot of my own sites simple because I feel that too many shiny objects for these types of products make customers hesitate instead of pulling the trigger. 

But what do I know… I’m just a retired teacher and not Jeff Bezos. 🥴 LOL

[Windy]

@KayeCee I learned more about hotlinks when I decided to try and use the site as a shopper might. I have never been a shopper here, just a designer/marketer. Like you I have dabbled for years, and finally for some reason now I am getting a smidge more serious. There are pages in the Help section about the need to optimize listings which are not bringing sales and views. My pattern has been to spend some time at Zazzle, then get busy with other things, then come back 18 months later and dabble some more. For the past few years when I have spent a few weeks here, I would work hard during that short time, on optimizing listings that had been up for many years, yet had garnered only one or two views. I have dozens, or maybe hundreds of these suboptimal listings. I would work hard to improve the description and the tags and the title, and then I would leave Zazzle once again, for six months or more. When I returned, I would find that now, instead of having three views on a product, maybe I had four total all time views. In other words, optimizing my listings by using better tags, title and description has been a complete waste of my time. 

This leads me to believe that the official Zazzle instruction to optimize our products with better tags, titles and descriptions is ill-advised and will not help.

When I figured that out, I started to play around a little with Zazzle search, trying to act as a shopper would so that I could learn what parts of the page a shopper is  likely to click on, and would also learn where that clicking would take them. Mainly what I have learned is that search is not the strong suit around here. 

[KayeCee]

Ooooo… thanks for that input! I’ve been dragging my feet on cleaning up my old shop and wondering if it’s worth the time to redo tags and titles. I’m still trying to figure out which hidden products I need to delete completely. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ok… so if dusting off tags/titles is futile and search isn’t Zazzle’s strong suit, do you have an opinion on what is?

At the moment, I’m working on 2 niche sites with the thoughts of integrating products on them. I’m thinking that may be my best bet. (Magazine style sites more like Good Housekeeping… not product promotion based sites if that makes sense.)

[Windy]

For some reason I have made a few products I cannot stand looking at. (Maybe this was from that year when I came in to Zazzle and decided to create one product every single day, no matter what, lol).  Those uglies are the ones I delete. I also do have SOME items with thousands of views and no sales, or just one or two sales. I have deleted a few of those, in cases where I thought the tagging etc was already good. Thousands of views and no sales, in my mind, equates to "people don't like it and won't buy it". As for marketing, where to do it, how to do it, I have not yet found the secret. A lot of people here have learned what works for their niche.  So it can be done.

[KayeCee]

Thank you! I’m going to get my new shop up to speed, then start reviewing at least 1 old products per day. I’ll probably transfer a few designs to newer products and delete some of the uglies that I made when I first started. 

As for marketing, I’ve got a few ideas I’m mulling around, but it’ll take a while to see if they work. 

[Username]

@KayeCee 

I'm thinking you were looking at the tags on a Label product page, that's why you saw 'Labels' and 'Other Products'. If you would look at tags on a Bibs product page, the tags sections would be titled 'Bibs' and 'Other Products'. The tags sections on an Invitation product page will be titled 'Invitations' and 'Other Products'.

So, the first section, the tag words will link to other 'Labels', 'Bibs', or 'Invitations' (depending on what type of product you look at the tags of at the bottom of the page) in the market place that have that exact same tag word.

The section that says 'All Products', the tag words will link to ALL products in the market place. Labels, bibs, invitations, cookbooks, t-shirts, pillows, ALL products in the market place that have that same tag word.

What determines which links are blue/clickable I am not sure. But I do have a hunch that it has to do with the amount of other products having that tag word, and an algorithm that checks or is connected to the relevancy of certain market place tag words.

[shellifitz]

As that Zazzler told me a while back, they create landing pages for Zazzle advertising purposes. You may be onto something with the algo hotlinking when a certain number of products is reached and then Z can use the links to create ads with.  Then these linked products might show up on a Google shopping page when the right search terms are used.  Makes sense to me anyway. 

[KayeCee]

Oh, thanks! That was a very helpful explanation and makes sense! I appreciate you! 🥰