Even with the most wonderfully unique and highly creative products on offer, it’s still entirely possible for your Etsy store to be ignored. That’s why leveraging SEO for Etsy success is absolutely essential.

You know how it is. You’re finally ready to put up your online store and, bursting with excitement and anticipation, you curate beautiful photos of your creations or collections, write enticing descriptions extolling their virtues, lovingly finesse your storefront, and wait expectantly for hordes of appreciative customers to gleefully overfill their shopping carts..

…only to be greeted with the desolate sound of storefront tumbleweed drifting across an online desert.

This can be even more frustrating when you’ve already enjoyed a great deal of success at craft fairs, markets and pop-ups, but for some mysterious reason, the same success fails to follow you online.

After some months and several hours of agitated research, it suddenly begins to dawn on you that you might have missed a crucial step. SEO!

Using SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) could be the most vital step for achieving success on Etsy, but what is it and why does it matter?

What is SEO?

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a way to increase your online visibility and get discovered by potential new customers without spending a huge amount of money on ads.

SEO is implemented by discovering which words your customers are using when they’re searching for products like yours and then using these words in the exact same way, in the exact same order on your store.

Once your Esty store is optimised for search engines like Google and Bing, your products will be much easier to find online.

This is what makes SEO such an important step in your Etsy store marketing plan. The alternate is perhaps slowly drifting into online obscurity before finally, dejectedly taking your store down and telling yourself the internet just isn’t the place for what you offer after all.

Please don’t do that!

Your customers are looking for products like yours online, right now, even as I feverishly type this blog post. In fact, SEO is the reason you’ll find this blog post a few weeks or months from now.

Be patient with the process and you too will soon be found online.

Why Research is Essential

To increase your chances of ranking and being discovered online, your product titles, tags, descriptions, categories, videos, images, attributes, and even your store policies must all be optimised with relevant keywords, so you need to know which are the best keywords to get your shop ranking in search engines.

It’s impossible to guess or assume which words will work for you. For example, when you begin your SEO research, you might be surprised to discover that none of your potential customers is actually searching for, large personalised oak chopping board with handles but nearly 1,000 people are searching for, wedding gift for friend.. EVERY MONTH! So be sure to include this in your description if relevant and keep searching for the right product-related keywords to add as well.

For example, oak chopping board gets a respectable 140 searches a month (at the time of writing this blog) and has a ridiculously low competition score! So, it’s a yes from us.

Whatever words your potential customers are typing into search engines when looking for products like yours, these are the words you need to be using in your store.

How to Use Keywords

When it comes to titles, Etsy allows for the use of 140 characters, which gives each product plenty of scope for ranking for a few different long-tail keywords.

Place the most important keywords first in your title, as this is the one that’s given the most emphasis in search engines. You should focus on making the first 50-60 words of your title—the ones that will show up in search pages—the most powerful in terms of their ranking potential.

You should also include your best keywords at the beginning of your product descriptions as well as in tags and other text-friendly spaces.

Use every possible opportunity to include long tail keywords, and use a range of variations to avoid keyword stuffing.

How to Use SEO for Etsy in 2024

Be aware that when it comes to titles, Etsy now supports sellers using one long, clear title, which includes maybe two clearly defined longtail keywords, and excludes endless single-word repetitions.

So if you’re starting your store in 2024 or beyond, try not to copy sellers who used endlessly long and bewildering titles, packed with repetitive single keywords in caps, when setting up their stores several years ago. These title styles may not allow you to reap the same benefits, going forward.

A few final tips and takeaways for SEO beginners to keep in mind.

• When using SEO tools, remember to look for keywords with a high search volume and low competition.
• You currently have 13 opportunities to use key phrases in your product tags – use all of them! Remember to also apply the long-tail keyword principle and add multiple-word phrases rather than highly competitive single-word tags.
• Make sure your store, product photos, descriptions and titles all have a high-quality look to them.
• Algorithms like what’s popular. If customers are clicking on your pages and lingering longer because they have a pleasing aesthetic, this will be noticed and figured into the capricious algorithmic equation. High-quality images, professional-looking videos, and engaging product descriptions not only attract buyers but also improve SEO performance.
• Pay attention to your reviews and overall customer experience, as great reviews can see you rising through the rankings faster than you can say Etsy.
• Avoid having more than 3 words spelt out in upper case letters in titles, as these can be extremely off-putting to customers who are looking for a more polished and professional look… and the algorithm is taking note.
• Write high-quality descriptions that answer customer concerns and help to increase the overall quality of your store—and remember to include your best keywords.
• Regularly update your listings using Etsy’s built-in analytics to track performance.
• Stay up to date with algorithm changes to maintain your store’s competitiveness.
• Engaging with the Etsy community through forums and social media can also increase your visibility.

Help Me!!!

If you’re still reading but the thought of SEO is causing you to break out in a cold sweat, it could be time to get help.

Contact the team at LA Search and ask about our content creation strategy services. We have over 12 years of experience in helping small to medium-sized businesses to succeed in increasing their visibility online.

Let us help you!