How to Get Found in Search

At this stage, not only should you be familiar with the Zazzle design process, but you should also have a firm understanding of your niche. If not, pause here and take a moment to get caught up. Otherwise, keep reading to learn how to get your products found within search.   

Now that you’ve finished designing, we need to make sure your products are discoverable and easy to find within the marketplace. But how exactly will your customers find your products among the vast ocean of other products? Well simple…through your metadata.

What is metadata?

Metadata is the information you use to describe your products. Think of it as the breadcrumbs your customers follow in order to find your products within Zazzle’s marketplace. It’s a bit daunting when you consider the vast number of products being sold on Zazzleand the amount of visitors flocking to the site each month. But the fact of the matter is that the sole determining factor of your success is not how well you stack up against other designers, but how well your niche connects with YOUR products. By being more in tune with your niche, you can write quality metadata your customers will most likely search for, thus giving your products the edge to shine through the rest.

Your metadata comprises of three parts: Tags, Product Title, and Design Description. If you’ve already made it to the ‘Post A Product’ page, you’ve definitely come across these three fields. When filling out these portions, just know that the more unique and descriptive the information you input, the easier your customers will be able to find your products. How unique you make each  is entirely up to you.

Title & Tags

Both your product’s titles and tags are the ‘keywords’ that you use to describe your product. Zazzle uses these keywords to catalog your products, and relies heavily on them when delivering a customer’s search results. This is ultimately how your customers will discover your products, both on Zazzle and Google, so take your time when thinking this out.

Some Tips When Considering a TITLE:

• Your title should reflect the actual design of your product and contain the most IMPORTANT keywords. The goal is to succinctly describe your design in such a way that the viewer will know exactly what to expect before even seeing your design. You should look to include the most visually prominent elements of your design, such as:
  • Dominant colors
  • The main subject of your design (is it a character? quote? name? etc.)
  • Design themes (i.e., vintage, whimsical, professional, etc.)
• Don’t waste valuable space by also including what the product type is. Our internal system will automatically append it for you.
  • Example: If you’re designing is on a t-shirt, simply title the product ‘Firefighter Moms,’ and the system will show the product title as ’Firefighter Moms T-Shirt.’

Some Tips When Considering TAGS:

• When choosing tags, you should refer to your buyer profiles to get into the mindset of your niche audience; you’ll want to choose tags that your customers will most likely use as search terms.
• Your tags should also mirror the keywords in your title. The more in sync your title and tags are, the more potent your metadata becomes!
• Like the title, tags should only be representative of your design. Do not include the product type.
• Avoid tags such as ‘custom’ or ‘personalized’ and any other related keywords. Remember that you only get ten tags per product, so you don’t want to waste it on keywords that will apply to most of the products in the marketplace.
• Feel free to build your tags around phrases (only when it makes sense of course!). Each phrase can have a maximum of five words and need to be grouped together by using quotes marks
  • Poor Tags: fire, department, female, firefighter, mom
  • Better Tags: “fire department,” “female firefighter,” mom
  • Be careful of misspellings!

Let’s see an example:

Title: Wanderlust Gustave Flaubert Quote

TAGS:

wanderlust, “Gustave Flaubert”, travel, whimsical, explore, adventure, “travel makes one modest”, typography, quote, inspirational

Notice that the design, title, and tags all circle back to each other. 

Writing your DESIGN DESCRIPTION:

The design description section is your chance to connect with your customers on a more personal level.  You’ve worked hard on your designs, and your customers should know it! This is your opportunity to tell your creative story.

• Be descriptive as possible but be sure to have some fun with it!
• Keep in mind that Google will still crawl this section, so don’t forget to speckle it with keywords
• Like your title, the key to a successful description is uniqueness. Try not to submit the same description for multiple products, even if they feature a similar design. Google is getting better and better at recognizing duplicate copy (even sentence structure), so it’s in your best interest to create unique descriptions.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the practice of including keywords that do not pertain to your design. The theory is that if you include a bunch of random keywords, your product will surface for a wider variety of search terms.

Makes sense right? Wrong! Keyword stuffing is possibly the WORST thing you can do for your designing career. Both Google’s and Zazzle’s algorithms are fine-tuned to recognize keyword stuffing and will omit any product they mark as spam from their results; leaving your hard work unseen.

Auditing Your Metadata

Hey it’s pretty hard to hit a homerun your first time at bat, so don’t feel discouraged if your sales are off to a slow start. One great way to breathe new life into your products is to update its metadata, especially for the products that have yet to be viewed by the public. Here’s how:

Within your PRODUCTS tab (located within your store’s dashboard), you will be able to track how well each of your products are doing by using several different metrics.

Click on the ACTIONS dropdown and click EDIT to update your metadata, royalty percentage, and even your product visibility. Editing your metadata is a great way to keep up with new trends without creating new products so don’t forget to give it a refresh from time to time.  

zRank

Want to know how you can get a boost in the marketplace? By upping your zRank score!

Your zRank is an ongoing, qualitative score between 1 and 10, which allows you to see, at a glance, how well your store and its products are optimized for the marketplace. The closer your zRank gets to 10, the stronger the influence your store has within search results. It’s also a great way to gauge how appealing your store is to its visitors, so be sure to spend some time building out your space.  You can find your zRank score on the HOME tab of your store:  

And that’s it! You now know the fundamentals of publishing some great products on Zazzle.

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