Keyword research for Etsy doesn’t have to be hard. And with Marmalead’s Storm tool, it isn’t. So if you want to flood your listings with new and improved keywords, it all starts with Storm. Let’s jump in and figure out how.
An Etsy SEO tool built for keyword research
Welcome back to another “How to-torial” with Marmalead. Today, we’re taking a look at Marmalead’s Storm tool! Storm is going to be a great tool to help you brainstorm keywords for your Etsy listings. It’s going to help you figure out which 13 tags you should use for your listings. Also, it’s going to help you figure out keywords to put in your titles and your description. Overall, Storm is going to be a great keyword research tool for Etsy to have in your back pocket.
Where should you start your Etsy keyword research?
The first thing you need to do when it comes to Storm is pull up Marmalead. Once you get it pulled up and you’ll see “Storm” on the left-hand column. It’s got the lightning bolt symbol.
Before we start a new Storm, one of the things you’re going to be wondering is:
What is Storm and why is it called that?
Storm’s going to help you find keywords that you’d never even think of. Once you put in a seed keyword into Storm, Storm is literally going to rain keywords down into Marmalead, and it’s up to you to pick and choose the keywords that are appropriate for your listings.
All you have to do here is click on “+New Storm” and type in a seed keyword to help Storm pull up some keyword suggestions for you.
What keywords should you start with?
If you watched our other how-to video on how to use Marmalead’s search tool, you know that when it comes to brainstorming Etsy keywords, we like to start vague. In this case though, with the Storm tool, it helps if you don’t quite start so vague, that way, Storm’s going to have a better idea of the type of listing that you want to curate.
So rather than starting vague, what we could do is go to our Etsy search terms in our current Etsy shop. A great place to start is going over to the real search terms that buyers are actually using to find your current listings.
Start your keyword research with real Etsy search terms for your listings
Obviously, whenever it comes to brainstorming keywords, you’re going to have a listing in mind that you want to optimize. What you’ve got to do is jump over to Etsy, and then go into your Shop Manager, then stats.
Once you’re in Stats, scroll down to find your listings. Look for the listing you want to optimize and click on that for some juicy information from Etsy. In our example, we’re optimizing a listing for black clay pottery.
Once you’re in your listing, you’ll want to scroll down and look for the stats that show the “search terms” for this listing.
Search terms found in Etsy are from real shoppers
These are going to be the search terms that real buyers are actually using to find your listings. In our example listing (from a fake shop we created), we have buyers that are currently finding our listing using the keyword, “black pottery,” “hanging planter,” “vase,” “plant pot,” and so on. So you could start with any one of these keywords that are real buyer search terms for your listings.
You already know that people are using these keywords to find your listing, so Storm is going to help you dig deeper into these keywords and offer some suggestions that you can incorporate into your listing.
Start your keyword research for Etsy with Marmalead’s Storm tool
Take any one of the buyer search terms that shoppers are using to find your listings, and start your Storm with that as your seed keyword. In our case, we’re using the buyer search term “black pottery.” Once you have your seed keyword typed into Storm, it’s going to flood Marmalead with keyword suggestions that are going to be related to that seed keyword.
Storm is going to use machine learning to take word and phrasing matches, similar shopper searches, and popular keyword suggestions to create keyword suggestions based on your seed keyword.
It’s up to you to pick and choose the keywords that are going to be related to your listings, and you’re going to dump them right here into your bucket.
Which Etsy keywords are effective and which ones aren’t related?
Some of the keyword suggestions that Storm gives you are going to be more related to your listings than others. And it’s up to you to tell Storm which keywords are MOST related to your listing. That way, Storm can learn from you and start to offer you keyword suggestions that align with the direction you want to take for your keyword research for Etsy.
So now what we’re going to do is quickly go through Storm and save the keywords we like, and get rid of the unrelated keywords. And of course, the entire time we want to pay attention to the Marmameters that Storm shows you. This is arguably the most important part of using Storm.
Getting to know our Marmameters for your Etsy keyword research
If you’re not familiar with the Marmameters, I definitely recommend you go check out our article on “How to use Marmalead’s search tool.” In that video, we take a deeper dive into these Marmameters. But essentially, what we’re doing here is we’re going to show you the number of searches this keyword is expected to receive in the next 30 days. The number of clicks through engagement that this keyword is expected to receive within the next 30 days.
Also, the amount of competitive listings that are using this exact same keyword on Etsy. You’re going to want to keep an eye on all three of these Marmameters here, as we go through Storm.
Save the keywords related to the listing you want to optimize
Once Storm has your keyword suggestions pulled up, it’s time to start dumping in some keywords that are related to our listening, getting rid of the keywords we don’t like. All of this we’re going to keep in mind with our current listing that we’re optimizing, of course. If it’s related to the listing that we’re optimizing, we’re putting it in our bucket, paying special attention to the Marmameters.
Common keywords, high competition
Keywords like, “gift for her” are going to show up along with “gift for him” “Mother’s Day gift” and “Father’s Day gift” etc,. Those keywords are of course going to have high searches and high engagement. But without a doubt, those keywords are also always, always going to have HIGH competition. All the keywords like “gift for her” or “gift for him” are some of the most popular keywords on Etsy because those are the type of searches a lot of buyers use when starting their search on Etsy. Kind of like Google.
