1 What is Etsy?

2 Is it worth selling on Etsy?

3 What determines ranking on Etsy?

4 How to take good pictures for Etsy?

5 Etsy SEO for the store name, titles of the products, descriptions, and tags

6 How to do backlinks on Etsy?

7 How to set up Etsy ads?

Conclusion

First, what is Etsy?

Etsy is an e-commerce platform that specializes in handmade items and vintage goods, it was born in 2005, 16 years ago. It was founded in the USA.

While Etsy can be a great place to sell your crafty items, getting people to your shop can be challenging.

Currently, Etsy has about 800,000 active sellers and 1.6 million active buyers. Etsy has grown into a massive marketplace, but for this reason, there are also many other shops to compete with. The platform currently has over 50 million items on it.

Throughout time, the category of items has expanded and now there are many new products available like digital ones.

If you are wondering, is it worth selling on Etsy? I would totally say, sure! Etsy is a great marketplace for creative individuals to sell their products but it is hard to stand out. You don’t need a lot of money or technical knowledge to start. The price to list a single item on Etsy is as low as $0.20 (the listing is valid for 4 months).

Etsy SEO can help you stand out among the many similar stores around. But you should know how Etsy’s ranking factors work before diving into its SEO strategies

What determines ranking on Etsy?

 

1 Query match: Title, Tags, and Description must match the keywords searched by users; when a member searches for an item on Etsy, the search algorithm seeks to return the most relevant results, so the item that matches the keywords or phrases entered by the buyer. Buyers will not see the results of items that don’t match their search criteria. Something important to know is that in the titles, the first words are more significant than those at the end, so remember to put the most important and relevant keywords at the beginning of the phrase.

2 Quality score: it is determined by the number of conversions based on the clicks the product receives. In other words, the higher the CTR (click-through rate), the higher the quality score.

3 Recency of product and/or store: Etsy favors newcomers by giving a small boost and making the products appear higher in search results.

4 Customer and market knowledge: Having great reviews from clients, a well-written About section, and completing your store policies can all help you rank higher in search engine results.

5 Free shipping: Etsy loves buyers that have free shipping for their products, if you need to pay for shipping just increase the price of your product by the same amount.

6 Shop Location: If your store is located in America, for example, it will be more visible to buyers from the same country. You can capitalize on this opportunity by entering the location of the store where you think your product would do best.

7 Language: the language of titles, descriptions, and tags of the products must be in the same language you selected in the store.

Another thing to know is that Etsy uses CSR technology that stands for context-specific ranking, basically, Etsy shows the buyers the product they are more likely to buy based on their chronology, so not all search results are the same because they are customized for every user.

What will also make a huge difference is knowing how to create the perfect product photos to make sure to catch buyers’ attention. If you use these pieces of information with the knowledge of Etsy seo, you will surely be able to succeed.

So, how do you take good pictures for Etsy?

A good product photo is essential for catching attention and getting buyers to click and then buy the product, but also to show them all the features and important pieces of information about it, to explain the product in detail. But what kind of photos should be used? It totally depends on the product itself but in general, the type of photos that are used are:

-general-photos: the photos would be perfect if they’re shot in a professional studio with good equipment, they are used to show the product realistically to let buyers know what kind of product to expect when they order it;

-lifestyle photos: they are photos of a product inserted in its place, so, for example, a wall art placed on the wall of a living room, it’s used to make buyers imagine how it could look like in their apartment or other places.

-detailed photos: they are zoomed photos that show all the little details of the product, to make sure buyers know every aspect of the product they want to buy;

-proportions photos: they are used to show the dimensions of the item compared to everyday objects like a coin for small objects.

Remember that Etsy has specific recommendations for the photos you upload: 2700 pixels wide and 2025 pixels tall is the perfect size for product photos.

But let’s see the other recommended dimensions by Etsy:

Mini shop banner 1600 x 213px

Big shop banner 1600 x 400px

Profile photo 500 x 500px

Order receipt banner 760 x 100px

Shop icon 500 x 500px

Team logo 170 x 100px

Now let’s talk about Etsy SEO for the store name, titles of the products, descriptions, and tags:

Store name: a short but impactful name is recommended, which is easily remembered and which is linked to the products being sold. The maximum limit is 55 characters. The name of the store will correspond to the first text that your customers will see in the search engines results so it shouldn’t be overlooked.

