On our podcast today, Taylor covers a super important topic for all Etsy sellers: search engine optimization.
Our goal for this podcast is to help you create the business you love. At Studio Sisters, we focus on etsy because we know etsy really well. We've had multiple shops for 5+ years on Etsy. In fact, we made more than $110,000 on etsy in 2020.
How did we do it? One of the most important ways we’ve been successful on Etsy (and you can too!) is by improving your Etsy SEO!
Listen here:
Okay, first of all, what is SEO?
SEO stands for “search engine optimization.”
It is the process of making the “Search engine” - that search bar - find your items/products easily and frequently.
Why do you need good SEO?
Improving your SEO improves two things: the quantity of your search rankings and the quality of your search rankings.
If you have strong SEO, you will be found more often by your ideal customer.
If you have strong SEO, you will also be found in the right kind of search that is relevant to your item, searched by the customer who is actually looking to buy your product.
Basically, SEO defines how you get ranked. You could have all of the best products in the world and it wouldn’t matter if you don’t have good SEO.
Also...the best selling shops in your niche have nailed their SEO. Your competition. So, no excuses. If you want to be successful on Etsy, you have to learn SEO.
How to get started with the basics of SEO:
1. Determine what your products “are.” Write down 2-3 words for the product you sell.
For ex: handmade plushies - stuffed animals, stuffies, plushies, handmade stuffed baby toy, handmade bunny doll.
Think about how your product will be used or who is buying it. Will the customer be searching for a birthday gift for dad? A custom wedding gift? Or, maybe they’re buying “boho planner stickers” for themselves?
2. Take these keywords you’ve come up with and search these keywords yourself on etsy & other search engines like google or pinterest. You need to do this with every single one individually.
What other keywords come up?
The goal here is to see if there are other ways people are searching for this product. What are the first keywords that come up for you?
A note on Pinterest: we use this to search keywords to see what’s popular right now. When you search in the search bar, you’ll see additional word bubbles pop up. For example, if I searched “aesthetic stickers” I might see “printable,” “vintage,” “cute,” indie,” “boho,” and other words come up.
Pinterest lists these left to right in order of search popularity. So the most frequently searched terms are on the left and it scales left to right.
Make a list of the most popular terms you see & compare these to search terms on Etsy.
Now, all of these keywords you come up with are the critical point to your SEO.
These search terms should go in both your Etsy listing title and your 13 tags. It’s super important that they match exactly or as close as possible (character limit of search tags).
Other Important Stuff:
You should use ALL 13 tags. Etsy gives you this real estate, so use it. (Pssst! your competitors will use it, so should you).
Make sure you’re doing these things:
Don’t assume you know what people are calling the item you sell
Use search engines (Google & Pinterest) to find alternate search terms for your products
If you sell a lot of variations of one item, like stickers, many of your search terms will overlap like “laptop sticker” but try to have variation and niche down where you can by describing the style like “boho laptop sticker” or “mountain hiking sticker.”
Don’t use one word tags
So, that’s what you need to know to get started with better search engine optimization today. However, I do want to add a really important note:
SEO takes time to rank. SEO is not an overnight success. It will take a few weeks to even 3-4 months to rank in Etsy’s search engine and to start having success with your hashtags.
But don’t want you to get discouraged by the time it takes. SEO is the part of the long game, and there are no magic wands for etsy. Instead, I want you to think about the longevity of your business.
Where will you be in 1 year? 100 sales? 1000 sales?
Where will you be in 5 years? 5,000 sales? 10,000 sales?
By focusing on the end game, you’ll be begin to see how laying the ground work and waiting a few months for your Etsy SEO to ramp up is worth the wait.
The key to Etsy overall, not just your SEO, although it ties into it, is not different than any other business. You only have to do one thing to make your shop amazing. Show up.
Talk soon friends!
xx Taylor & Katie xx
This was really helpful and insightful, thank you!