Redbubble Tagging 101
You’ve signed up for Redbubble, customized your storefront, and uploaded your newest designs. Great! Now how are customers going to find your work? Tags!
Proper tagging will help bring your work to the top of the search results on Redbubble, and in search engines like Google. You can review your tags on all of your designs on the manage works page of your Redbubble account.
What are tags and why are they important?
Tags are descriptive words or phrases you add to a work to help potential customers find your products. When a customer searches on Redbubble or via a search engine like Google or Bing, the search algorithm uses tags to match relevant designs with the search query. By including relevant and specific keywords in the tags, you increase the chances of your products appearing in search results when customers search for those terms.
How do I choose the best tags?
When choosing tags, focus on using descriptive and relevant keywords that accurately describe your artwork. Think about the subject matter, style, medium and any other unique characteristics that set your work apart. Most importantly, you should consider the words and phrases that potential customers are likely to use when searching for products like yours.
What tags should I avoid?
Recently, we’ve seen an increase in superficial, misleading, and inauthentic tags. Google perceives these tags as spammy at best, and deceptive at worst. They are heavily penalized in search rankings and should be completely avoided. Examples include; best selling, top selling, trending, new design, new style, new product, cheap, hot sale, best price, best quality, money back, free shipping, delivery guaranteed.
Here are all the do’s and don’ts of tagging your work, so you can get more eyes on your designs – which means more sales!
✅ DO ✅
Do: Use 10 to 15 tags on each design.
Do: Use each of these categories:
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- content that appears in your design
ex: “flower, tree, star” - theme:
ex: “nature, botanicals, zen” - style or color palette
ex: “watercolor, floral, pastel”
- content that appears in your design
Do: Stay true to you. If you have a doodle of a pink dinosaur, tagging your work with “superhero” or “politics” might show it to more people – but not ones who want to buy it. Be specific, accurate, and honest, and your work will end up in the hearts and homes of your new fans.
Do: Note your tags to use again. Especially if your work is abstract or has repeated themes, keep a running list of your favorites to help you hit 15 tags every time.
Do: Aim for single word tags when possible, but specific multi word tags are sometimes good, too! Keep “hiking” and “trails” separate, but “Grand Canyon” works all together.
⛔ DON’T ⛔
Don’t: Repeat yourself. Repetitive tags actually work against you. So if you have “dog”, you don’t need “dogs, dog lover, and dog mom”, too. Aim for variety like “dog, pet, puppy, corgi”.
Don’t: Waste your space
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- Avoid being too broad
ex: “funny, gifts, illustration” - Avoid being too specific
ex: “pastel kawaii tabby cat fluffy” all as one tag - Avoid value tags and buzzwords
ex: “trending, best selling”
- Avoid being too broad
Don’t: Use full sentences. “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” – too much filler! “Brown, fox, jumping, lazy, dog” – gets right to the point.
Don’t: Skip the description. Google sweeps Redbubble descriptions to support your SEO ranking, so if you leave it blank, you’re missing out.
Don’t: Include the product type (t-shirt, hoodie, etc.). Customers can filter their search to see which designs are available on which items, so focus on your design – not the product.
If your designs are more abstract, it can be difficult to nail down the theme or content words that best describe your piece. Here’s some advice for picking the best tags no matter what design you’ve created:
Look for synonyms
Your Starry Night Sky design could be Celestial Night Sky or Starry Evening Sky or Twinkling Balls of Gas Dark Horizon Space Landscape…. You get the idea.
Ask a friend
Send your new designs to a couple friends and ask them to describe it – and how it makes them feel. They could have new ideas you didn’t think of!
Take notes
Many artists work in a similar style, color palette, or explore variations on a theme over time. Keeping track of the tags that work for your style will give you a solid foundation, then you can swap in specifics on each artwork. For example, “dreamy, neutrals, shapes, blobs, lines, doodle, modern, cottagecore, natural, earthy, grounded” can work over and over, while “succulent”, “faces” and “hearts” won’t always make sense.
Research
Once you have a couple tags picked, search them on Redbubble and see what else shows up! Looking at other designs and titles might help you brainstorm what you’re missing.
Ready to optimize your tags? Head to your manage works page and hit ‘Quick Edit’ to put your newfound knowledge into action.
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