Etsy SEO Tips: 23 Important Tips To Get More Etsy Sales

Etsy SEO Tips: 23 Important Tips If You Sell On Etsy

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Before we start, this article on Etsy SEO ended up being so much longer than I’d anticipated! I advise to save this on Pinterest or another social media (even if it’s just for yourself and nobody else will see) as there is a lot of content to get through!

Etsy SEO is one of the single best things you can focus on if you sell on Etsy in 2021. SEO, which stands for search engine optimisation, increases your chance of ranking higher when buyers are searching for items. The better your SEO, the higher chance your Etsy store will be discovered.

SIMPLE… or so it seems.

In short, Etsy SEO is critical to your success. By filling in your titles, tags, categories and attributes you’re making a good start. Tips include detailed information on how to effectively fill these in, the use of long-tail keywords and how to find them, listing recency, stopping repetition of keywords, keyword orders, meta descriptions, in-bound links, shop sections and videos. 

There’s a whole lot of Etsy SEO tips out there, but below we’ve compiled a list of tips to increase your rankings, increase your visibility and, overall, increase your sales! You may also be interested in these 29 broader selling on Etsy tips. Remember to subscribe for our Etsy updates: 

 

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Etsy SEO tip 1: Use Long-Tail Keywords Or Phrases

Long-tail keywords are vital. They result in targeted, quality traffic as it means that if people search for these keywords, they will be better matched with your item and store. These long-tail keywords have less competition and have higher conversion rates meaning you’ll make more Etsy sales.

BUT… what are they?

They are search terms with more than 2 words or phrases together that are specific to your listing. For example, ‘abstract terrier portrait’. If someone is searching for a painting of a dog, generally, they may type in dog painting. This is someone probably not ready to purchase, they are shopping around.

HOWEVER, if someone used the long-tail keywords ‘abstract terrier portrait’, it is much more likely they know what they want and are intent on making a purchase. They are looking for something specific.

By adding long-tail specific keywords, if someone searches for these there is far greater chance they’ll find what they’re looking for and make a purchase from YOUR store.

Tip 2: Consider Titles, Tags, Categories & Attributes!

When it comes to describing your listings, there are so many avenues to explore. So often, we as Etsy sellers are so keen to create and do the fun bits, get our listings up quickly and start promoting on social media, that we forget to fill out all possible opportunities to increase traffic. Or… we say we’ll fill them in later.

We fill in the title, throw in a couple of tags and CALL IT QUITS. Well… when I started that’s what I did. By doing this we’re missing so much opportunity to reach new, interested buyers.

Etsy itself states that ‘Search uses your titles, tags, categories, and attributes when trying to match you to buyers, so when a buyer enters a query, we’re looking for all the keywords that you’ve added across those four dimensions.’

Always remember to fill in your title, tags, categories and attributes! Now, how do we fill them in?

Tip 3: Titles - Think Like a Buyer

Firstly, fill in the title with keywords that buyers would use to find the item. Think like a buyer! Etsy suggests this in this article! There’s no point writing a title that sounds cute but isn’t going to be written into the search bar. For example, I wouldn’t search for an item titled ‘My personal favourite painting in our new animal art collection, Flopsy the dog’.

On the opposite end of that, I also wouldn’t search for keywords like ‘chestnut, domesticated dog with mustard, chinoiserie pattern collar’. That’s extreme, but I hope you get my point that most buyers also wouldn’t search for something with complex, unused adjectives.

Instead, I may search for ‘acrylic painting of brown dog’. When writing a title, use keywords a buyer would use.

However, DON’T just cram keywords in your titles, this will hurt your SEO ranking rather than help. This means don’t just throw any keywords under the sun into your title if it doesn’t truly reflect the item. It still needs to be user friendly so the buyer can understand what the product is from the title and not just the image.

To help you select keywords, I follow this method below:

1) What would the buyer write into the search bar to find your type of item? This is what I call my buyer keyword. An example is ‘animal painting’.

