First, subscribe to the Etsy Finds. I subscribe to all of those under shopping and all of the newsletters.
When you get the shopping emails, they look like this:
All of the words in blue take you somewhere. Spend a little time to see where they go, and take note as they apply to your shop. I will walk you through how I see this email.
The first linking words, August's Hot Topics, goes to treasury lists that are tagged with August Trends. If you are going to make a treasury anyway today, include something turquoise and items from your friends and teammates that could have made this email but didn't, then tag it August Trends. Your treasury will get extra activity over the next couple of days as people open and explore this Etsy Finds email. Your friends will love you for it. You can't really do anything for yourself directly with the treasury links. Indirect benefits of making treasuries include: you may find more people adding you to their circle if they like your picks. There may also be sellers who appreciate the feature and give you a feature in return.
The second link, turquoise, goes to turquoise items. If you have relevant items, you can renew them since there is still a row of recently listed items at the top of the page . From the looks of my screen shot here, renewing affects your relevancy too. I see 2 of the recently listed items showing up as most relevant as well. Do make sure you have relevant titles and tags and descriptions before you renew.
Competition
Turquoise links to a huge number of items on Etsy, so if you are already in the top ten pages on that link, you are doing great with your titles and tags. I have a turquoise pillow cover, but I don't think that turquoise is the most important thing about it, so I am not going to try to get in on the action here. I will leave this link for you jewelry sellers to battle it out. You will be able to see that relevancy has nothing to do with the quality of photos, so that is where your items can stand out. Take a look at the titles and tags that the most relevant items (those start at the second row.) Check them against yours to see how you can improve your ranking. The items with the best photos probably get the most clicks. As a buyer, I am willing to flip through a number of pages to find something that catches my eye.
Here is a good way to figure out which item to work on from your own shop - Click on the link in the finds where you know you have something. There are several in today's finds that apply to me (personalized, men, dresses, and Christmas.) Let's look at dresses. I click on the link and then go to the local results to see my most relevant items.
Apply the info
Oops, my mens dress shirt shows up in dresses. I don't like that. I will check my shop stats to see if anyone is finding me by searching mens dress shirt. I will also go to google and check to see if anyone searches mens dress shirt. If it is a popular search, I will leave it. If not, I will take dress shirt out of my tags so I am not showing up in the dresses. I am pretty sure I do not have dress as a stand alone tag on that item, but I better make sure. My most relevant item looks to be my girls dress pattern, so I will renew that today and probably sell it and relist a few times. Also, when I click on men in the finds, that same shirt is my most relevant item, so I will be looking at it and renewing it - sorry in advance, if it keeps showing up under dresses.
Do I spend time everyday doing this? No. If I had a marketing person - this would be one of their daily jobs. I think having 4 potential hits in this one email, and a treasury I was going to make anyway sitting in my Brandybuck favorites folder, makes today my day to jump on it this week.