It’s the time of the season for Etsy holiday prep! The holidays are almost here and it’s time to get the most out of Marmalead for your Etsy holiday keywords. So today on the Jam, we’re talking about using Marmalead to prepare for Etsy’s holiday season — whichever holidays you plan to target.
Etsy holiday prep starts now
No matter where you are in the year, our tips for Etsy holiday prep will apply for any holiday that you want to sell more products.
Because what it boils down to is you want to ensure that your Etsy listings are set up with the best keywords for any season that’s coming up for your shop.
We’ve got some steps and best-practices for you guys to follow here. This is how we would use Marmalead for our Etsy holiday prep in 2022.
Start your Etsy holiday prep with this
The first thing you’re going to want to do is to identify the Etsy holiday keywords that you want to replace.
Ask yourself: Where can you sprinkle in some new Etsy holiday keywords into your listings? Obviously, if you have listings missing tags, that’s an obvious opportunity to do that. But hopefully, you don’t have any of those.
However, you should start by looking at listings that are already bringing your shop traffic. Some people might call them hook listings where they just really do well in search, and people click them a lot.
The point is, you get a lot of traffic into your Etsy shop from these hook listings. So there could be a good opportunity to bring holiday traffic by switching out a couple underperforming keywords with new holiday keywords.
This could be a good opportunity to pull some shoppers in that would otherwise not find your products.
But don’t ruin your best listings
When it comes to optimizing your best listings for Etsy holiday prep, you want to be very careful.
These listings are already bringing traffic to your Etsy shop right now. And you really don’t want to mess that up.
So what you need to do is find out which keywords aren’t actually doing anything for those listings.
And an excellent way to find out which keywords are actually working is to go into your Etsy Stats. Here, you’ll be able to see which keywords people are actually visiting that listing for.
If you have Google Analytics, you can see it in there too (if you’re comfortable there). But for most sellers, your Etsy Stats is an excellent way to get this information.
Take a look at the tags on your listings, and then look at the keywords Etsy shows are bringing you traffic. Which tags are underperforming or doing nothing at all? That’s probably the best place to start when it comes to using new holiday keywords.
Boot old tags for new Etsy holiday keywords
Compare the actual keywords that are bringing you traffic versus the tags on your listings. Any tags (or portions of those tags) that aren’t bringing you traffic need to go.
So once you’ve found keywords that aren’t bringing you traffic on a successful listing, you’ve identify the tags that aren’t really contributing to its success.
And that’s a good candidate for a keyword to replace.
Remember this strategy when it comes to optimizing any of your listings. Whether you want to test out new keywords or if you want to drop in some Etsy holiday keywords, this is one of the ways to do it.
Use Storm for Etsy holiday prep
Once you’ve removed Etsy tags that aren’t bringing you traffic, it’s time to start brainstorming new keywords. And a great place to start is with Marmalead’s Storm tool.
This is really what Storm was designed for — to help you brainstorm effective Etsy keywords.
Start by seeding your list in Storm with keywords that may have worked for you in the past.
For example, if this isn’t the first year your shop has been open, you might have some holiday keywords that worked well last year. This would be a great spot to kickstart your research instead of starting with a blank page.
Still not sure where to start? Try this:
Weed out ineffective Etsy holiday keywords
During your Etsy holiday prep, you’ll find out that there might be thousands of Etsy holiday keywords related to Christmas, but not all of them really apply to your listings.
So, if you’re not selling Christmas wreath-related items, all of those Christmas wreath keywords won’t apply to you.
That’s why it’s important to weed out the keywords that have nothing to do with your listings.
Related: Here’s what to sell on Etsy to make more money in 2022
Save the Etsy holiday keywords you find to a list
While you’re working on your Etsy holiday prep, save the Etsy holiday keywords you find to a list in Marmalead. We don’t mean just writing them down — you can actually create your own keyword lists in Marmalead that will always keep track of current search data.
So if there are any Etsy holiday keywords that have worked for you in the past, save those keywords to a list so you can remember them for next year.
