I guess it worked. . .

Ok so I had been working on my SEO and rankings for over a week, doing a few listings each day.  I noticed a slight improvement in views, like I was actually get views daily. *LOL*  So this weekend I spent hours and hours making sure I did all 65 listings and reworking them over and over until I hit "A" ranking on all of them and overall for the whole shop.  It was a lot of work but when I had all A's I felt really good like I had accomplished something.  o:-)

Yesterday I had over 40 views and 4 favorites in just one day, that's a frickin' record.  Seriously I don't think I've had that much activity in a single day the whole year it's been open.

I hope it keeps up and I hope I get some sales from all that work.  I have shipped a couple of custom orders and while I got an email form one of them saying he really loved what he ordered I really hope that eventually they will take the time to write me some nice reviews.  

Victory !!!

I have conquered Etsy SEO, at least I think I have have for now.  :-/

I know SEO is an ever changing animal dancing on shifting sands but right now at least all my listings have A grades and my shop is typo free.  ~woo-hoo~

Pardon my happy dance but I am thrilled to have accomplished such a huge task and glad to move on to other things.

I made an adorable tree yesterday so I am hopeful that I can get a few more finished quickly and add the new section to the shop.

EtsyRank. . . .

OMG!?!?   EtsyRank makes me want to cry, seriously it is a helpful tool I guess but I have worked so hard to use all 13 tags and re-do my titles and make sure all the right words are in my descriptions.  I really thought I had made great progess but then EtsyRank upgraded and changed format and I checked again only to find I have an overall C rating, many of my tags are not scored well and my attempts to cover all the spellings of chainmaille (chain mail, chainmaill, chain maille, etc.) are counted as spelling errors.  :-(

In the "external links" section it for some reason doesn't count the links from this blog or my Facebook page, but maybe that's because there is a separate section for "social" stuff.  However, since I don't use Pintrest, Twitter, LinkedIn or other sites my sad little Facebook page and this underutilized blog don't fare well in comparison.  :-(  

So while I am planning to expand my listings and know that I need to re-shoot most of my photos I now know that I also need to re-do most of what I thought was done to improve things I apparently suck at.  ~sigh~

Expanding the line up . . .

I have decided that I am going to expand the line up in my shop and list the wire tree sculptures for sale.  Everyone seems to like them so much and I really do enjoy making them so it makes sense.  I am working on a couple of custom order chainmaille necklaces at the moment but I hope in a couple of weeks I'll be able to add new listings for the wall art.

This will mean a whole new "section" in the shop and a whole new set of tags and search terms to work on but I am hopeful that it will increase views and sales by reaching more people looking for something other than jewelry.