So, you have an Etsy shop, you have a website, and you have social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram. They all need fixing, tweaking, SEO, cohesive branding, and more in order to start generating income. What’s the priority? What should get fixed first?
This is often a daunting question to the small business owner once they realize the full scope of what it takes to begin generating eyeballs, income and search engine standing. Seems overwhelming and guess what? It is.
Since it is ALL important, yet realistically it ALL cannot be fixed at the snap of a finger, priorities will need to be set.
So what gets done first? What is the order of repair?
What I always advise my Etsy clients is to take care of their Etsy shop first. Social media second. Website, last. Why?
Your Etsy Shop –
Your Etsy shop comes with a large built in audience. Not just are there thousands of shoppers who use Etsy exclusively, but Etsy also spends fair quantities of money promoting the shops in Google which is the de facto search engine.
So, it makes perfect sense to take care of your Etsy shop first.
Competitors must be researched extensively.
Most often, we find that Etsy shops are woefully lacking in cohesive SEO optimization, from shop description all the way through product titles, descriptions, and listing tags down to most efficient usage of shop categories to get the eyeballs and shoppers staying in your shop longer and eventually purchasing from you.
Once this has been optimized to its fullest extent, and you see the traffic coming in with your listing stats enabled, you can safely move on to getting your social media accounts in order.
Your Social Media Accounts –
Again, this is one of the mechanisms by which you will generate eyeballs and shop visitors. It’s a very important way of generating traffic, so this gets taken care of 2nd.
We recommend focusing on your business Facebook page and your business Instagram account.
Cohesive across the board branding is imperative. Same logos, business descriptions, etc. must be used to create a transparent entity for your online business. Same handles for social media are important as well so that it’s all very easy for site visitors to remember you by.
Hashtags need extensive research to adequately represent your products and brand and to bring the necessary likes and favorites to your posts.
Social media posting that is NOT blatantly screaming “BUY FROM ME” is mission critical. There is a way to post and then again, a way NOT to post.
Until your website is fixed, social media accounts should be linked to your Etsy shop. Remember, the one with the built in audience? Get some income going first.
Your E-Commerce Website –
This is last. Generally websites are designed to be pretty, and SEO is not the hard core focus. However, that way, your e-commerce website is just another pretty face instead of a pretty face that generates income.
We have found websites are usually the train wrecks of the small business.
Why?
Websites need special care. They have NO built in audience such as when you sell on a venue such as Etsy, eBay or Amazon or Amazon Handmade. Websites are just kind of “out there”.
They are easy to get lost especially if new, especially on any major search engine because there is SO MUCH competition and those competitors are generally well established – hence they get the visibility without trying too much. Those e-commerce websites that have less longevity on the internet tend to quite simply get swallowed up.
There are many ways to help a website along in the search engines. Simple quality SEO on product titles, descriptions, tags and don’t forget image SEO. Then we can move on to the wider reaching geo targeted SEO should your products warrant that – IE: do they have a niche or do they fit in a niche that could be well supported by geo targeting.