This is one of the nice things about Etsy holiday prep for new keywords.
You’re doing all of this prep work up front, and when you use Marmalead, your work will be saved for next year. And this is something that you can benefit from every single year.
Etsy holiday prep means new holiday trends
When you put keywords in a list in Marmalead, we keep those keywords up to date. So when you show up for the next holiday season, it’ll already show you which keywords are forecasting to do well for that holiday.
This means you can just keep going back to your saved lists, and you’re not starting your Etsy holiday prep from scratch every time.
And you definitely want to continue adding to those lists every year because new holiday trends will continue to pop up.
If some things are trendy this year but will fall out of style next year, consider dropping those keywords from your list. Keep your lists groomed and you’ll always have actionable Etsy keywords on hand.
Start Etsy holiday prep ahead of the season
Since you now have a great list of Etsy holiday keywords, it’s time to use them in your listings to bring more holiday traffic to your shop!
Make sure to apply the strongest and most relevant keywords well ahead of the holiday, because (most) people don’t start shopping the week before the holiday. They start shopping well ahead of schedule.
For 2022, these are the holiday dates you need to keep in mind:
Halloween: Picks up Aug 1, peaks Oct 3, tapers off Oct 31
Advent: Picks up Sep 15 , peaks Oct 15 , tapers off Dec 25
Thanksgiving: Picks up Sept 1 , peaks Nov 4 , tapers off Nov 28
Christmas: Picks up Sept 1, peaks Nov 28, tapers off Jan 2
Christmas Jumper Day: Picks up Oct 1, peaks Dec 5 , tapers off Dec 25
Hanukkah: Picks up Oct 10, peaks Nov 9 , tapers off Dec 10
As soon as people sense that holiday feeling in the air, they’ll get excited about the holiday coming up. And buyers will be making their way over to Etsy to explore what’s going on for the upcoming holidays.
So even if they’re not ready to actually put something in the cart and buy it yet, they’re going to start getting the gears rolling ahead of time begin window shopping.
Get your Etsy products on their favorite list and they just might come back later in the month to make a purchase.
Etsy holiday prep and Etsy’s newsletter
Don’t forget about the holiday newsletter Etsy sends out or all of Etsy’s marketing and social media content leading up to that special day.
All of this content is aimed at bringing Etsy shoppers to the marketplace during the holidays.
For example, if Etsy shares a holiday gift guide for Christmas-related items, this will come weeks before Christmas. So when they’re curating those lists, featured posts, and featured listings, they’ll do this well ahead of the holidays.
Of course, Etsy needs to find those items first, get them approved, etc.
And they won’t find your products if you haven’t optimized your listings for the holidays yet.
So get ahead of Etsy’s marketing
You want to take note of when Etsy’s sending out those marketing communications.
Prep your holiday listings ahead of Etsy’s schedule so when they start searching, your listings will show up. Remember, Etsy won’t find your listings if your Etsy holiday keywords aren’t added yet.
Don’t forget this important thing
Keep in mind, if you follow our method for Etsy holiday prep, you’ll be removing keywords that aren’t currently doing anything for your Etsy traffic anyways.
So even if you add your Etsy holiday keywords early, you’re really not losing out. By adding your holiday keywords early, they’ll be primed and ready to go so that when Etsy is curating their holiday guides, you’ll show up in search.
Etsy holiday prep for Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday on Etsy is a big shopping sale ahead of Christmas, so you’ll definitely want to make sure your listings are set up well ahead of time.
This will ensure you’re included when buyers start to search with Cyber Monday keywords.
Pro tip: Put some of your listings on sale to join in the Cyber Monday sales event! That’s a whole other topic that we get into in a separate Jam 😎
In any case, make sure you include some of your listings in Etsy’s seasonal sales events. That’s just extra promotion for you!
Final thoughts
So, there you go!
There are some tips to make the most of Marmalead during your Etsy holiday prep! Follow these tips and your holidays will be off to a fantastic start, with effective Etsy holiday keywords added to your listings.
Good luck this holiday!
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