Are you completely new to Etsy SEO and have absolutely no idea where to start? You want to make sure you can get the absolute most out of Marmalead but you’ve been wondering how to set your listings up for success. Well in this episode of The Jam, we’re going to cover exactly how to get started with Etsy SEO and Marmalead.
Today, we’re going to talk about being new to SEO! You want to fire up your Etsy shop sales and you want to use Marmalead for that SEO. We’re going to tell you where to start and walk you right through it.
Where do I even start with Etsy SEO?
The first thing you’re going to want to do is to find which listings you should be working on. Where do you even start? And there are a few places in Marmalead where you can get a good sense of which things will get you the most bang for your buck.
Where is your time best spent when you are getting started with things?
Are your tags MIA?
You can use Marmalead to see if any of your Etsy listings are missing tags. You go to the screen where all of your grades are, and on the right-hand side, there’s a filter to be able to see if any of your listings are missing tags. That is an awesome place to start. Those are really easy and quick wins.
Obviously, you want to use all the Etsy tags on all of your listings because you’re casting the widest net for shoppers. By identifying any listings that are missing tags, you can go in and fill those things up right away.
Zero matches when getting started with Etsy SEO
Along those same lines, you’re going to want to see which listings have zero title and tag match (in Marmalead, we call those keywords that are matching in titles and tags, “focus keywords”). You’re going to want to see in those listings if you have tags over here for these keywords, titles over here using these keywords, but none of them actually line up. Folks, keywords are going to send a much stronger signal to Etsy search, letting them know that your listing is really about this right here.
Sort by lowest grade
You can also sort by lowest grade and look at your listings that have the lowest grade inside of Marmalead. Remember, grades don’t tell you what listings are performing the best or performing the worst. They’re geared to tell you which listings you have set up in the best way according to how Etsy recommends doing SEO on their platform, and from what we have seen on Etsy that seems to work best for SEO. You can easily find your lowest grade listings and start looking into those first. What can you improve on those listings?
Utilize Etsy Stats when getting started with Etsy SEO
We also highly recommend looking at your Etsy stats. In Etsy stats, you want to see which listings are performing the worst. That’s a great spot to start. When listing your best listings, sure, might there be a little bit more ceiling you can improve upon? Yes. But the lowest hanging fruit is probably going to be your worst-performing listings.
Build a massive list of keywords & apply
Alright, so we have identified listings that we think would be awesome to work on. Maybe we found some that were missing tags, and we’ve got a handful of tags that we can start filling up on our listings. What’s the next step?
The next couple steps are going to be to 1.) build a massive list of keywords and then, 2.) figure out which of those keywords we want to apply to our listings.
Use Marmalead’s Storm tool to help get started with Etsy SEO
For generating that big list of keywords, there’s also a few ways to do that inside of Marmalead, and a great place to start is the Storm tool. Now, this will do a lot of the work for you. You can go into the Storm tool inside of Marmalead, put in a seed keyword, and it’s going to start returning keywords that are syntactically similar to that keyword, that have been found to be useful by other sellers, and keywords that shoppers have also searched, who have searched for the keyword that you entered. This will build a giant list of keywords for you.
You can click through those, and every time you add one of those keywords to your bucket that you want to keep inside of Storm, it will use that information to add even more keywords to your Storm list.
So it’s kind of this way of brainstorming repeatedly and finding more and more keywords that are related to the ones that you’re saying, “Yes, this could be a good keyword for my listings, this does a good job of describing things.”
If it’s relevant, add it
Now, even if you find keywords that don’t have really good scores inside of Marmalead (maybe they don’t have great search and engagement and the competition is super high) we would say that’s still okay. As long as it’s a relevant keyword, add it to your Storm.
Later on, we’ll figure out how to look at whether a keyword is good or not. Right now, we just want to collect a bunch that are very relevant to our listings. By adding the most relevant ones to your bucket, Storm’s going to keep giving you even more relevant words associated to that one that you just added. Keywords are a lot like panning for gold. You’re going to have to look through a lot of dirt, and when you find the gold, it’s very well worth it.
Use similar shopper searches
Another spot to find keywords for your list is in similar shopper searches. You’re going to find those when you run a keyword search inside of Marmalead. You’re going to scroll down to similar shopper searches, and here you’ll find keywords that shoppers that search for this are also searching for. Things that are very similar. Take the ones that are relevant to your listing and throw that into your list as well.
Long tail alternatives
On that same page of the keyword search inside of Marmalead, there is an area for long tail alternatives. If you search for a more generic keyword inside of Marmalead (that is not a long tail keyword), we will look and see if there are any long tail alternatives to that keyword, which include that keyword, but are also more specific and still have good traction in the Etsy marketplace. That’s a great place to go when you’re trying to brainstorm keywords, too.