2) From this, produce some long-tail keyword ideas. This often means taking the same as above but adding more detail or slightly modifying the words. For example, acrylic dog painting, abstract pet portrait, Yorkshire terrier artwork.

3) A general keyword. This is used to get people who are not looking for anything really specific, but know they want a certain item. For example, they know they want a painting but they are not sure of what kind or style. Examples include: pet painting for bedroom, colourful wall art for office. Notice these don’t specify anything madly specific, but they will capture buyers who are just browsing.

From this method, you should have some long-tail keywords and a few general keywords to describe your item.

When putting together a title, you can split major long-tail keywords or components of the title differently. For example, using a full stop, dash, | or slash:

An example: ‘Colourful Dog Painting | Yorkshire Terrier Artwork | Acrylic Pet Portrait | Wall Décor for Bedroom’

Notice how I also put capitols at the start of each word? To many sellers, this makes it look more professional and can increase sales.

Tip 4: Title and Tag keywords should match

Using the long-tail keywords or phrases you selected for your title, you should make your individual tags from these. Why?

Long-tail keywords or phrases that appear in both the title and tag of each listing shows Etsy that these are really relevant to the listing. By adding the same keyword phrases to both titles and tags, when someone searches using one of your keywords, it shows Etsy your product is really relevant to this buyer. This makes it more likely that Etsy will show your product over others.

Additionally, using longer phrases in tags and titles that match exactly is always stronger than using individual words for your tags.

Tip 5: Put Your Most Important Tag at the Start of Your Title To Improve Etsy SEO

As we’ve established, the title of each of your listings is essential for Etsy SEO ranking. However, another key piece of SEO advice is that the beginning of your title holds the most value when SEO and ranking is concerned.

Try to put your most important tag that best describes your listing at the START of your title. This is also what buyers see first when browsing and can immediately make them scroll past your item.

Tip 6: Don’t Repeat Keywords in Individual Listing Tags

You can add 13 tags and all of these should be unique and diverse. What do I mean by that?

Try to avoid using the same word more than once in your various tags. If your tags are something like this: ‘dog artwork’, ‘dog wall décor’ ‘colourful dog painting’ you may be missing opportunities. See how I used the word dog in every one of those tags… this is repeating of words. Even though the long-tail keyword is different with the descriptors, you don’t have to repeat a keyword such as dog.

By changing these to ‘dog artwork’, ‘animal wall décor’, ‘colourful pet painting’, you are slightly changing the words but this can dramatically increase the number of buyers you can reach. Therefore, make sure to make your tags as diverse as possible and do not repeat keywords.

Tip 7: Use New Keywords For Each Listing

This can be quite difficult… there is bound to be some overlap between listings. However, if each of your listings start with the exact same keywords then you are limiting how many people can find you.

We have seen so many amazing Etsy stores with fantastic items, but the titles all start with very similar keywords or phrases, or they are exact matches. This means you could even be competing against yourself!

For example, sticking to the dog painting theme, if you sell paintings of different dogs try to mix up the titles. Don’t just put ‘acrylic dog painting’ as your first phrase for each listing. Try to get title variety between listing.

Examples:

Listing 1) Terrier painting
Listing 2) Bulldog artwork
Listing 3) Great Dane abstract art

By changing keywords for each listing, you can reach a wider audience. It helps your overall Etsy SEO by allowing you to compete for more keywords.

Tip 8: Avoid repeating attributes or categories in tags and titles

What does this mean? It simply means that attributes and categories also technically act as their OWN tags.

Therefore, by repeating words in the tags and titles which you have selected for your attributes and categories, you are missing opportunity to reach further audiences.

Etsy states that ‘Adding the exact same phrases that appear in your categories and attributes is actually a missed opportunity to maybe add an additional tag that’s unique to the item you’re selling.’

It’s good for your title and tags to have similar phrases and long-tail keywords as mentioned earlier. But, try to make your attributes and categories different from the words you use in your tags and titles.

