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There are many guides and articles out there to help you perfect your SEO for Etsy, but none have as long of a name as this one 😄

In all seriousness, we talk about SEO for Etsy quite a bit. In fact, take a look through our blog and YouTube channel, and you’ll find a seemingly endless amount of topics on the subject.

Topics like How to improve your SEO, Etsy SEO Myths, and Marmalead for Etsy SEO, to name a few. With such a big pool of content dedicated to SEO for Etsy, it can be intimidating to figure out where to dive in. And that’s precisely why we created this handy guide!

Before we begin

This article is a part of our Complete Guide for Everything You Need to Know to Succeed on Etsy! If you just stumbled across this article, we recommend you start back at the beginning: Everything You Need to Know Before You Start an Etsy Shop.

Or, if you’d like to check out each article in the series, click through the links below:

8 Steps to Starting an Etsy Shop

We created the Complete Guide for Everything You Need to Know to Succeed on Etsy to teach you how to start an Etsy shop the right way. You can position your Etsy shop for longterm success by following these core principals.

At Marmalead, we strive to offer accurate, practical advice for Etsy sellers right here on our blog and on our YouTube channel. The world of Etsy is constantly evolving, so if you have a question you can’t find an answer to, reach out to us at success@marmalead.com.

So, how do I perfect my SEO for Etsy?

Well, the first step is understanding what you’re looking for and why. So, that brings us to the questions “what the heck is SEO?” and “why are keywords important when selling on Etsy?”

Luckily, in this SEO for Etsy guide, we’re running through the absolute basics of SEO – and we’ll let you know how Marmalead helps with these basics, and how it helps really well.

Keywords, descriptions, search engines, volume, rank. If any of these terms confuse you, then read on!

What is SEO for Etsy?

SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” And this means doing some pretty specific things to your website to make it rank higher in a search (we’ll get into these “things” further down below).

“Rank” is the order in which your listing appears when someone searches for a keyword that’s relevant to your product. So, a higher rank means your product is closer to the top of search results. This gives your product a better chance of receiving more clicks, which ultimately leads to more sales.

Most commonly, SEO is big in Google search. But SEO is useful for other websites with their own search engines, like YouTube, Bing, Amazon, and Etsy.

So what does this mean for Etsy?

SEO for Etsy can also be achieved by doing some pretty specific “things” to your Etsy product listings to make them rank higher. We’re talking tags, titles, and descriptions here, and it all revolves around your keywords.

Keywords are a huge part of SEO for Etsy. “Keywords” are simply the words people type in the Etsy search bar to find a product they want to buy. It’s not really any more complicated than that.

So if you want your products to be found in search, it’s important you spend time finding out keywords that are relevant to the products you sell.

Guide to SEO for Etsy: Keyword strategy

Not all keywords are the same.

It’s obvious that more people search for “father’s day coffee mug” than they do “Australian red gum volume knobs for fender jazz bass.” And although it’s true that these keywords are completely different, there’s even more of a difference than you think. Especially when it comes to the date behind them.

But, rather than comparing these two totally different keywords, let’s think about two similar keywords for a second: “father’s day coffee mug” and “coffee cup for dads” When looking at and comparing two keywords like these, you’ll need to think about more than just the words buyers might type into search.

Volume: This is the number of times that people search for this keyword every month. If search volume is low, there are fewer people typing this keyword in search.

Difficulty/Competition: This is a measure of how difficult it would be for a new shop (like yours) to get traffic from this keyword. Competition directly correlates to the difficulty of a particular keyword.

Engagement: The measure of how many people search for that term and then click on an Etsy listing.

Results: This is how many other listings show up in the search results for that keyword.

Here are some more examples

Consider the following:

“Vintage dress” may have a lot of volume and an equally high level of competition, which would mean there’s a lot of stores selling vintage dresses. This keyword could be quite difficult to work with.
“Dinosaur shirt” may have a lot of search results, but low competition, which would mean high demand and low supply.
“Cowboy leather belt” may have high volume but low engagement, which could mean people are looking for the product, but the search results don’t match what they want to buy.

All of these elements play a role in helping you effectively implement an SEO strategy for your Etsy store.

Now, once you’ve decided which keywords you’d like to use, it’s time to put them into action. These are those “things” we were talking about earlier.

How do I ‘do’ SEO for Etsy?

Doing isn’t usually a verb that’s used in reference to SEO.

More specifically, it’s the process of optimizing, modifying, and altering what you already have by targeting relevant keywords and adding them to your listings. For example, changing the title of your listing to mention said keyword, and then rewriting the product description.

In pretty much all cases, Etsy SEO simply involves modifying the following:

Product titles
Product descriptions
Tags

These sections may be altered to mention your keyword or to change out a keyword entirely.

So, it’s as simple as finding and using the right keywords for your listings to bring you more traffic (and ultimately sales).

It’s important to remember that SEO is an ongoing process and can never really be 100% done. You can set yourself goals (e.g., 150 clicks from ‘search’ in June 2021), but you’ll never have truly perfected it – the same way you’ll never have perfect product photos (but you can get pretty darn close to perfect in our eyes 🧐)

Using Marmalead to get pretty darn close to perfect Etsy SEO

Start by putting your keyword into Marmalead.

You’ll see a fairly basic report with information we discussed earlier, like engagement, competition, results, and volume.

seo for etsy - keyword statistics from marmalead

From here, you can quickly decide if a keyword is too competitive, or doesn’t have a high enough volume and more.

If your keyword is too competitive, try using the Tag Cloud to find similar, but less competitive keywords.

Build up 15-20 keywords that are of interest to you, and put them in the Keyword Comparison tool. Find and remove the ones with the least potential (not enough volume, too competitive etc.) and you’re then left with keywords to use.

seo for etsy - comparing similar keywords

These are keywords to use in your tags and in your description – ideally as close to the start as possible. It’s in using these well-researched keywords in your copy, that you’ll be ‘doing’ SEO, and increasing the chances of your store ranking, getting traffic, making conversions into sales!

In conclusion

Remember, if you’re brand new to Etsy SEO, even the most basics will help you grow. It’s a learning process – Etsy success won’t happen overnight, but with persistence and research it will start to click more and more!

Well, this brings us to the end of our Etsy 101 series dedicated to helping new Etsy shops find their start on the platform! Whether you’re a brand new shop navigating your way through Etsy for the first time, or if you’re a long-time seller brushing up on your skills, we hope you found this blog series to be helpful and entertaining!

If you found your way to the end of the series but missed all the posts in the middle, start here: Everything You Need to Know Before You Start an Etsy Shop. Have a question that we didn’t answer in the series? Reach out to us in the comments below!

Happy selling, everyone!

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