What does the fox say? Tag your designs properly.
What words do you spontaneously associate with the term “fox”? Do you think maybe sly, hunting, silver fox, foxy lady or even hipster pet? Well this is very similar to what tagging is—think word association, here. You want to make it easy for others find your designs when they’re personalizing products in the T-Shirt Designer, or when looking for products in the Marketplace. By means of adding the right tags, you help folks find your designs when they enter a search term. In this blog post, we will shed some light on how you can help customers and search engines find your designs. Read on!
First, be sure to find a suitable name.
The design name should – in a nutshell – give a neat description of the design. On one hand, it’s nice to have a short and succinct name for a design, but on the other hand, you should remember that the design’s name will be on the customer’s invoice, so it’d be nice to convey a reputable impression.
Let’s say somebody is looking for a phone case with a fox on it. In his Marketplace search, the person enters “fox hipster t-shirt”, upon which he receives a number of different design suggestions. Then he clicks on a design that he takes a spontaneous liking to. The design chosen for the purpose of illustration here is called “fox hipster”, which seems quite a fitting name in light of the nerdy glasses the little guy is sporting on his snout. The other terms you can read here (see red edging) are often confused with the design description or design tags – but the wording is only a combination of product name and product type.
Adding suitable keywords – tags – helps would-be buyers find your design.
In the course of the upload process, you can choose tags that best describe your design. These can be synonyms, analogical words or fitting associations. The main thing is that the tags you choose are not too general, which means that you should try to narrow down your choice thematically to help your customers find what they are looking for.
Some of the tags chosen here are quite clever, others not so much. “Music“ pops up here thanks to the popular song “What Does the Fox Say”. Although “hipster” does seem like another obvious tag, “meme” and “internet” have little to do with our hipster fox. Perhaps adding the tag “nerd” would be a good idea here.
How should your tags be worded?
If possible, a tag should consist of only one word. Groups of words or whole sentences should be avoided. In some cases, i.e. a design depicting a well-known saying or proverb, you may divert from this rule. What you should do, however, is consider whether the tag you choose is necessary or not.
Going back to the example of our fox, you could have chosen the proverb “as smart as a fox” as one tag and then opted for adding the tags “crafty”, “cunning” and “clever”. Whether this would have improved the chances in terms of pertinent search results for the design is questionable, though.
And however much you are tempted to do so, avoid using trending tags that don’t fit your design. Unsuitable tags will not make a customer choose your hipster fox design if they are looking for a “Keep Calm & Carry On” or “I Love NY” design.
Do you have any questions, queries or tips you feel like sharing with us? We need to know! Please drop a comment below, and we’ll get back to you ASAP!
The post How To: Using Tags Properly to Get Your Designs Seen appeared first on The US Spreadshirt Blog.