Etsy SEO: How to Get Noticed on Etsy in 2023
Increasing the visibility of your brand on Etsy is possible, and it largely depends on two decisive factors: SEO optimization of your Etsy store, and using high-quality images.
Having good SEO means your products will appear more frequently, boosting your brand visibility and increasing sales. To help improve your Etsy store, we’re sharing useful Etsy SEO tips and tricks to help you improve your brand’s ranking on the platform.
The Printify team has previously shared ten tips for improving your Etsy search engine optimization:
Source: Youtube/Printify
We have updated this list, adding more valuable tips to help you improve your Etsy store for 2023.
Table of Contents
- 1. Choose an Etsy Shop Title That Describes Your Products and Includes Keywords
- 2. Do Etsy Keyword Research and Choose Your Keywords
- 3. Use Keywords in Your Product Titles and Descriptions
- 4. Use All of the 13 Product Tags in Each Listing
- 5. Select Specific Categories
- 6. Add Relevant Attributes
- 7. Establish Competitive Shipping Costs
- 8. Renew Your Listings Regularly
- 9. Use High-Quality Photos and Place the Best Photo of Your Products First
- 10. Complete the Etsy Shop “About” Section
- 11. Add Clear Policies to Your Store
- 12. Add Titles and Tags in the Language of Your Store
- 13 Promote Your Shop Page to Get Inbound Links
- 14. Experiment and Adjust Your Strategy
- 15. Make Your Customers Come Back
- 16. Use Paid Advertising Opportunities
What is Etsy SEO?
Etsy SEO is a set of techniques and processes for improving your store and product rankings on search engines, as well as the Etsy platform itself.
Never make the mistake of considering Etsy as an independent platform: this online marketplace has, in fact, an excellent PageRank on Google and other search engines such as Bing and Yahoo, which puts you in a position to intercept even more users from search engines.
Etsy SEO Ranking Factors
Several factors influence your Etsy listing’s SEO rankings. These include:
- Relevancy. How similar are your Etsy listing’s tags, attributes, product descriptions, and titles to people’s search queries? Query matching is Etsy’s top priority. The more relevant your products are, the higher your ranking will be.
- Listing Quality Score. Etsy pays attention to how people interact with your product listing. If your product is related to a customer's search, and they stay on your ad for an extended period, this boosts your listing quality score. Alternatively, if someone quickly clicks on and off your listing, it suggests your items fail at query matching, meaning they are either irrelevant or uninteresting to the Etsy user.
- Recency. When you create a new listing, Etsy gives you a search boost. This boost enables them to gauge the interaction with your listing. After a few days, they will establish a listing place for your product based on its customer and market experience. The same method is used for new shops.
- Shipping Price. Everyone loves free shipping, and Etsy reflects this. If you have free shipping for your product, Etsy boosts you in the rankings. Consider including shipping in the price of your product to improve your product ranking.
- Personalized Search. Machine learning means Etsy tailors its own search engine results to consumer interests. Personalized search causes subjective Etsy listings, whereby your products will rank higher for some than others. However, personalized search shouldn’t deter you from implementing these SEO strategies. Etsy SEO strategies are not only successful at boosting your ranking, but they will also increase search engine confidence, giving you one less thing to worry about.
- Language. Your chosen language when you open your online store should be the one you use when you write your listings. If you can produce listings in other languages, Etsy recommends doing so as these translations will be more accurate compared to their translator technology. Providing listings in other languages means you can better cater to those customers and improve your Etsy SEO in other locations.
How Do I Master SEO on Etsy? 16 Etsy SEO Tips to Follow
1. Choose an Etsy Shop Title That Describes Your Products and Includes Keywords
Your Etsy shop title is a crucial component of your Etsy SEO. A good Etsy SEO page title will indicate what products you sell. A new or edited Etsy shop title can be up to fifty-five characters long.
We recommend including competitive keywords your ideal client will search for and that accurately reflect your brand in your page title.
2. Do Etsy Keyword Research and Choose Your Keywords
Keywords need to be in your tags, page title, categories, and attributes to improve your Etsy SEO. The keyword or keyword phrase you use should be an exact match with the terms customers are frequently typing into the search bar.
