Why You Want Organic Google Search Traffic to Your Store

Online sellers love organic traffic and work very hard to get it, but what is it exactly and how can it help you sell more handmade items online? Here is what you need to know.

What does the term Organic mean? Organic results are the pages you see after you type a search term into a search engine and click “search.”

Where do organic searches come from? From the major search engines, Google, Yahoo, and Bing. They also come from Google Images if you name your images correctly. Since Google dominates the search market by such a huge margin, most organic searches come from them.

Why do you want your store or website to be found in organic search? Organic traffic is targeted traffic. You are more likely to get a sale from someone that finds you organically versus them coming from clicking a banner ad or from browsing through categories. When people want a specific handmade item they ideally want to be taken to a page filled with those particular items and as a seller you want your handmade items to be on that page.

Do you have to buy organic traffic? That is why it is so great, organic traffic is FREE. It is the best kind of traffic to get and you do not have to pay for it.

Can you get organic traffic if you sell on Etsy? Yes but not always directly. If someone searches in a search engine for something very specific, your store or even one of your item listings may show up in the search results. A lot of times when you search for something handmade the results will show either an Etsy category, or they will take you to Etsy.com and will show you pages of listings that include the keywords you typed into search.

A lot of sellers use the same keywords in their descriptions so someone searching would end up browsing through a lot of items to find you. Your description, title, and tags will need to include the words that the person typed into search.

If someone knows your store name and they search for that, then you will probably show up near or at the top of the search results since you are the only store with that particular name.

How do you know if you are getting organic traffic? You can use Google Analytics and/or Etsy Stats. If you sell your handmade items any other place than Etsy, Google Analytics is your best option for viewing where your traffic is coming from. Google Analytics works with Etsy as well, but they also have “Etsy Stats” which gives you more detailed information.

Why does analytics show some search terms as “not provided?” – This is a fairly recent issue. People logged into Google get their searches encrypted so the keywords do not show up when you view your site stats. This is very frustrating as a seller because it is important to know what search terms you are ranking for and what people are actually searching for to find you. Google has been changing a lot of things lately and hopefully there will be a way around this in the near future.

Can you buy organic traffic if you want to? Sort of, you can use PPC, “pay-per-click” ads, or Google Adwords. Technically “pay-per-click” ads are considered non-organic because they do not show up in the normal search results. They are the ads that you see at the very top of a search results page or along the right side. Like regular search results, these ads only appear when a person searches for specific terms. If you do not show up “organically” in the search results for a certain term you can buy one of these ads so people can find you.

Why people finding you through organic search convert into buyers – They typed in what they were looking to buy and found exactly what they were looking for. They were not browsing through categories. They were specific. If someone wanted to buy a handmade rose as a give for mother’s day, they would not find what they were looking for by typing “rose” in the search engine search box. Now if they typed in “handmade red metal rose” and you happen to make those and your site shows up in the organic search results, you may have just gained a customer. For them to find you, you probably had those keywords in your title, description, and tags.

Etsy search versus Google Search – You can think of Etsy itself as being a sort of search engine for handmade items. Normally if you are searching for a specific handmade item online you would just go to Google and type in what you want. A lot of people know about Etsy though and know that that is where many handmade items are. Instead of starting at Google.com, a person may go straight to Etsy.com and search there for specifically what they are looking to buy.

Does organic traffic just happen? It can but you have to be doing the right things. It is also not instant and does take time. It is an ongoing process as well and does take a lot of work. You have to be consistently doing the right things and traffic will start to come over time. Do not expect instant gratification for your efforts.

What can you do to increase the organic traffic to your store? Have more specific item descriptions for less broad terms and have more items. The more competitors you have, the more specific and descriptive you need to be. Learn about SEO, keywords, tags, backlinks, image naming and text. The process is called “optimization” and the techniques work whether you have your own personal site, a blog, or sell your handmade items on Etsy or any other marketplace.

If you want more organic traffic for your handmade items, spread yourself out – There is no reason why you cannot show up multiple times in Google search results. There may be a result for an item you put on Etsy, one for your Facebook Page, another for your Blog, and even another for your Personal website. It is not uncommon to show up more than once in the results. All of your pages will need to be “optimized” for your target keywords if you want all of them to rank.

Good luck with your selling

Richard

Tags: adwords, descriptions, etsy, google search, handmade items, keywords, optimization, organic, pay per click, ppc, search results, seo, tags