How to search engine optimize your Etsy shop in 2023 | Etsy SEO 2023

1. How to search engine optimize your Etsy shop in 2023: Hi friends, My name is Sarah Smith. I'm the founder of cultured simplicity on Etsy and Pinterest. I'm an Etsy shop owner of four years and an Etsy shop analyst of three-and-a-half years. And in this course, I'm going to be so when you had a search engine optimized your Etsy shop in 2023, I just very recently released a course. I had to set up a best so like Etsy shop at 20:23. And that goes a bit more into like the visuals and the sharp friend, all those kinda more business owners stuff. This course is going to be very specific to search engine optimization. There are some very specific tips in here to this year. These are some things that I'm accounting for with all the ETC, algorithm updates that we had between 22 and I'm constantly getting new knowledge from other experts on how the algorithm is changing and what works the best. And I really want to share that with you is actually if you're a new shop owner that is trying to really get a foot in the door, make some goods sales this year. So definitely rabbit notebook or some, some way to take digital notes and get ready for this course because there's a lot to unpack here. So let's get started. 2. Lead with nouns follow with adjectives (Think like a buyer, not a seller): My very first tip is to think like a buyer, not a seller. And this essentially means that when you're crafting your titles, lead with your nouns and then follow up with adjectives. And this is quiet contradictory to the English language. Most of the time, people, when they're speaking, they're going to say beau ** and long formal dress or something like that instead of saying dress beau **, long and formal. But basically every single buyer, for the most part, when they're searching the kinda just spit balling and they know generally what they want, but they are still trying to figure out how to narrow it down. And, you know, search engines, that's their specialty as people type, the search engine will start to suggest longer tail, which just means more narrow keywords. So somebody knew that they had just done invited to a wedding as a guest. And they're going to Etsy and they're typing in wedding guests dress, you can see that there are all these recommendations that come up. And if you target one of these, rather than this very general search term, you'll be a lot more likely to show up for the single longer tail keyword that you are optimizing for. Wedding guests dress summer wedding guest, yes, spring wedding guests dress for really any of those words are good places to start because you know that people, when they're searching, they're gonna be clicking on one of these search terms. Will, for the most part, I know that I use up a lot when the search engine will start recommending stuff, I'll click on it. And this isn't just true at seats. Also true to Google. We go to Google and they type in wedding. Yes. Dress, face. We can see that they have a lot of those same keywords. But once we actually click on one, or we just, let's say we just search it to. We can probably get some more narrow stuff here and we look under images for winning guest stress. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself here. So let's just go back to thinking like a buyer. So like we said, wedding guests stress, we follow it up with an adjective. You might want to start following it up with multiple adjectives. And that is how you think like a buyer. And right, like you are writing for buyers rather than writing for a seller. So you will notice too that some of these do follow up. Some of these listings are written with the adjective first, but they are using, they're using keywords that they also know people are searching for for starters, these are both bohemian. Bohemian are very, very popular fashion niches on Etsy. So it makes sense that they would follow it up with that. And we also can notice that these are ads, so they're paying to be shown up for these search terms. So you really got to take ads with a grain of salt. But that is my very first tip and that is something that a lot of Etsy experts, it's whereby to start with a noun and then get more specific as you write your, your title. So let's go ahead and get into the next video. 3. Leave out commas or dividers in the title - optimize for as many keywords as possible: My next tip that is also sworn by for a lot of Etsy experts is to leave out your commas and other dividers that people have been known to put into the title or to leave their descriptions with. So as an example, you can see this listing. I have dividers in here. I have this squiggle, and I have this dash, and I have another dash. And then a lot of sellers do that because it was traditionally best practice to write your title, to be very reader-friendly, good for readability. But as you know, the marketplace has really become saturated, over-saturated with competition. At this point, you are really trying to rank for every single keyword that you can rank for. And you do that by leaving out those commas on. I'll show you what I mean. These are two very, very similar listings. But on this one, I left out all of those commas. I looked at all the dividers basically. And you can see that by doing this, I rank for a lot more keywords. I rank for work planner, where it cleaner stickers, planner stickers, digital stickers, digital black girl. That sounds kinda weird. I know from personal experience that that is something that people actually search for on Etsy. Digital black girls stickers, black girls stickers, black girl stickers, good notes, girls stickers, good notes, black girl planner. We have planners, stickers again, and then stickers, digital black woman, then black woman stickers and then stickers, digital work and then digital work stickers. And this really covers every single way that somebody