When doing your keyword research, consider the features that make your product unique. From here, you can create more accurate longtail keywords for your page title, listing titles, and descriptions. These features will help your products stand out amongst Etsy’s expansive search volume.
If you already have an Etsy account and existing Etsy listings, and you are changing your keywords to improve your Etsy SEO, you should see your Etsy analytics. You will be able to see which keywords and tags are getting the most traffic and producing the most sales. From this, you can alter your product titles, descriptions, categories, and attributes to include more of these keywords.
Remember to consider regional phrases and synonyms when doing your keyword research. You can find multiple keywords just by considering the other words and phrases people around the world use.
How You Can Find the Best Keywords for Your Etsy Store Products?
What would you think if we told you that we managed to find a wonderful strategy that lets you know what your potential client is looking for and/or needs to buy on Etsy? What strategy do we mean?
We mean the strategic use of the famous Etsy search engine. That’s where you can find the best keywords for the products in your Etsy store.
Why do we suggest you search your keywords on the Etsy platform and not in an external database?
Because the Etsy search engine suggests keywords taking into account two important criteria: the searches that people have done previously and the trends at the moment, so it allows you to determine what people are really interested in buying within the platform.
So if your goal is to increase your sales and grow your business on Etsy, then you should anticipate and/or respond as quickly as possible to the needs of your target market on Etsy.
How can you do it?
Developing products that people want or need to buy and using the best possible keywords in the titles, tags, and descriptions of your products. This way, you will make your potential customers (who are already ready to buy within the Etsy platform) find your products, and therefore, buy them.
However…
How can you use this powerful tool strategically? Here are the steps…
- Go to www.etsy.com. There you will find the Etsy platform search engine.
- Then type in the search bar the main product of your Etsy store. For example, if you sell mostly posters, write the word “posters.” When you finish writing the word, you will notice that the Etsy search engine offers you a list of words related to your search.
- But that’s not all. If you add the word “for” to “posters,” you will see another variety of keywords.
- And if this time you add the word “with,” you will see even more options.
Not only is this strategy useful for market research, but it also provides valuable information for your SEO strategy! If you’re struggling to come up with additional keyword options for your offerings, try using a keyword search tool. Additional Etsy SEO tools that you can use include eRank, Alura, and Keyword Tool Dominator.
3. Use Keywords in Your Product Titles and Descriptions
Placing the most relevant keywords at the beginning of the product title will let the buyer know exactly what the product you are selling is, resulting in more clicks, favorites, and therefore, more sales.
Write titles that are unique to each of your products, and that helps Etsy distinguish your product from the rest of the items found on the platform.
Titles must be concise but informative. If the title is too long, Etsy’s search results will only show part of the result. The same goes for Google search! Avoid very long titles that are not useful for customers and/or fills them with unnecessary keywords.
Writing titles as if they were a series of labels (for example: “Women’s T-shirts, Cool T-Shirts, Black T-shirts” …) will not help you position yourself in the search results. On the contrary, this type of title usually has a low conversion level because it is not specific, and it confuses customers.
The search system on Etsy is smart enough to interpret strategically composed keywords. Therefore, it is best to write your keywords more specifically.
As Etsy points out, “keep a buyer in mind, not a computer.” The language used in the titles should be as natural as possible.
Use phrases that the client would write in their search engines.
In the composition of your title, write keywords that clearly describe your product. The maximum length for a title is 140 characters but you don’t always need to stick to it. Just write titles that are clear, concise, and accurate.
It is no longer a secret that Etsy seeks to improve the visibility of your store and product listings in the search engine results of sites such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc.
Note: If you need help with keyword identification, we recommend that you watch this video:
Source: Youtube/Deborah Engelmajer
Make It Happen Today!
4. Use All the 13 Product Tags in Each Listing
Etsy allows up to 13 tags on your listings. To improve your Etsy shop’s SEO, you want to use all 13 tags. The more keywords you have listed, the more often your products will appear in searchers rankings. Your tags don’t have to be one word, they can be longtail keywords or phrases too.
The tags on your listing can be up to 20 characters long. To boost your ranking and product visibility, you should target ‘long tail keywords’ rather than single words.