Tip 9: Fill in as many attributes as you can

These could be one of the most UNDERUSED AND FORGOTTEN SEO helpers on Etsy. Put simply, they are just another opportunity to be found by shoppers.

If you put your category as ‘wall décor’, this can change the attributes you can change. The attributes available for wall décor are: primary colour, secondary colour, style, room, height, width, depth, occasion, celebration and craft.

Try your best to fill all these in. Whilst sometimes it is not always possible, such as celebration or occasion, filling in as many as possible just gives you more opportunity to be found.

Etsy SEO Tips: If you sell on Etsy, these 23 Etsy SEO tips guarantee sales!

Reminder… if you are finding this article useful or enjoyable, you may also love these more general 29 selling on Etsy tips. 

Etsy SEO Tip 10: How to find effective long-tail keywords (Marmalead and Erank)

I’ve babbled on about the importance of long-tail keywords and phrases. But how do we know we’ve chosen good keywords?

The aim is to get keywords that have low competition and high search volume. This means that we want to select and use keywords where not many other sellers are using them, but high numbers of buyers searching for them.

This is where tools such as Marmalead and Erank come in. These tools are game-changing when it comes to Etsy SEO. They can be used to identify new keywords, analyse your current ones, check keyword competition, check keyword search volume and so much more.

Marmalead helps to grow your store and the number of sales by helping you identify real shopper keywords. Marmalead is trusted by thousands of other Etsy sellers who have reached great selling success.

Erank has a number of neat functions too. It identifies the number of searches for keywords, competition, it calculates your Etsy visibility score to Etsy buyers and can also give you an overall Etsy SEO rank. This means the quality of your SEO can be assessed for you – you should aim for rank A!

These tools can show you if any of your keywords are duplicated in your categories or attributes, which gives you the opportunity to change them. They also show you spelling issues, and if your keyword is in your title and description.

Why not try out their free trials now to see if you like the tool and if it helps you?

Tip 11: Improve your listing description with tags

Another great Etsy SEO tip is to add your tags naturally into your listing description. By adding your tags throughout your description, it again shows Etsy that there is coherence between your title, tags and descriptions.  

Search engines are smart. They easily look through the entire written content of your description and can identify the keywords you have used that match buyer searches.

When you add your tags throughout your description, make sure they are added as AUTHENTICALLY as possible. Whilst they are important to be there, readability is key to your buyers and Google really does not appreciate keyword stuffing.

Ensure your description is well-written, using your tags, and provides buyers with every detail possible about your product. This not only improves your items ranking and SEO, but also improves customer confidence.

Whilst it is sad that buyers can complain about our hard work and products, a detailed description can help Etsy settle any disputes. If a buyer leaves a negative review claiming certain information, a detailed description can be used to show what the product is, dimensions, materials used or anything else.

Tip 12: Meta Description – What is it?

The meta description is the first 150 – 160 characters of your listing description. This smaller section of your description is what is shown to people when they search for products on Google.

Make sure you optimise this short meta description by adding in your MOST important keywords that you added at the start of your title and tags. Try to make this snippet inviting to a buyer, ensuring you describe what the product is.

Some people have found good success by adding a call-to-action (CTA) statement. This is simply a statement to prompt an immediate response or asks someone to take a specific action. For example, in this scenario, you could have a sentence starting with ‘Check out this [Insert product keywords].’

We use CTA’s a lot whilst on our website. Whether that’s us suggesting other blog articles we think you may like or prompting you to subscribe for more Etsy content. See below:

Tip 13: Don’t change Etsy SEO that is already working – use your stats!

It’s important to remember that if you have a listing that is bringing in traffic, it shows the SEO is probably working. I would personally avoid changing the listing keywords if you’re already driving substantial buyers to that product.

How do I check if the traffic I’m bringing in is because of my SEO? On your shop manager section, look under your stats. There will be a section titled: ‘How Shoppers Found You‘. Underneath this, it gives a breakdown of how shoppers came to your Etsy store and listings.