Add them to your list
As you’re doing this research and you’re building out your Storms and you’re looking at keyword pages, you can add these things to a keyword list. This is a fantastic way of collecting these keywords when you’re in this “generate a big list of keywords” phase.
Check out word clouds when getting started with Etsy SEO
Another great source of keywords at the bottom of search is going to be the word cloud. The word cloud is going to take all of the tags from listings that come back from the top 100 search results, and it’s going to make a nice word cloud. If you know what word clouds are, basically, the bigger the word, the more frequently that pops up. So you’re going to be seeing what other sellers are using on their listings for that given search and what’s coming back. Again, throw those on your keyword list.
Filter and pair them down
So now you’ve considered all these sources and hopefully, you’ve built up a massive list of keywords that are very relevant for your listing (or listings) that all fit that same space. What we need to do now is to start pairing down that list and figure out which of those keywords are the best ones to try on our listings that are missing tags or don’t have tag title match, or maybe you’ve found that listings have keywords that are not really performing that well on them. Well, now we have to filter through that list.
Always updated, never old
A great place to start with this is if you’ve added your keywords to a keyword list inside of Marmalead, the stats on those keywords are always updating. Every single day when you come into your keyword list, those are updated. It’s not like a list that you’ve exported from a platform or printed off that it is immediately out of date. Those are always going to be up-to-date when you come back to look at them.
You can use the ranking of those keywords right inside of keyword lists and sort by engagement and say, “I want to pick the keywords that have the strongest engagement and see those things right at the top of my list. I don’t want to mess with the things that don’t have great search or great engagement at this point.”
Get started with Etsy SEO with Keyword Comparison
Something else that you’re going to use is the keyword comparison. That way you can compare four keywords at the same time side by side, (you can compare more than four clearing one if you don’t like it, and then just continue to replace and compare), and you can compare searches, engagement, and competition right there side by side. This is a great way to start weeding out which ones are going to work and not work when you start to drill down.
Run them through search
Hopefully, between those things, you can get it down to a handful of keywords that look like they could be a potential fit for you. And maybe you have room for all of those. But it’s also a good idea to take those keywords (the select few that you think might be a good match) and run them through search, just to verify some other things about those keywords.
Look at seasonality
Look at seasonality on those keywords. If this is a keyword that you want to put on your listing and leave it there long-term, you’ll want to make sure that the seasonality supports that. That it looks like that keyword is going to do well into the foreseeable future.
Look at pricing breakdown
You’ll also want to check out the pricing breakdown to make sure that you’re not throwing a keyword on there that’s way out of whack. You don’t want buyers to be caught off guard on your product’s price point. You want to be in line with other products that are coming back in search for that keyword.
Look at the shipping landscape & look at image results
Be sure to check out what the shipping landscape looks like as well and make sure that you fit in with what other people are doing for shipping for that keyword. It’s always a good idea to spot-check the images that come back in a keyword search. Do that little gut check and say, “Okay, does my listing fit in with these other ones? When a shopper comes and does a search for this keyword on Etsy, are they expecting to see something else because, look, all these images are something completely different than what I’m trying to list?”
Don’t change what’s working
Then with all that, there are a couple of key tips that we want you to take away from this as well. These are tried and true. Don’t change what’s working. If you have a listing and it’s selling well and things are doing great don’t change anything.
Let’s say you’ve set up your listing, you’re like, “Hey, I’m new to this SEO thing, but here you go, this is my listing,” and it’s a C grade-wise. But it’s selling. It’s actually doing well. Don’t mess with it! Okay? Work on listings that have low grades and aren’t selling well. When something’s working, and you don’t really know why that’s fine. Let it go. Let it work.
Don’t change too much at once when getting started with Etsy SEO
The other tip we have is this: you want to make sure that you’re not changing too many things at once. It’s easy to get in there, and once you hit your stride, to keep rolling and think, “Oh man, I’ve updated five listings already! This is actually kind of fun! Let me keep chugging along here.” Before you know it, you’ve redone most of the keywords throughout your entire shop.
You’re probably going to have a bad time if you’re making sweeping changes to your listings. If you’re changing too much at once, you’re resetting your keyword cred (what you build up inside of Etsy for keywords you’ve been found for) from Etsy basically to ground zero. Then, you have to build it up for those new keywords.
Fine on a small scale
This is totally fine to do on a small scale. Try it a little bit here and there in your shop. But if you’re changing massive things all at once, you’re probably going to see a dip in your visits for a while before you start to build up credibility for the new keywords that you’ve just added. So that’s something you want to be aware of and careful, again, not to change too much stuff at once.
Final thoughts on how to get started with Etsy SEO
So there you go! If you’re brand new to Etsy SEO, this is a good flow to use inside of Marmalead to really get started and identify your listings that need work. Start coming up with a massive list of keywords and how to pair down those keywords into the ones that are most likely to bring your shop success.
Happy selling, everyone!
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