Titles: The title is the first thing that appears in search results and on social media when someone shares a link to your Etsy product. The maximum length for a title is 140 characters. It is necessary to do careful keyword research because due to the high competition you have to find relevant keywords that also have medium or little competition. There are several tools for doing Etsy keyword research, my favorite is erank. A very easy to learn and inexpensive tool, it is also possible to do a free trial. You need to search keywords with a good amount of monthly searches but with not too much competition. From there you will have to select the most relevant ones and choose the primary keyword and other secondary keywords. If you don’t rank with them within a month or so, you can try the other keywords you have found.

Do and don’ts:

Do: Use descriptive keywords, put the category of your product in the title, put first your primary keyword (as we’ve seen before Etsy considers the first words the most important ones)

Use long-tail keywords that have less competition, use synonyms, keep it short

Don’t: be repetitive, write too long titles, include unnecessary words like “the”, be too creative, just stick to the most relevant keywords that describe well your product, use the same titles for different products, it will destroy your chance to rank because it will start the keyword cannibalization phenomenon, that means that the products you sell with the same titles will compete against each other and they won’t rank.

Descriptions: repeat the keywords of your title, it is fundamental for the seo. Etsy displays the first 160 characters for the item’s descriptions so make sure that the most important pieces of information are included in those 160 characters. But in addition to this, remember to best describe the product and all its characteristics such as color, size, etc., and also try to make people understand why your product is better than the others, what unique characteristics it has and why it is special.

Tags: the maximum tag we can have is 13, it’s recommended to insert all of them, and also it is essential to make the tags match exactly the keywords of the title.

While we have seen how to do seo on Etsy, we must remember that Etsy uses a different algorithm and bots than Google does. As a result, if you want to be found through Google search, you will have to conduct a different kind of keyword research. Instead of using a specific app for Etsy such as erank, you will have to use the Google keyword planner, Ahrefs or another software. If you want to know how to do keyword research for google I recommend you to read this guide here -> Best practices for keyword research

To increase the ranking of your store/products, you should be aware also of the importance of backlinks. These are links that come from another site and lead to your site and your products. However, not every link is beneficial. A negative link would be one from a site that does not have high authority (you can check the authority on the Ahref free backlink checker, where it says domain rating, sites that have good authority have the domain rating from 35 to 100). There are also spam sites that need to be avoided for backlinks. The sites we should get backlinks from are sites with good authority so from 35 onwards and sites with good traffic so visits to our Etsy store will also increase.

How do you do backlinks on Etsy?

If you publish your Etsy site as a post and share it with your friends, you can create backlinks from social networks such as Facebook and Twitter that have great authority.

You can also search online for blogs that write about the products you sell (for instance, if you sell custom notebooks, you can attempt to find a blog that writes about the best school products). Once you have found the right sites, find the contact section and ask the blog owner if he can mention your products if he thinks they are valid. Although most of them require money in exchange, it is still a good investment if the site can bring quality backlinks and traffic.

Advertising on Etsy is possible through Etsy Ads, a promotional tool available to sellers. They are a way to get your items to appear higher in search results. You can choose which products to promote and how much to spend on every ad. To get started, set a budget of 1 dollar per day for the first month and increase it once you have seen results, a maximum of 25 dollars per day is allowed.

But how to set up Etsy ads?

You need to go to the Shop Manager, then on Marketing and Advertising, there you can choose your budget and you can start the ad by clicking on Start advertising.

Both Etsy.com and Etsy’s app will display your ads on Etsy Search, Category Pages, and Market Pages.

When you start an Etsy Ads campaign, all your current listings are advertised. You can edit this, go to Etsy ads and toggle the status to on or off.

You can also stop the advertising of a group of listings, just go to Manage advertised listings in Etsy ads, and you can deselect or select the listing status you want to edit.

To keep track of the results of your ads you can check the graphs, just go to Etsy ads and on More options and then on Show graphs.

Conclusion

Etsy can be a great way to create a business and grow it over time. You can achieve excellent results by increasing sales and customers even with a lot of competition if you create a good seo strategy.