Here are some tag examples that you could use if you sell personalized mugs as a gift for moms.
If you’re struggling with tag ideas for your product listings, you can view the tags competitors are using for similar products. To do this, click on explore related searches under the product pictures or at the end of the webpage.
5. Select Specific Categories
The categories in Etsy act like tags. When you add more specific categories to your listings, you create more opportunities for your products to be found in the results. Categorizing products to the most specific subcategory can give you greater visibility in the search results.
6. Add Relevant Attributes
The attributes you add to your listings also act as tags and can help your products be found in search results. Relevant attributes for context-specific ranking include:
- Size
- Color
- Product purpose
- Material
- Manufacturing information
- Bulk or individual purchase
- Optional customisation
- Unique features
Attributes should describe what a product is, not how it’s used.
7. Establish Competitive Shipping Costs
High shipping costs can discourage buyers and prevent them from completing the purchase process. Etsy has established as a ranking factor the price of shipments, so creating competitive shipping prices, including “free shipping,” can increase your positioning in the results.
8. Renew Your Listings Regularly
Renewing your listing gives you a mini boost in the rankings. Although constantly renewing your listing isn’t a viable Etsy SEO strategy, doing so during busy periods like the holidays can help increase your brand visibility.
It’s also important to renew your listing during high traffic hours. Consider when your potential buyers are most likely to shop and publish your listings at this time.
9. Use High-Quality Photos and Place the Best Photo of Your Products First
Each listing has room for 10 photos. Be sure to place the best photo first to get the best Etsy SEO results. Remember that the first photo is what buyers see first in the search results. If you use photos that clearly present what you are selling, you will increase the likelihood of having more clicks, favorites, and sales.
As well as adding images, you can improve your listing quality by adding short video clips. Videos are more accurate than still images. Show your customers you care about honesty and transparency by adding short, high-quality video clips to your listings. For inspiration on product videos, look at other Etsy sellers who utilize this medium.
In a survey conducted in 2017, 90% of Etsy shoppers said the photo quality was “extremely” or “very” important for their decision to make a purchase.
The Power of Brand Photos on Your Etsy Store
From SEO, we move on to the needs of users: to increase the visibility of your brand on Etsy, you must also know how to capture the attention of potential customers, to turn them into real customers. Here, the quality of the graphic sector of your e-commerce plays a very important role: the photos taken in a professional way communicate great emotions together with the message that your brand wants to convey.
Use bright colors, make shots with models, and try to do it in dynamic positions and perhaps using a context that may be familiar to your primary target. The only limit is your creativity: the more you are able to capture the user with your photos, the more products you will be able to sell on Etsy.
Check out this ultimate guide to product photography for image inspiration and recommendations.
Dropshipping makes business easy. Rather than having boxes of inventory cluttering up your home and workspace, you can order your customer’s goods and have them sent to them directly, without having to worry about postage or stock. However, when it comes to marketing your products, things can become a little more tricky. Without having a physical product, you can’t take images or videos for your listings.
With Printify, you don’t need to worry about photographing your product for promotional purposes. We offer mockups for the majority of our products, using our mockup generator. You can use our mockup generator to give your customers a clear image of what you are selling. Using product mockups from other websites can help your product stand out compared to other Etsy listings. Websites such as Placeit are an easy and efficient way to achieve this.
Although mockups are a great solution for those who might not have time to photograph their products, we recommend ordering product samples. Having product samples not only means you can get creative with your imagery, but it gives you an idea of the quality of the product you’re selling.
10. Complete the Etsy Shop “About” Section
Completing the “about section” of your store can help you increase your “customer & market experience score,” and therefore improve your ranking in the search results. For Etsy, it is very important that the Etsy seller shares their story in their shop section, because they can create a special connection with customers and make their shop look trustworthy.
Make It Happen Today!
11. Add Clear Policies to Your Store
Having clear policies in your Etsy shop sections will let buyers know what to expect if they make a purchase in your store, inspiring them with greater security and confidence. In addition, having clear and complete policies in your store will increase your “customer & market experience score” and also help you to have greater visibility on the web.