Look at Etsy marketing and SEO. This will give you an indication of your SEO performance to see if things potentially could be tweaked.

Under this tab, you can scroll down to see the exact search terms buyers used to find your items. This will show you which keywords or phrases are working well, and potentially which ones you could adapt.

Under the ‘How Shoppers Found You‘ tab, you can also look at how many people found you through generic ‘Etsy Search’. This again will highlight specific keywords they used in their search which allowed them to find your product.

The takeaway from this point is, if a listing is bringing you traffic, don’t change it just because it fits your quarterly schedule of revamping titles or tags, for example. You may find you change it and lose all current traffic to that listing! So, see what’s performing well and see what could be changed.

Tip 14: Give Etsy SEO time!

This is a difficult one. Sometimes you do have to take a step back and give your Etsy SEO and keywords time to work. What do I mean?

If you decide to change a listings SEO, don’t assume that you’ll get immediate results (even if you have got amazing keywords from Marmalead or Erank, which I’m sure you do!). Things can sometimes take time to get into the Etsy algorithm, so DON’T LOSE HOPE that your listing may not be performing within days of any changes made.

Tip 15: How recent your item was listed is important

Etsy consistently reviews how recently one of your items was listed. This is true for whether the item is newly listed from scratch, but also if it has simply been relisted.

What does this mean in terms of Etsy SEO though? This simply means that there is an opportunity to boost your listing in the search feed if you did decide to change your keywords or SEO.

This works well if you’re changing your keywords of a product that hasn’t been as successful as you’d hoped. Instead of just fixing the SEO on an older listing, you can duplicate it and publish this as a new listing.

Etsy will view this as a NEW product being added to your store, which will give that listing a temporary boost in the rankings. By adding a new listing, this also shows Etsy that you are an active store and they also appreciate that in the rankings.  

Tip 16: Etsy Shop Title

Your shop title is the 55-character description that you can write which appears under your shop name on your homepage. The shop title is NOT the same as your shop name!

This shop title becomes the page title of your homepage, and is the text a buyer sees in the search engine they are using to get a first impression of your store.

Ensure you edit this in your shop manager. Etsy recommends ‘briefly describing your shop and the items you sell. Some sellers make a tag line or slogan. Also consider including your full name or your business name in your shop title if the potential customers are likely to search for you that way.’

Etsy SEO Tips: Follow These Tips For More Etsy Orders and Traffic

Tip 17: Shop Sections Help Etsy SEO

Etsy says that ‘how you name your shop sections can also help boost your shop’s SEO. Each section has its own landing page with a page title based on the section name.’ See more guidance on SEO directly from Etsy here.

Therefore, it is important to access your shop manager, click on listings, find sections and select to manage them. Sections help shoppers to browse your shop. It gives shoppers a taste of all the different products in your store and allows them to navigate more easily.

Etsy, similarly to your shop title in tip 16, uses each of your sections to create individual landing pages so search engines can find individual sections of your store. The section name forms the page title for each of these landing pages, and this is what buyers see in the search engine that links to your store.

So, how do I improve my SEO for my shop sections? Etsy states you should ‘briefly describe the kind of items in each specific section. Using “category style” names for your sections that include your keywords not only helps a shopper navigate within your shop, but also can help shoppers find you in search engines.’

Tip 18: Videos (In Beta)

You can also create 5 – 15 second videos of your products. Whilst they do not feature sound, it is an excellent opportunity to showcase your product up close from many different angles. This shows buyers exactly what they’re getting and can really increase your chances of getting sales.

How do videos help my SEO and ranking? According to Etsy, based on an analysis of over 5 million buyers, ‘shoppers are more likely to purchase an item if the listing includes a video.’

Therefore, by adding a video it increases your chance of getting a sale. Etsy works on recency (similar to Etsy SEO tip 15), meaning it will result in more relisting of your products resulting in higher search rankings.

