Today we are talking about how to increase Etsy sales with these 7 SEO hacks. We're going to be talking about Etsy SEO in 2023. 

1. Look at the Etsy search bar

I really feel like the Etsy search bar is really underrated. It is information that is coming directly from Etsy as to what people are searching for. Head to the search bar and start to type something in and when that little pop down menu comes down, you know that those are popular searches right now. 

You want to be using those keyword phrases (if they're making sense for your listing) in your titles, your tags and also in your listing descriptions.

2. Look at the sidebar

When you're doing an Etsy search, look at the sidebar (where it says filters, depending on what device you're looking on). You are going to find some attributes and things for customers to refine their search.

You know that your people are going to be using them, so use these to look at A) how your customer will search and B) potential keyword opportunities.

So many sellers who don't have free postage or don't have a sale running, will not be included when people tick those little boxes to refine their search. So make sure that you're mindful of that.

3. Look at how people are searching for your product

Every single target audience or niche will search for an item slightly differently.

For example, I am a qualified gemologist so I would know what the different crystals are called and I would search/ type in something like 'raw citrine crystal'. But, someone who isn't a qualified gemologist would probably type in 'orange crystal'. They wouldn't know that it's a citrine crystal. They might even type in 'crystal point', or 'crystal for abundance' or something like that. 

Can you see how the search terms will differ depending on who your target audience is? And this can differ from shop to shop too. Don't go onto your competitors shops and copy their keywords, tags and titles and expect to get the same amount of sales, because it will not happen like that. 

My favourite thing for finding out how people will search for your items is to actually go into Facebook groups, forums, or places where your target audience hangs out. If you don't know who your target audience is, then I have lots of videos on my YouTube channel specifically teaching you how to do that. 

When I'm in those Facebook groups or forums I will pop a post in there saying something like "hey guys, here's a picture of a thing that I sell. What words would you use to search for this item on a search engine? How would you describe this item?". 

You will get a lot of quite weird answers that you'd never have thought of, but it's always a good idea to write these answers down. You can always go to Pinterest, Google as well as paid tools like eRank to help you with this too. 

If your listings don't have any of those words that your customer is using to search for it, you are not going to be shown even though what you're selling is perfect for your customer. This is why doing your keyword research with your specific target customer in mind is really vital.

4. Don't keyword stuff your titles

This is a massive way to turn Etsy off and also potential customers too. We don't like it when we look at a title that is formatted like this: 'necklace, gift, Valentines, Christmas'.

This does not accurately describe what the item is. When I have ran tests in my own Etsy shop, the listings that have longer titles, that make sense and are readable by a human being do rank the best.

Although Etsy says that shorter titles do better, if they're giving me all of that SEO space then I'm going to use it. I make sure that I use phrases that make sense for that item. 

5. Use highly searched, low competition keywords 

This is something that eRank and other keyword tools can help you with, but you don't want to be using highly competitive search terms because you will not be found for it (especially if you're a new shop or you have very little sales history).

Instead, use highly searched terms but that have low competition. You want to use these terms before the bigger shops even know that they exist.

6. Keep a record of keywords that you are using across your other listings

If you have a lot of items that are similar within your shop, don't just use the same title and tags over and over again.

No, this is not because you're competing with yourself. This is a bit outdated now as Etsy will allow multiple listings from one shop to show up on page 1, so therefore you can't really compete with yourself.

But, you don't want to limit yourself to just the words that you are using in that listing as we spoke about before with the raw citrine crystal. Someone may not be using those words to search for it, and if you're just using the same words over and over again in all of your listings, you are limiting your scope to just those words. 

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7. Don't forget to review expired listings

I always turn off the automatic renewal on all of my listings, because I want to have a chance before Etsy spends my money to renew it to make that listing better. 

If I'm not getting any sales or any views on a listing, I want to make sure that I can re-do the SEO. 

This is something that not a lot of shops do. They just let their listing expire and then they just renew it over and over again. It doesn't matter how many times that you are renewing that listing, if it's not getting views then it will not sell. If what you're doing in that listing is not working, then it's not going to work no matter how many times you renew it.

Go through and review your expired listings. Are the photos working for you? Are your keywords working for you? Is it the description? Is it the tags? Review each listing as if you were listing it for the very first time.

8. Make sure to sprinkle your keywords into your descriptions

So many sellers ignore descriptions, and if you go back to my videos from 18 months ago, you will hear me saying to sprinkle keywords into your descriptions before Etsy even said to do it, because Google has ALWAYS crawled listing descriptions for keywords. 

So now Etsy have announced that they are doing it, everyone is jumping on the band waggon, but it has always been a good practice to sprinkle some of your best long tail keywords (low competition, highly searched ones!) in your description.

If you'd prefer me to visually teach you this blog post, then you can watch it HERE.

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