Adding Tags to your Designs and Products

What are Tags?

Tags are a word or phrase that describes your design! Tagging your art with accurate and relevant keywords is one of the most important things you can to help people find your art in both the Threadless Marketplace search and for web searches like Google.  Since all searches rely on your tags to index exactly what the design images contain, this is critical for helping customers find what they are looking for. 

You can add tags to your designs from the  Product section of your Artist Dashboard. Find the design you'd like to add tags and select 'Edit'. On the product page, go to the field that says 'Tags'.  Enter the keyword (spaces are ok!) and hit 'Add Tag'. You can enter more than one tag when they are separated by a comma (ex. Dog, Doggo, Space, Lost in Space). While there is a limit of 25 characters per tag, you can add as many or as few tags as you'd like!

TAGGING GUIDELINES

1. Relevance-  Tags should accurately reflect the subject matter, style, and/or theme of the design. Make sure that tags relate to the content of your design.
2. Specific - Make sure that the tags you are using on your designs are specific rather than general tags. For example, a tag like "tee shirt art" is general and does not add SEO value to your products.
3. No Spam - You shouldn't use excessive, incorrect, or irrelevant tagging. This will have a negative impact on your shop's and products SEO.

So, what makes a great tag? 

Great Tags

These will be relevant to your design and helpful to people searching. Thinking like a customer is the first step to getting found. Here are a few ways to think of good keywords:

• Think about your potential customers. What words/terms would they search to find this design specifically? 
• What are the elements or themes in this design? bears, astronaut, cats, pizza, animals, food, geeky, gaming, sports, politics
• Who would wear it (aka. who would be looking for it?) skateboarders, campers, kids, nerds, athletes 
• What is the design style or does the art use certain techniques? illustration, photography, watercolor, line art, mixed media
• What imagery, text, or colors are used in the design? floral, outer space, geometric, pop culture, blue, nasa, no, peace 
• Use variations of words that are interchangeable like dog, doggo, puppy, pooch, fido, bow wow, man's best friend 
• Is this design a good fit for a holiday or special event? valentine’s day, halloween, elections, birthday, super bowl, back to school, summer time
• See what tags similar designs are using or ask a friend how they would search for your design. 
• Revisit and revise your tags often! Be sure to take advantage of popular trends, passing fads, and fashionable phrases or terms that could be related to your design.  

Not As Great

Bad or misleading tags will not help with search and can even keep your design from being seen by the right customer.

• Product or Size tags like tees, pillows, mugs, 2x-large, etc since they are already included and won't help when searching. 
• Spam or Irrelevant tags Don't add popular search terms unrelated to your design. They won't equal sales. It's better for a few people who really want to see a specific design than a ton of people who weren't looking for it.

Looking for a little inspiration? Check out some popular tags and categories across Threadless and Artist Shops:

Download the Artist Shops Popular Tags and Category List

For best practices and more details about tagging, searches, and SEO, check out the Creative Resources blog.