who could possibly really searching for work stickers to go on a planner, in my opinion, especially for me, my niche is women of color. So that also hits my target audience as well with some of those keywords. So when you write it like that, you hit so many more keywords and you would, if you were to place a comma right here between work planners stickers, between digital black girls stickers and yes, that would increase readability. But at the end of the day, your buyers are going to know what your listing is from the image. It's your images job to do the talking as to what your product is. And reading this, it is not great for readability, but they are still going to know what your product is by reading this title. So just bear that in mind. I can kind of, we can look through some of these listings. You can see that a lot of people still do use commas in the other dividers in here as well. So you will really be ahead of your competition by coming in right off the bat, not including those comments and other dividers. So let's move on to the next tip. 4. Naturally lead with your most important keywords in your description: My next tip is to lead with the keywords that you want to optimize your listing for in your description, you want to lead with those keywords. And Etsy recommends as our best practices that you incorporate those keywords and naturally within those first two sentences, or three sentences or whatever, it comes down to it within the first 160 characters. So however many sentences that is, you basically, what you didn't know about SEO and Google is that Google crawls the first 160 characters, so you're adding description and uses that to create the meta-description for your listing page in their search engine. The meta-description is that short paragraph you see under your SEO title in Google search results. And once again, ETC. They do say to incorporate those relevant keywords naturally and make sure that they are very accurate and relevant to what you are selling. So avoid copying or tidal verbatim or simply listing out your top keywords and said you want to craft a sentence or two that casualty incorporates a few of your top keywords and a way that sounds human and written in your brand's voice. And once again, shoppers, they will only see the first few lines and your description, both in Google and on Etsy when they first clicked your listing. So you want to make sure that that account, and if you're anything like me, that bit harder to make your first few sentences sound natural when you know that you're intentionally trying to target certain keywords for me occasionally, well, not even occasionally. I use this a lot more now that I actually know about the tool. This is a tool that I just learned earlier this year. And it's called a Laura, and it's Uluru dot io. And they have an AI assistant in here, which is artificial intelligence. And you go and you click a ice and sit on this little writes tab toolbar whenever we wouldn't call it. And then you go to product descriptions and they will create a compelling product description for your Etsy products. So what I did was I just copied and pasted, well, I copy the name of that product and non pasting it. I can choose a focus keyword if I want, but I'm gonna leave it as it is because this keyword is, this title is very optimized already for all the keywords that I am trying to target. And we're going to see what this AI robot will spit out for me. And they honestly to do a pretty good job for it being a robot. So let's see what it says, right? Not school stick. Okay, so we're going to ignore this first part here. Make your workdays wife one empowering with these beautiful digital black woman, girl planner stickers, whether you run a business or manage your own products or projects. These seekers will help you seize the day and style and make sure you stay organized and on top of your tasks. So that these would be like the first few sentences in my description. If I was to copy this copy this description exactly as it is, what I recommend you do is to redo the entire description that they craft for you and find whichever sentences you feel best heart of the keywords that you want your product to be renting for it. I just, I like this, this tool because it does create very beautiful sentences that sound attractive, and I do think they do a pretty good job incorporating your keywords naturally. So that is the tool that I like to use. But of course you can do that all naturally in your own head by just looking at the keywords that you're targeting. And just thinking of a sentence, thinking of a few sentences so much that it's those first 160 characters that really matter most. So let's get into the next hit. 5. Using GOOGLE and ETSY over third party tools 1: My next tip would be to basically go search engine optimization. There were slightly more old-fashioned manner. A lot of people nowadays they go straight to eat, drink, and Marvin, lead and crest and a Laura and all these other third party search engine tools that are out there for optimizing their shots and why those products are great for what they do, do. It's always great to start at the source and know exactly what's trending when you're not even what's trending, but what people are searching for when they are. When you are creating your listings, you want to make sure that you're creating them using the keywords that people are currently searching for. You can do that by going onto Etsy. And literally like, I'll use the same example that I did earlier. If you know you're selling a wedding guests dress. All of these keywords are, they're free and they're right here. And you know that these are exactly what people are going to be clicking on when they are searching that original query. So there's really no point to go to these other search engine tools initially anyway, when you have all these great keywords, I would say if you are going