Getting your shop on the first page of Etsy search results is a dream for many sellers. With the growing number of shops on the Etsy marketplace, achieving top placement and outsmarting the search algorithm is becoming increasingly challenging.
However, there are effective strategies you can use to boost your shop's visibility and ensure your products are discovered by potential customers on Etsy.
But how to master Etsy SEO and rank higher? If you want us to take care of your store's SEO just check our Growth Program.
First of all..
How the Etsy SEO works?
SEO, or search engine optimization, involves enhancing your product listing's visibility in search engines to increase views. Search engines like Google and Yahoo match user queries with relevant internet results. Similarly, Etsy search functions as a search engine, connecting products from Etsy shops with shopper searches.
Etsy SEO entails optimizing your products, shop, and various other elements to improve your chances of ranking higher in search results, thereby reaching more potential buyers.
Understanding the Etsy search algorithm in 2024
Etsy ranks product listings in two steps: Query matching and Ranking.
Query matching
- Title
- Tags
- Categories
- Attributes
- Listing Description
Etsy listings that include the buyer's search query keyword in any of the aforementioned areas will be eligible to rank. However, their exact placement in the search results is still undetermined.
What are the key factors that influencing Etsy's search algorithm ranking?
Once Etsy identifies all the products eligible to rank for a query, the Etsy algorithm utilizes additional factors to determine the final search ranking of these listings.
Listing quality score
This considers how well a particular product sells or converts. Etsy factors in the percentage of people clicking on, favoriting, and purchasing a product to determine its score. Etsy aims for visitors to actually buy the products. The higher the conversion rate, the better your Etsy ranking will be. Conversion rate is calculated by comparing the number of purchases (conversions) to the number of visits. For example, if two products each have 100 visits, the product that sells 10 times will have a higher conversion rate than the product that sells only 2 times.
You can find more useful information on how to boost your shop's conversion rate in one of are blog posts here.
Shoppers' habits
Etsy analyzes a shopper's individual searches, clicks, purchases, and more to further refine the ranking of listings. This is why different people see varied ranking orders for the same listings. The key takeaway is to use descriptive, long-tail keywords that accurately describe your product, increasing the likelihood that it appears in front of interested shoppers.
Relevancy
This is how well your listing's titles, tags, etc match what shopper searches for. Exact matching of keywords will improve the ranking of listings.
Listing description
Following the May 2022 update on Etsy, listing descriptions now play a bigger role in Etsy SEO. Your product description helps determine the ranking of your listing in Etsy search results. To optimize this, start your listing description with a short paragraph that includes 3-5 keywords and highlights the benefits and features of the product.
Recency
A new or recently renewed product receives a slight ranking boost Therefore, frequently renewing all your products won't be beneficial, as it used to be in the past. Consider renewing listings whenever you make any changes to the listings, so the algorithm can crawl and index the new changes.
Shop's age
New Etsy store gets a boost in ranking for a certain period of time.
Customer & market experience score
Etsy also looks at your shop’s review, policy and more. Achieving these will help your ranking:
- Good reviews for the particular products;
- Good reviews for your shop;
- Finished About page;
- Completed shop policy;
- No cases open against your shop;
Shipping price
Etsy ranks shops higher if they offer free shipping to the US for orders over US$35. This could be difficult to do if you are outside the US. But there are solid ways that you can make free shipping work for your shop.
Translations & language
You don’t need to worry about this one given that you use English for your products and shop. Etsy just wants your shop to use the same language as the ‘shop language’ you chose when you open your shop.
Shop location
In EU, Australia and Canada, the local shops will rank higher than non-local shops. Given that you are not moving your whole business to another country for a slight boost in search ranking, there’s not much you can do about this.
What are the steps to rank higher on Etsy search
Knowing these ranking factors help us find the right strategies to improve the visibility of your products to potential customers.
One of the most important strategies is to align your keyword with what buyers are searching. Think like your potential customers in this process.
In this process, we will:
- Brainstorm and come up with keywords
- Choose the right and best keywords
- Put them into your listings' titles and tags
After these Etsy SEO tips, your product listings would likely get a boost in search results.
1) Keyword research - Coming up with keywords
Researching keywords is knowing what specific keywords your customers are searching for.
Here are a few ways to help you come up with a pool of keywords.
Getting some initial keyword ideas
Try describing your items with a few short sentences. Here are some points to inspire your thought process:
- Physical attributes (e.g. material, color, size, style, etc.)
- Who is it for (e.g. mum, boyfriend, bridesmaid, teacher, etc.)
- Uses (e.g. gifting, motivation, healing, etc.)
- Occasion (e.g. wedding, prom, baby shower, etc.)
- Seasons
- Holidays and Festivals (e.g. Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Christmas)
Use the Etsy search bar
Etsy search is the best place to start brainstorming your keywords. Why? Because that is based on what shoppers actually look for.
When you type something in the search bar, you will notice Etsy start making suggestions. These are the search terms that shoppers around the world actually use.
Type in what you are selling in the search box, and you will get autocomplete suggestions from the search box. For example, when I put in “linen dress”, I get relevant keywords like “linen dresses for women”, “linen dress midi", etc.
You can also click into product listings, scroll down to the bottom of the page, and see more closely related search terms. Etsy uses these to inspire and encourage shoppers to browse more related products. Add the ones relevant to you to the pool of keywords.
Follow your competitors
Your competitors have probably been in the market longer, or have more sales than you. They have likely done keyword research themselves.
Look at the keywords of their similar items and mark down the keywords that are suitable for your products.
2) How to find the best keywords for your listings
To find the best keywords, aim for those with high demand from shoppers and manageable competition on Etsy.
Etsy search bar reveals some valuable information about shoppers' demand. When you are typing, the keywords that rank high in the list of suggestions tend to have higher demand. The list change from time to time, so keep in mind to check back every few months.
