Skip to content

Titles and description

← Selling 3: Listing items and Managing stock

The title and description of the item should be as descriptive and as accurate as possible. Imagine that you are describing your product to someone who can't see it, and also think about which words buyers might use to search for them.

If you list your products  on more than one platform or site, resist the temptation to copy and paste your product descriptions - this is really bad for your organic search results (i.e. Google, Bing). Make sure the content you publish to Folksy is unique to Folksy!

Title

The title is particularly important as keywords used in the title have a higher weighting in the search. It’s a good idea to describe what the item is in the title as well as using a product name if it has one. You could also add colour or style information, but don’t overload the title with unnecessary information. Remember you can use the description to go into more detail.

Description

You are given 1500 characters to describe the item. It’s important to provide enough information for the buyer to understand what the item is. You might like to include information on:

  • What it is (eg evening bag, beret, wedding dress)
  • How it was made
  • What it is made from
  • Size and weight
  • Packaging and postal options

Long descriptions may be necessary if your item is of a complex nature but usually a short description is more likely to be read rather than scanned. Keywords are used in combination with labels (colours and materials) and the title to ensure the best matches are returned to a search.

Keywords
Imagine that we’ve made a handbag that we want to list. We have come up with the following list of keywords to describe it: 

  • Physically descriptive words that real buyers are likely to use in a search -  red, leather, bag, handbag, shoulder bag, zipped pocket, rolled handles, hand stitched, flat base, black lining, magnetic closure, shiny, patent, small


  • Adjectives that appeal to our target audience and the press! – fashionable, on trend, handmade, quality, sexy, va va voom, eighties, 80s


Power Paragraph


We now need to create a paragraph which incorporates these keywords, whilst succinctly describing our bag. Search engines will mostly be interested in the first 40-50 words, so you have to make this count and ensure that it is full of the keywords that a person may use when searching for an item. It must be readable and attractive – a string of keywords will turn off potential buyers as will overly florid and unnatural sounding sentences.


The first paragraph is also the text that is used when people add your link to Facebook, or if you use an RSS feed to automatically update your blog or other social networking sites.


All of the keywords we have used have been highlighted to show just how search engine friendly our ‘power paragraph’ is. We have repeated the most important keywords “red” and “handbag” – don’t be tempted to over use keywords, this can have a negative effect -  but do use variations of a word such as bag, handbag, handbags.


This patent leather red handbag is just what you need for a little extra va va voom!  Made from quality materials this handmade bag features a secure magnetic closure and internal zipped pocket with a hard wearing black cotton lining. The hand stitched, rolled handles are long enough to be worn over the shoulder and close to the body. Seriously sexy, this eighties inspired handbag is on trend and red hot!


Edit your description until it really works for you, removing unnecessary words and sentences until it captures the essence of the product you are selling. Take a look at other listings from successful sellers on Folksy or in any online shop for inspiration and develop your own style of writing your descriptions. This will also help to speed up the listing process.


Don’t leave out important factors about the product – materials and dimensions are a must as it can be very difficult to gauge the size of an item or what it is made from through a photograph alone.


For more information read our blog post on how to write a good product description >


Find more advice on keywords and SEO for your online shop >


Tags

You can now add tags to your listings. Tags are used within Folksy to help shoppers find what they are looking for. They are one of the factors our internal search engine uses to bring back relevant results. We match tags to searches done by shoppers on Folksy, so if they search ‘picnic blanket’ and you have tagged a product ‘picnic blanket’ it will show up in their search.

NB. Tags are not the same as ‘keywords’ which are words or phrases people type into search engines like Google – but you can use keywords relevant to your products as your tags.

How to use tags on Folksy

 
  • You can add 15 tags to your items when you list or edit a product.
  • Think carefully about which tags will best match shoppers’ searches.
  • Tags can be one word or a short phrase, but the shorter the better.
  • Long tags with multiple words are less likely to help your work be found because people may not use the exact same phrase with words in the exact same order.
  • Use tags alongside other ‘keywords’ or phrases in your titles and descriptions to help your work get found within Folksy and also by search engines like Google.

You can find more advice on how to use tags and find the best tag for your product here:
http://blog.folksy.com/2015/06/18/how-to-use-tags-on-folksy 
http://blog.folksy.com/2016/11/22/how-to-use-tags 


Please do not use any profanities or ‘rude’ words in your title, description or tags – it is against the terms of use!

Feedback and Knowledge Base

(thinking…)