12. Add Titles and Tags in the Language of Your Store
The titles and tags must be in the language you chose when you opened opened your Etsy store. Adding tags in other languages will not help your products appear in search results. Etsy will automatically translate the titles and labels into the buyer’s language.
13. Promote Your Shop Page to Get Inbound Links
Guest Blogging
An excellent way to get more exposure is to connect with relevant bloggers and write a guest blog post. This allows you to build your network, publicize your products, and create links to your store, which is excellent for SEO. In addition to increasing your visibility, guest blogging helps you to be perceived as an expert in your field.
Social Media Accounts
If you have an existing social media following or you’re interested in growing one, you can use this to drive traffic to your Etsy shops. Create a designated brand Instagram account, show people behind the scenes of your business on Tiktok, or reach out to family and friends on Facebook. Increasing traffic from external sources will help improve your Etsy shop’s SEO and continue to boost your brand visibility.
Pinterest Marketing
Did you know Pinterest is an image search engine? You can utilize Pinterest to promote your products and link to your listings. Similar to your Etsy store, you need to optimize your account using Pinterest SEO.
Add pins relating to your product and include the same primary keyword and phrases you have on Etsy to get your content seen by Pinterest users. If viewers enjoy your content, they’re more likely to click on your pin and view your Etsy listing.
14. Experiment and Adjust Your Strategy
Etsy recommends that you regularly test your new strategies and review your statistics. As Etsy’s search algorithm changes, you need to make sure you’re familiar with its developments.
You can also monitor which products and keywords are driving the most traffic to your store. You can update those listings that have lower performance, and add other products that can further enrich your offerings.
Use Store Statistics
The store statistics give you a lot of useful information, so be sure to log in regularly to keep track of your actions. Here you can identify what is working and what is not, and see important metrics like where your traffic came from and who mentions you.
15. Make Your Customers Come Back
Not only is it good for your business, but the Etsy algorithm also loves stores with recurring customers.
Some ideas:
- Send discount coupons for future purchases.
- Special offers for the best customers.
- Small gifts like badges or stickers.
- Personalized thank you cards.
- A bit of ethics, please.
This seems obvious, but it would surprise you…
There is a line that separates marketing from deception, and you should never cross it.
Do not use photos in a deceptive way to represent measures or results that you do not really have.
In short, do not promise more than you sell, or you will be tied to negative feedback and your brand will be stained forever.
16. Use Paid Advertising Opportunities
The Store Announcement feature is located at the top of your store page and can be used to alert buyers to – you guessed it – making important announcements about your store. This could, for example, alert buyers to a sale in your store or to let them know you are not there.
Etsy recommends making short announcements, rather than using other sections of your store like the About page, which allows for longer text.
You can also make use of Etsy’s paid advertising opportunities to become more prominent in a customer’s search. By choosing your item to be a Promoted Listing, you can pay per click to keep it at the top of the search results. Your Promoted Listing will include the word ‘ad’ to indicate that it is a paid campaign, but it will be catered to the target demographic and search tags you’ve selected.
Once you start ringing in the sales, you can start asking your customers for reviews to boost your listing prominence even more! Getting to the reviews stage will take some patience, so aside from marketing on Etsy, we recommend adding a couple other elements, like social media promotion and word of mouth advertising into your marketing mix. This will help you create even more pathways to your shop.
What Do You Think of These Etsy Optimization Strategies?
Boost your business prospects using Etsy SEO. By implementing small changes to how you manage, run and utilise your Etsy store, you can increase traffic, improve sales and successfully promote your listing page.
We hope these Etsy SEO tips and tricks will form a good foundation for your store and get you on the road to success – do you have any other tips to share?
Let us know in the comments section. If you know other Etsy sellers, do not hesitate to share this Etsy SEO guide, so they can also benefit.
Make It Happen Today!
Written by
Graham Williams
Share the article
Topics
31 comments
How can i send send discount coupons, small gifts like badges or stickers, personalized thank you cards.
Hi there!
Currently there is no option to add gift notes, however perhaps you can send a coupon code to your customers via email. 🙂
How i can rank the first page etsy products b doing promotion although i have completed the SEO optimized title, tags, description and attributes sections. Some fiverr expert offer services to rank etsy listings on first page without changing the title and tags in listings, how does it happen, i am curious to know about the process.