How shoppers use Etsy
We’ve talked about this before, but the average shopper uses Etsy kinda like Google. They’re not always sure what they’re looking for. A lot of the time, they’re going to start with a vague search in Etsy, like, “gift for her.” They’re just doing some shopping. They’re trying to get ideas for what kind of gifts and what kind of products are out there on Etsy.
All the keywords like “gift for her” or “gift for him” are some of the most popular keywords on Etsy because those are the type of searches a lot of buyers use when starting their search on Etsy. Kind of like Google.
In our case, we are not going to be using “gifts for her,” for this listing. You could use it for your listing, if you want to build up some keyword credibility to try to rank for “gift for her” but again, those keywords are going to be really hard to rank for. We’re not going to focus our time on them.
More and more suggestions
Again, as we dump keywords that we like into our bucket (and get rid of keywords that we don’t like), Storm is going to give you more suggestions at the bottom. We’ve now got tons of suggestions that are down here. As we’ve been doing this, Storm’s been adding more suggestions. We’re just going to keep doing this for as long as you want to! You could create as long of a list as you want, and just keep going through and adding in more keywords. It’s up to you! Whenever you think you’ve got a good enough bucket, that you can go back through and start to pick and choose keywords for your own specific lists.
Using Storm for product market research
While going through Storm, you may see keywords like, “Bulbasaur planter.” This particular keyword isn’t necessarily related to our seed keyword, black pottery. But it is one of those elusive keywords that are all green inside of Marmalead.
What the Storm tool can really help you do is find product ideas in markets that are virtually wide open.
“What other products can I create that are somewhat related to the current product that I make?” If you look through Storm, you can get all kinds of ideas for new markets to move into.
In this case, “bulbasaur planter” has high searches, high engagement, and not a whole lot of competition. That’s the sweet spot in terms of market potential!
Something you should be worried about with this particular keyword though is copyright law. You don’t want to get into hot water for creating products that are protected under copyright.
In any case, you can still see that this is a good example of a different market that you can tap into. It’s a suggestion based off of Storm, so keep these different keywords in mind. In our case, we’re not going to be interested in making Bulbasaur planters. We’re going to get rid of that.
Storm will run out of ideas and that’s ok!
You’re going to get to a point where Storm is really going to run out of ideas that are closely related to your listing. But that’s okay! Once you feel like you’ve gotten to that point, we like to take one final scan through everything to see if there’s anything else we can include in our bucket.
Be sure to save your Storm!
Now that we’ve got a pretty full bucket, what we can do is further optimize the keywords that are on this list. But before we do anything else, we’re going to want to make sure that we save this Storm.
If we were to hit the back button or go to any other Menu tab, then Storm is going to just erase this list we’ve already created. It’s not a huge deal because all you have to do is just type in that same seed keyword into the Storm tool and you can pick and choose from your keyword lists again. But to keep your sanity, definitely make sure you save the Storm. That way, you can jump back in any time.
An extra tip to continue researching keywords for Etsy
Once we’ve got our Storm saved we can start to create lists based off of these keywords that are in our bucket. Before we do that, we’re going to show you one quick example of something else you can do with Storm, with your keywords. Obviously, we only took one keyword from the search terms. We didn’t take any other keyword suggestions. But you can go back into your buyer search terms from Etsy and create another Storm from another seed keyword.
As long as you want them, you have them
Once your Storm saved, it’s always going to show up in the Storm section. And what’s going to be really helpful with saving your Storm is you’re going to be able to come back to that at any point in the future and check to see if these Marmameters have changed over time.
Changes in Etsy keyword research over time are normal
Obviously, the Marmameters for each keyword are going to change based off of the seasonality of the type of keyword that you’re looking at. These different meters are going to be different throughout the year. That’s why you always want to save your Storm so you can come back in and check to see if the keywords that you have pulled off of Storm and put into your listings are going to be any different.
This is just one of the ways you can use Marmalead to check in and see if these keywords have changed over time.
A full bucket, now what?
After you’ve got your bucket nice and full of the keywords that are related to your listing, what are we going to do from here? What we like to do is add them to a list. So we’re going to create a list that’s specific to the listing that we’re optimizing. Again, our seed keyword is “black pottery” so that’s just what we’re going to name our list. You can name it whatever you want. It has no reflection of how it’s going to affect your keywords.
We’re really trying to think of the different keywords that are going to be related to this listing that we chose, and we’re adding those onto our list, so again, you can get an idea of how you can organize the different keywords that you’re brainstorming. We go back into your list, we go into black pottery, and then from there, we can see all the different keywords we’ve put on this list. If you want to create lists for any specific tracking method that you want to have in your shop, go for it!
Final thoughts on using Storm for your Etsy keyword research
That pretty much sums up how you can use Marmalead’s Storm tool for your Etsy keyword research!
If you enjoyed this article, make sure to bookmark this blog and come back for more “How To-torials!”
Do you actively use Marmalead’s Storm tool for your keyword research? How do you use this tool to your advantage in your Etsy shop? Let us know in the comments below!
Happy selling, everyone!
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