Tip 19: Interlink Between Listings

This one is quite simple. If one of your listings is really performing and driving a lot of traffic, why not link to some of your other listings in the description?

To do this, you can simply copy the listing URL of some of your other listings and paste them into your description. It does not have to be the entire URL, only the shortened version which contains only the numbers e.g. www.etsy.com/listing/[number].

To improve this further, you can add your shop name to the URL. Your linking URL should read:

www.etsy.com/[shop name]/listing/[number] = www.etsy.com/LittleFindsCo/listing/871663119

This shop name and listing is made up, but I hope you get the idea! This could encourage buyers to look around at more of your listings.

Tip 20: In-bound Links (Improves Etsy SEO From External Sources)

What are these? In-bound links are links on websites outside of Etsy that link back to your Etsy store. For example, on a particular blog one of your products has been featured and in the blog post, they have linked to your listing. This is an in-bound link because it is linking to your Etsy from an outside source.

Search engines are constantly trying to show users the most relevant content for their search. One aspect that improves how search engines view your content is the number and quality of in-bound links that link to your pages. Therefore, try to get as many as you can, as long as it’s GENUINE.

How do I get more in-bound links? You want people writing about your store, listings and Etsy pages. So, why not reach out to bloggers? Network with bloggers who review products, talk about Etsy or even discuss business in general. If you put together a detailed, polite email or contact them via their contact options, they may be happy to feature your store.

A few of us at Pastime To Profit have even been discussing doing posts where we feature your best work. You could submit one of your products or store in general, and we’d write about it and put an in-bound link. It’s just an idea. Let us know what you think!

Tip 21: Guest blogging or starting your own blog for in-bound links!

If you don’t like the idea of networking and asking other bloggers for a shoutout or feature. Why not start your own blog? It’s a brilliant way to start building an audience outside of your Etsy, and a great way to start building an EMAIL LIST. 

Your own blog gives you the opportunity to write about your products, your processes, where you source materials… you name it! Think of all the in-bound links you could give yourself from your own website.

If this is something you may be interested in, you may want to start on the Bluehost platform. We use Bluehost for this very website. They are a cheap but absolutely amazing method of creating your own website. Check out this link to get a great discount to start your blog today!

Don’t fancy writing all that content yourself, but keen on writing a little? Why not write guest posts with an in-bound link? You can reach out to bloggers, discuss your post idea and ask if they’d be willing to have a guest post from you. Make sure you let them know you would like to put an in-bound link to your Etsy. I’m sure if you explain nobody will mind!

This is another thing we would like to try if you would be interested. GUEST BLOGGING. If you love certain topics, similar to those on our blog at Pastime To Profit, let us know in the comments as we’d love to give you the opportunity to write some content with us.

Tip 22: Great Customer Service

This encourages repeat customers and purchases, meaning more money. By offering fast replies to queries and a generally approachable and understanding attitude, customers are far more likely to enjoy their experience.

These repeat purchases mean relisting, and as Etsy likes you to be active this will increase your overall search ranking.

Final Etsy SEO Tip: More Products

You can never go wrong with more products. This is literally just more chance for people to find you.

More products allows you to add a greater variety of keywords and phrases. Additional listings, again sorry to labour the point, shows Etsy that your active and gives a small, temporary boost to your listing rank. It also tells a search engine that you have more things to offer a potential buyer, resulting in increased traffic.

What if my listings take ages to create? You can create bundles. By bundling a handful of products together you can create a new listing, new keywords, only pay the listing fee once for a number of the products, only pay shipping once and more. You could also simply change the colours or styles of your products as these too count as new listings.

Etsy SEO Final Thoughts

We genuinely really hope you found value from this article. These Etsy SEO tips will go a long way to improving your Etsy store and number of sales. 

If you liked this article, remember to subscribe for more Etsy advice and content below: 

 

You can also check out the Etsy seller handbook. It has an article (Click here) detailing the art of Etsy SEO. Have a wonderful day and GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR ETSY STORE! 


 

 


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