You’ve started your Etsy shop but out of the over 2.5 million sellers with over 60 million product listings, how do you stand out? Two of the easiest and most consequential places to optimize your listings are through product titles and tags. When an Etsy shopper enters a search phrase, Etsy scours through all the listings looking for either the exact phrase or the presence of all the individual words in your titles and tags. Etsy also tries and mirrors Google’s SEO practices which means an optimized listing on Etsy is also optimized for Google. You’ve got a two in one deal! So, how exactly do you write the best title and tags?
Don’t stuff your titles! Leave the stuffing for thanksgiving. Etsy prioritizes readability so if your title is a mass of keywords instead of phrases, you’re not going to appear in search results anytime soon. Think of phrases that you would use to search for your product. For example, if you were looking to buy a wooden picture frame, what would you type in the search bar? “Wooden picture frame,” “rustic wood frame,” and “rustic picture frame” are all good examples. But you also need to remember not to go beyond 3-4 long-tail keywords because buyers don’t search in sentences. With multiple phrases in your title, make sure you’re using commas to separate them. Readability is key so if you don’t separate your phrases with a comma, you’ll turn off potential buyers and hurt your SEO.
Do stuff those tags! If you don’t want to wait till Thanksgiving, use all that stuffing and put it into your tag words. Etsy allows thirteen tags and they can be up to twenty characters long. Think of the specific qualities of your product. Is your product light or heavy, smooth or rough, solid or print, big or small? Use tags to get into the nitty-gritty of your product that you couldn’t add to the title. For wooden picture frames, you can use tag words like “rustic home decor,” “dark wood frames,” and “16×20 frames.” You also need to make sure you’re not repeating your tags. The category and attribute section work like tags so if the product category is “Picture Frames,” don’t add this phrase as a tag. Remember, you only have thirteen chances to further improve your searchability among over sixty million products sold on Etsy.
Use Etsy’s search bar! If you’re simply out of ideas for keywords or phrases for your titles and tags, type in one of your top keywords and look at the search suggestions. Etsy shows these suggestions based on its popularity. If a suggestion is towards the top, Etsy shoppers use that search term the most. Play around with different variations of your keyword and try using a descriptor before and after the keyword.
Bonus Tip! During seasonal times, make sure to update your titles and tags. For example, if Christmas is coming up, adding keywords related to the holiday will improve your chances of appearing in search results. Etsy has a great “Quick Edit” feature to update your titles and tags without going straight into each listing.
Search-friendly titles and tags are the first steps in creating optimized listings. If you’re stuck, just ask yourself, how would you search for your product?