For competition, the longer the keyword, the less competition there will be. The term "women linen dress with pockets" will be easier to rank than "women dress".
This brings us to the concept of long-tail keyword.
You should aim for long-tail keywords that are at least 2-3 words long. Short keywords like “necklace” have too much competition. It’s almost impossible to rank for short keywords. Also, shoppers typing “necklace” probably are just browsing and are not ready to buy.
On the other hand, long-tail keywords are specific. Because it is not general, you will face less competition and will be easier to rank for them. Also, if a shopper typed the whole 3-word phrase in, they have a pretty good idea of what they want to buy, and they are probably ready to purchase. This can lead to higher conversion rate. Like we said before, a higher conversion rate will further push you up in the search results as it’s one of the main ranking factors.
It's also useful to 'mix and match' some shorter keywords to make longer ones. Remember that longer keywords have less competition. For example, from "black linen dress for women" and "summer linen dress", you can get extra keywords like "black summer dress" and "black dress for women".
3) How to maximize your Etsy reach
Use descriptive, keyword-rich listing title
Once you have a selected list of keywords. It's time to put them in action in the product titles and tags.
Choose the most descriptive keywords for the front of the title. The keywords in the front carries more weight than the ones at the back. And they are also seen by shoppers first. It's helpful for buyers to understand your product quickly.
Be careful not to have too much repetition. I'd suggest using a good variety of keywords that are descriptive of the product.
Match the keywords in title & tags
Match the exact phrase of long-tail keyword in both your title and your tag. Say if you are selling a white summer dress, put ‘white summer dress’ in both your title and your tag.
Use all 13 tags in each listing
Maximize your chance to rank by using all 13 Etsy tags for each listing.
Other methods of improving the ranking on Etsy search
Encourage positive reviews
Try encourage positive reviews from customers as higher shop reviews will improve your shop ranking. Other than providing good customer service, try reaching out to them with a thank you message and ask them what they think of your product after their purchase.
Fill in the about page & shop policy
Filling out your about page and shop policy as they are one of the ranking factors that Etsy cares about. Not to mention they will help your conversion rate as well as it reassures potential customers that your shop is trustworthy.
Create compelling listing description to improve conversion rate
Writing good listing description helps shoppers understand your product and why is it a right fit for them. This helps improve the conversion rate of your listing, and boost the listing quality score, which is one of the ranking factors.
Create stunning product photos
Click rate is one of the ranking factors in Etsy search algorithm. Aim to have product photos with clean background to stand out in the Etsy search results.
If you are looking a ways to improve your Etsy store visual appearance just click here.
Bring in external traffic
Extra traffic is always good. Have an online presence on social media like Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest, write your own blogs, etc can send targeted traffic to your Etsy store, which can improve ranking in the long run.
Email marketing
Using any Email Marketing Platform like MailChimp or Brevo can significantly enhance your marketing efforts, driving more traffic to your shop from repeated buyers and increasing yours sales while building lasting customer relationships.
If you want to use the Email-Marketing in your favor just check our package here
FAQ
How long does it take for Etsy SEO to work?
Now for the million-dollar question: how long does it take for Etsy SEO to work? Unfortunately, there's no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The amount of time it takes to see results from your Etsy SEO efforts will depend on a variety of factors, including:
- The level of competition in your niche: If you're selling products in a highly competitive niche, it may take longer to see results from your SEO efforts than it would in a less competitive niche.
- The quality of your products and pictures: High-quality pictures mean good click-through rates (CTR), while a high-quality product offering brings great conversion rates (CR). Both are taken into account by the Etsy search engine and if your products are high-quality and in-demand, you may see results from your SEO efforts more quickly.
That being said, there are some general timelines that you can expect when it comes to seeing results from Etsy SEO. If you're just starting out and have not yet optimized your shop or listings, you can expect to see some results within a few weeks of starting basic Etsy SEO. However, if you're looking for more significant results, it usually take 2-3 months to see noticeable growth in your Etsy ranking and traffic
Is it important to add alt text when you optimize listings?
The Alt-text topic is interesting, yes, and here is how it works on Etsy in a nutshell.
In the first place, alt-text is intended to describe images for the benefit of individuals with visual impairments. But it's also used by the Google search engine when ranking images - that's why it's also considered for SEO, especially when it comes to your website. When it comes to Etsy, we are in a great place because Etsy is always providing alt-text to Google. In case you didn't manually provide an alt-text for your photos, Etsy automatically uses the listing title as alt-text for every photo in the listing.
We actually ran tests comparing the automatic alt-text from the title versus manually adding keywords to the alt-text. The results confirmed that the algorithm treats both the manually and the automatically provided alt-text in the same way so by optimizing the titles you are also optimizing for the alt-text and the Google image search.
More about the alt text and what kind of impact does it have you can find here
Do plurals matter?
No, whether it’s plural or not count as the same thing. “Dress” and “dresses” are the same to Etsy.
How its better to write titles? Keyword stuffing or descriptive?
You always want to have rich product information in the title to match the buyers' queries, and the search engine wants to see a big variety of words. Stuffing the same keyword over and over may reduce exposure and traffic as opposed to adding more variety.
We are making sure not to overcommit on any single keyword. We use a focus phrase several times in the title but it should always be surrounded by many descriptors.
When designing titles we can do so in two ways - by listing phrases with commas or by linking them via prepositions to make them appear like sentences for the buyer. Internally, we call the first approach (commas) "stuffing" to differentiate it from the sentences approach that we call "descriptive" titles.
As the main SEO principle is keyword enrichment, both approaches to linking the words - commas or prepositions, end up with context-rich titles so in all cases we are aiming for descriptive titles.