Looking forward to hearing from you
Hi Murad,
Happy to hear that you are working hard on optimizing your Etsy store and want to make the most of it. If you have already nailed your Etsy SEO and you are curious about promoting your listings, we can advise looking more into Etsy ads. Our team has prepared multiple valuable blog articles on how to better optimize your product listings and make more sales, so make sure to explore our blog, as well as our YouTube channel.
I am new to all this. But the picture is bit clearer now. I have a long way to go but this kind of tools are very helpful. Thank you.
Hi Gill,
Thank you for your feedback, we are happy to hear you enjoyed this article!
Well-Written article. It will be supportive to anyone who utilizes it, including me. Keep doing what you are doing – can’t pause to read more posts. Thanks for the precious help.
Love it. Extremely helpful and to the point! This article was so much more than what I was expecting when I clicked it. More like this please!
Hi Ryan,
Thank you for sharing your feedback! We are happy to hear you found this useful and interesting, stay tuned for more content like this.
Really helpful post, thanks. Lots to work on now as I try to get more customers and sales by implementing some of your advice.
Hi Melissa,
We are happy to hear you liked the article!
im always trying to rank our store, I have heard of etsygeeks but not sure if they are trust worthy? Any advice?
Hi Nala,
I am not entirely sure, but you can always check out reviews about them on Google or in different print-on-demand Facebook groups. You can also join Printify POD Rocksgtars Facebook group and ask for advice there.
Thanks for the excellent contribution. In SEO it is still worth putting the keywords in the title of the article as well as at the beginning of the content.
Gracias Elizabeth.
Great tips! Can’t wait to try the keyword search.
Great information for sure!! Make sense , still learning the ropes , but it is like anything else , it takes work.
Thank you kindly for sharing this information. Indeed its very helpful . I will certainly be using all these tips to improve my store in every aspect . Do you guys perhaps a team who go into a store and Critique them and than give us feedback? Thanks Sam
Hi Sam! It’s a great idea – our marketing team will think about that. 🙂 Thanks, Elina
A good helpful article.
Very informative article. Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge. I am looking for ways to improve my Etsy rankings. I’ve done basic optimization and some improvement, I’ve heard about Etsygeeks.org. I would greatly appreciate it if you can give me some feedback.
Thank you so much for writing such an informative, clear and interesting article. It is much appreciated. I can’t wait now to get my Etsy shop up and running.
Great to hear that, Helen. Thank you too!
Thank you for sharing such a helpful article! I’m wondering if the Etsy search has recently changed … because it seems like the suggested searches at the top and bottom of the page that you had mentioned are no longer there. I’ve tried the app and on my laptop with safari/chrome browsers. Just curious if you knew anything about that. Thanks again!
Hi Megan, thank you, for giving us a heads up. Yes, it could happen – Etsy improves their UX dashboard all the time. 🙂
Thank you very much for sharing these tips
Thank you so much for such a great tips!
This worked incredibly well for my shop, so THANK YOU!
So happy to hear that! :))
Thank you very much for sharing knowledged.
Nice in-depth article with clear explanations. You left out one very important piece of information that is important to the success of an Etsy seller. Pinterest is a tremendous source of traffic for Etsy. In my experience, Pinterest is a better driver of Etsy traffic than any other one specific marketplace. The most active category on Pinterest is DIY which works well with Etsy style products. Since Pinterest is a planning site and planning in and of itself signifies a future purchase, having product pins plus pins that lead to helpful content produce the best results. Not everyone is ready to buy today so they are reluctant to click on a direct to product page pin at times. They will click through and save your content to return later when they are ready for the purchase. Following this strategy broadens your potential market because you are bringing p[eople into your ecosystem earlier in the buyer’s journey. . The seller doesn’t even have to have a separate website for content. they could just as easily utilize a communal blogging platform like Medium or a Q & A site like quora as the base for their content. I’m speaking from extensive experience, we offer a free workshop for sellers that want to learn how to make the most of Pinterest and drive their own traffic. Since Ecommerce is a numbers game, the more sources of traffic any seller has, gives them a distinct advantage over the seller that just waits for the marketplace to send them traffic.