Understanding Etsy SEO is a fundamental requirement for every Etsy Seller if you want to get more visibility for your listings. The basis of Etsy SEO is the same as how you’d try to rank your website higher up in Google search results. Just that in this case you’ll be trying to rank your listing higher up in the Etsy marketplace.
In this article we’ll be looking at the different factors which will contribute to how well your listings will rank on Etsy.
1. Title and Tags
Ultimately these are the 2 most important fields you need to consider when you’re creating a new listing. Etsy will look at the text here to decide what your listing is about and what keywords when being searched, will your listing appear. Not only are these important for organic listings in the Etsy marketplace, Etsy will also use the same information to optimize any Etsy Ads that you’re running as well. Remember, you have very minimal control over your Etsy Ads campaign, as Etsy automatically decides when your ads will appear.
One thing to note is that there’s a character limit in the title, and also a maximum number of tags you can use for each listing. I guess its Etsy’s way of preventing sellers from spamming irrelevant information to get more visibility. You’ll be able to input up to 140 characters in the title, and up to 13 tags for each listing. (there’s a 20 character limit for each tag) So be sure to maximise each option.
2. All Other Fields
As mentioned above the “Title” and “Tags” fields are the most important factors when trying to improve your Etsy SEO. However all the other fields should not be ignored as well. Here are some examples of how the other fields would affect the search rankings on Etsy.
The “Category” field is important because it would determine where your listings would appear. For instance, if you’re selling T-Shirts, you won’t want to appear in the “Jewelry” category. Moreover by specifying the category of your item, it will also free up more space for you to fit in more keywords in the “Title” and “Tags” fields. Let’s assume you’re selling a Spiderman T-Shirt, you can consider to just put in “Spiderman” or “Marvel” into the “Title” and “Tags” without having to specify T-Shirts again. This would save space allowing you to input more keywords into the “Title” and “Tags” fields.
Similarly “Clothing Style” (if you’re selling an apparel), Occasion, Holiday and other fields should also be filled in, even though some of them are optional. These give additional signals to Etsy about the item you’re selling. To give a little boost on your Etsy SEO, you may want to change the “Occasion” and “Holiday” fields from time to time. For example if the item you’re selling is appropriate for Valentine’s Day and Christmas, you should change the options when the respective occasion is nearing.
As a bonus, you should also consider including the same keywords in your “Title” and “Tags” within the description as well. Though Etsy doesn’t officially state that the content in the description helps in having your listings appear higher up in the rankings, I strongly believe they are being considered as well. Anyway as long as you don’t spam your keywords, I doubt there’ll be any harm.
3. Priority Listing For Free Shipping To United States
Etsy officially stated that your item will get priority listing there’s free shipping to the United States. In reality, what most Etsy Sellers would do is to mark up the price which will in turn include the shipping cost. Hence they will retain the same profit margin.
However, there has been many discussions that this benefit doesn’t apply anymore. I’ll leave it to you whether you think this is important, but I don’t think there’s anything to lose if you mark up the price cover the free shipping cost.
4. Uploading A Video
At the point of writing this article, Etsy is currently testing out a new video format. Etsy Sellers can upload a video with their listings, where 50% of the shoppers would see the video. Anything new or in beta is always good. Etsy would probably want to showcase the new feature as much as possible to get more usage statistics. As such your listings will get to enjoy the bonus visibility.
In addition if we assume click-thru rate also plays a part in Etsy SEO, more shoppers will probably click on your listing, when they see the video, since its something new and fresh.
5. Thumbnail Image and Click-Thru Rates
If you think about it, like any other search engine or advertising platform, Etsy would want to promote relevant content (listing) to their shoppers. When Etsy shoppers are more engaged with items being sold on Etsy, it increases the stickiness and return rate.
Hence I’m pretty sure Etsy will look at the click-thru rate of your listing, and give the seller bonus priority if the click-thru rate of that listing is higher than the rest. The easiest way of improving your click-thru rate is to have an eye catching thumbnail, or uploading a video for the item you’re selling.
6. Getting Reviews
The next obvious thing (even though Etsy doesn’t mention it) is getting as much positive reviews for your store. Just like how we look at “Domain Authority” for websites, Reviews tell Etsy a lot about your store. I’m pretty sure Etsy would want to promote stores with good reviews by giving them certain priorities, as compared to stores with negative or no reviews. Besides, more reviews means more happy customers, which in turns means more sales for both the seller and Etsy.
7. Response Rate and Processing Time
The basis of this is pretty similar to the points above, where Etsy would most likely give bonus priority / benefits to highly engaged sellers. Response rate here means the time taken for a seller to reply to a message, and processing time refers to the time required to manufacture the item before it’s being shipped out.
8. Multiple Listings, The More The Merrier
If you look at successful sellers on Etsy with thousands of sales, they probably have at least hundreds of different items listed in their store. The rationale of this is simple. The more items your list, the higher chance you’ll be seen. For example, one listing may get you 10 clicks to your store in a day. Going by this estimation 100 items listed would potentially bring 1,000 people to your store each day.
In most cases the conversion rate could be anywhere from 0.5% – 3%. So you’ll probably need at least 200 – 300 people visiting your store before making a sale.
9. Etsy SEO Tools
There are a number of 3rd Party tools that provide more in-depth keyword data. ERank for example provides keyword competition, search volumes, keyword suggestions, and a suite of other data for you when planning what to include for the various fields in your listing. There’s a free plan that you can try with sufficient options for most Etsy Sellers.
I hope the above information provides more insights especially if you’re an Etsy Seller that’s just starting out. If you have any questions or thoughts do feel free to leave a comment below. Would love to discuss more ideas around Etsy SEO with likeminded Etsy Sellers.
