Etsy SEO What Is It & Why Does It Matter

One of the things I didn’t realize when I started selling on Etsy was how important SEO was going to become to me. I just want to sell vintage and now I have to become a marketer? Okay, game on!

I will fully admit that I am by no means a marketing expert but I’m learning. As I learn things I like to share in case others are struggling. I like to help if I can.

What Is Etsy SEO?

The glib answer from marketing professionals is, “SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization”. Did you hear the snotty tone? Great. So what does that mean?

If you’re not an online marketing nerd then those words don’t mean much to you. And they sure as hell don’t explain what you need to do to improve your SEO.

The way I like to think of SEO is the words I use when I Google a product I want to buy. When I think about SEO in these terms it makes it easier for me to understand how to do it right.

When I look at one of my products I literally ask myself if I was looking for this what would I type in a search field to find it?

Of course, with vintage there are specific manufacturers that should be reference, and pattern names. For example, the tea cup below that I listed a short time ago. It’s a Royal Albert Tea Cup so those are search terms I will want to use that for SEO and the pattern is Un-Named Set #322, which I also want to use.

But what if the person looking for this cup doesn’t know any of that information? They just remember a pretty blue tea cup with flowers on it that their grandmother used to own. Those are terms I’m going to want to use too.

Do you see why this is important? It helps customers find your specific product, so you want to give them as many details to help find them as you can.

Where Do You Use These Search Terms?

Etsy give you several opportunities to improve your searchability. Of course you want to add details to the title but you only have 140 characters which limits the amount of information you can put in there.

Etsy’s search engines also looks at Description, Tags and Categories.

The description of your listing becomes the meta data in the search results for your item or at least the first 160 characters do. I always copy my title and paste it as my first sentence in my description for that reason. Other search engines like Google will scan the rest of your description so make sure you get as many descriptors as you can in this area.

Categories are one of the areas I think people forget about. Sometimes when I’m in a rush I get a little lazy on this front too. For the tea cup listing above I could have stopped at drink & Barware but as you drill down in the categories you finally get to Tea Cups and sets, but now my listing is included in all of these categories. But if I had stopped a drinkware and my shopper was browsing through tea cups they would not be seeing mine is my understanding.

Tags are Etsy SEO gold! You of course want to use the key words in your title and add all those other descriptors you think your buyer might use. You can see below that I used quite a few including the cup shape (Hampton) and a pattern that is mistaken for the un-named 322 pattern all the time. Why? In case the person looking looking for my cup things that’s the pattern they’re looking for.

Think like your buyer.

Do you have any tips for improving SEO? As I said I’m not a marketing professional so I would love to hear from you if you have any helpful tips to share. Comment below and help me and other’s who read this post improve their SEO!

Don’t forget to check out my other Etsy posts especially Vintage Selling What You Need to Know.

Just a reminder that all comments are held for approval, and comments that are not respectful to me or other commenters will not be approved and deleted. Go spread your type of sunshine somewhere else.

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Don’t forget to check out my post on setting up your shop policies! If you’re stuck on pricing your can read my post here!

Many blessings to you!

~S

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