to use these tools to follow up, use them. Use the tools after you already see the search terms here. And just use them to see what their general trends, what their general traffic is. So for wedding guests dress summer, they can go in and look that up in rank.com right here. And I'll get into this in the next video, more into this exact tool. But if we look at when it gets dry summer, the slope, if we just tell you, it'll, it'll basically confirm for you if this if this search term is something that you should be optimizing your listings for. Even though I will see that etsy.com, those search terms alone. Like I feel like not saying, I feel like I've seen it as an analyst in this field that using etsy.com to come up with your keywords is always more effective than going to a third party tool. For first. Jesse has a lot of the times these third-party tools are not entirely accurate. And you can tell because they have different stats between one another for the same search term. So when it gets dressed, summarise here, this does have a lot of searches and this will show you what that search train is looking like insensibly right now with it being the very end of February, this would be a fabulous time to go in and change all of your every single listing that you have that could, that could fit as a wedding guest stress. Adding in this keyword as a wedding guest stress summer. And this, of course, this is more than 20 characters. So you can add this in as one of your tags that you would put at the bottom of your listing. But you can of course, optimize for it within your title and your description. And you can find strategic ways to incorporate it in your tags, whether that's winning guys stress, guest stress summer, summer wedding guests, however you would want to target that keyword as well. So we can kinda look down here, we see a lot of related keywords. Is it kind of gives you an idea. We see summer when and gastritis, this also is trending. He's also trends around the same time. So this, this platform, these third-party tools are great for figuring out exactly which keyword that you should be targeting. You can kinda look at the exact searches and whatnot. But at the end of the day I was at c.com, you know that people are searching for those and you see them and they're all free. And this is true for Google as well. I've noticed in times past and a lot of Etsy shop owners was to strictly optimized just for the etsy.com platform. But people are coming to Etsy from Google very often if you type in wedding guests dressed. Summer. Okay, We see Shin has quite a state. They have a bit of a monopoly right here. But sometimes at C will show up for, you can see immediately we see Etsy is a very third listing for this search term. So Etsy is very, very ranked for on Google. And the only reason we see another one, another Etsy listing right here, of course, is a lot of competition and there are certain keywords that you'll find a whole lot more, ETC. Listing if it's a digital product, like if I were to type in hairstylists, Instagram, temporary digital products they really normally rent. You see all of these products or Etsy and people are clicking them and they're going straight to Etsy or this one is Creative Market, actually accretive marketers want to add C's biggest competitors. Etsy, of course, takes the cake over that one. So etsy.com, you click that. It takes you to the list thing and people can buy it. And that is because Google is so in tune with Etsy and that's not a great way to explain it. But I say that so that you will also use Google when you're coming up with the keywords that you want to optimize. So going back to that wedding guests dress query, you have all these same words. Pretty much the Etsy has. Sometimes it is different. This has a slightly different order. So that's that's interesting in itself. If we type in summer, you can see it narrows it down a little bit more. Summer 2023, summer wedding, some are formal, so all of these, we even see maternity. We can see there even adding words to the front end, which is something that etsy doesn't do as much. Let's see. So for this query they didn't add any to the front end. But on Google they do add some to the frame. We see maternity, red, black, maxi. These are also, these are also search terms that people are searching for when they are looking for a wedding. Guests stress for it. Summer. I say once again, use Google because it's free and it is the largest search platform out there are search engine out there. And you don't even really knew the stats because you know, people are searching for it because it's right here. I'd say, is that as a new shot or a smaller shop, you of course want to be prioritizing the longer tail keywords, which just means more narrow keywords. You would never want to go in and try to rank number one for wedding guest stress, nor would you really want to be trying to rent for wedding guests dressed summer as number one, but you would want to slowly be eating. You will want to go for one of these more specific tags. And in conjunction with your other tags, given they're all strong keywords, you'll find yourself ranking more highly for these other slightly more broad keywords. So I would definitely encourage ranking for these ones. These are very, very long tail keywords. So that is where Google comes in. It helps you find longer tail keywords that people are searching for and they didn't even know that they were going to search for that. But as they typed in wedding guest stress summer, those queries came up. So naturally they clicked on it since it was just, you know, it's right in front of them. So let's move on to the next tip. 6. The RIGHT way to use third party SEO tools: Alright, so I touched on in the last video how you can use Marlene and E rank and other third party at the SEO tools in a smart way in addition to google.com and etsy.com. But I do want to go