Working with Niches, Keywords & Tags in your Workflow

It’s recommended to read this article explaining the Niches table before reading this, as some of the Niches added in that article are covered in this article as well. 

There are only really two main workflows that are commonplace and most users will be using the Listings table at the core of their Merch Wizard/Airtable setup. This is the simplest to setup as Merch Wizard populates all the Listing data in there automatically.  If you use the Designs table as the central core to your workflow, this process can be assigned in much the same way. HOWEVER, for those using the OrbitKit integration, if you plan to use the Designs table for your Niches and Tags, you must be sure that the linked listing in the New Listings table does not have any values entered for Niches or Tags as Merch Wizard will first check the FinalKeywords field from the Listings table when pushing records and if any value is there it uses that instead of what you have in the Designs table when it pushes the Design and keywords to OrbitKit.

Listings Table at the Core

In the Listings table you have the following fields available as standard since the release of the v4 Starter Base. Either you grabbed this already as a new user, or if you are an existing user so will need to upgrade your base to make full use these features by following this detailed step-by-step article.

In this screenshot, I have simply added three new records to demonstrate how to add the niches we created in the Niches table article here. Mostly, all the Listings in this Table will be added automatically by Merch Wizard, so I will remove these three after this demo.

Or you can click in the Niche field and hit enter to see a list of all of your niches, then scroll to find the Niche you wish to add and click it. Please note, the records appear here in the order they are displayed in the Niches table. As I added Dog, Poodle and Greyhound recently, they appear at the bottom, but you can move these around in the Niches table as required.

Notice for Poodle & Greyhound, that keywords for the Dog niche have also been added automatically? This is because we added Dog as a ParentNiche to Poodle & Greyhound in the Niches table.

I will temporarily remove Dog as a ParentNiche from the Greyhound niche, so you can see what happens

Now the Dog ParentNiche has been removed, look back at the Listings table and you can see the keywords for the Dog niche have now disappeared from the Greyhound Niche keywords.

We can easily add in Dog as a Niche as well as the Greyhound niche for our new Greyhound shirt Listing and then you will see how the Dog keywords are added back in again. You can assign as many niches as you like to your Listings.

This means you have a number of ways to achieve the same result. If you only have a few Greyhound shirts, then adding in Greyhound and Dog niches individually is no big deal. But if you have quite a few, you can now see why adding Dog as a ParentNiche to Greyhound will save you lots of time later on.

Design Specific Keywords – Tags

You could finish up there, just adding a niche to each listing and using the keywords generated from the Niches table. But what about the Tags field? Well, whether you have Tags entered in here or not, it’s best to think of this as Design Specific Keywords. It’s best to think of these as a place to add extra keywords that describe your design specifically, and it’s a place to enter keywords that aren’t likely to be in the Niche keywords. So adding Tags like Dog, makes no sense as you would be duplicating the keyword and duplicating your work.

We don’t have a design made for the Dog Shirt demo listing, but you can imagine it looks like the Tags I’m adding below… 🙂

Did you notice how the new Tags (colourful, hairy & woofer) have also been automatically added to the Final Keywords field? That is what is really special about this base amendment.

Now let’s see what happens if I create another new demo Listings record without a Niche, but with some Tags only

Those Tags are still added to the Final Keywords field, which means whatever combination of Niches and/or Tags you have currently entered in your Listings table, you can use the Final Keywords field as is, or you can add more keywords by adding whatever is missing.

Now lets see what happens if we later add a Niche to the existing Tags…

The Tags always remain at the front of your Final Keywords field list, as these Design Specific Keywords are likely to be the most important keywords for this design. Adding in Niches later, will build on these keywords for all those print on demand platforms that permit you to enter up to 50 tags or more.

Important to note, if your Niches table has a long list of Niches that have been linked to a Product Listing, whenever you get around to adding (or removing keywords) to these Niches in the Niches Table, these changes will be updated across every single Product Listing that is linked to that Niche, automatically!