a bit more into depth on these platforms because they are very, very useful in themselves. As long as you don't overly rely on them, they are very useful. And I wanted to tell you which keywords that you should be prioritizing when you're using these tools. I want to think that these are, for the most part, pretty common knowledge from a business perspective. But I am creating this video with all kind of shop owners in mind. And if you're a beginner, you might not already know this. So you would want to go with the keywords that have a high amount of average searches, high average cliques, high average click-through rate, and low Etsy competition. So even though the wedding of course looked great with all of these three, that competition is absolutely insane. So we can even see that it's not a long-tail keyword. Iraq will tell you that you can see a long-tail keyword, as I mentioned the last video is just a basically a more specific keyword that not as many shops are trying to rank for, are competing for him. The very first long-tail keyword that we see come up is wedding guests dress summer, and that's pretty perfect since that is what we had originally searched. So clearly we were kind of hoping that you'd be at a rank for that keyword. And it's really, really good keyword because there's very low at the competition, but there are higher researches, high average cliques, hybrids, click-through rate, summer wedding guest stress, slight variation of this one, but it is also an extremely good keywords, slightly less good. Then the last one, since this one does have more searches and well, well, this one has slightly less competition, so it'll be a little bit better than that aspect, but it has slightly, well, not even slightly. It has less overall average searches. If you had to choose between the two, you would of course go with this one. But all these keywords are pretty strong. Keywords. I say all of them, but I mean the ones that are very closely related, I would say this one is good, this one is good. And I would even say that this one is good even though those searches and competition is, competition is high, higher and searches are lower. So of course this is a weaker search term then these two, but it is something that I could definitely see a lot of people searching. And it has potential and we see Google searches to definitely not overlook Google searches. Once again, a lot of you are coming to Etsy from Google. So you want to make sure that there are a lot of searches on Google as well. These average searches, all these metrics are some very specific to the etsy.com platform itself. But you don't want to neglect Google because we can see sometimes the ordering of certain keywords, you've actually be different. Something dress, wedding has a ton of searches on Google, but hardly any searches on Etsy. And I can't even, I wish I could explain to you why certain terms do so much better on Google than they do on Etsy? I want to think that it narrows down to Google searches. They include, they possibly include terms I wanted to make that people type into dress and then people type wedding. They click on wedding to narrow it down and that is included in this overall number. I'm not exactly sure, but I do think using Google searches is quite smart. And I've seen people kind of overlook this, this column before. I've even done that before and you really, really should not be doing that and not anymore anyways, Etsy is not at all independent of Google. Whereas the algorithm used to be relatively independent and different from Google. It's really evolved to be a lot more like Google and how it ranks like it didn't use to include descriptions and SEO. And it does include descriptions now and they're finding ways to use more artificial intelligence too. To make listing show up, even if the buyer didn't specifically optimized for keyword. There essentially they want products to be shown that they think people are gonna want to buy it, even if it doesn't check every word that was included in search term that the buyers hype, sometimes it'll still show up and Etsy is really evolving. That's been a more recent evolution. And I do think they'll probably back pedal a bit on how much they're trying to show. Keywords are trying to show products that they know people are going to want, even if they don't quite match the search term. But it's always good to keep in mind. You want to make sure that your products are being found via other platforms as well. And I feel like I know that was a random edition in there. But there's a lot more to search engine optimization than just the way that you text optimize your listing. At C also ranks products more high leaf if they have a lot of external traffic that you're bringing in from third-party sources. So if you're bringing in a lot of traffic from social media or your blog, you are going to rank more highly, a lot more quickly than a new shot or small shop that is not bringing in external traffic. So that is a random last-minute tip that's in there, but it's a very important one. And with that, we're going to wrap up this course. 7. Outro: I want to thank you guys so, so much for tuning into this course of your it'll learn a lot. I shared a lot. I feel like I shared as much knowledge as I possibly could and keeping this entire course relatively brief. So I hope you all enjoyed it. Once again, my name is Tara Smith. I'm the founder of culture and simplicity on Etsy and Pinterest. I'll be including my links below and I'm grateful to be here. I'm a teacher here on Skillshare, so go ahead and give me a follow if you'd like. And definitely do the class project and interact with one another. Because I'm looking, I'm really, really looking forward to seeing all your projects. I'm gonna be trying to be extremely active with this course and responding to you. I look forward to meeting you all and I'll see you guys in the next course.