Etsy has 81.9 million active buyers and 4.36 million sellers. This means 2 things, 1. there is a huge audience there that might be potential buyers, 2. it’s competitive, you’ve got to take the right steps to make sure your products are found by your target audience.
To do that, let’s first understand how Etsy search system works. It works in 2 phases, query matching and rankings. Query matching is basically matching the search term the buyer puts into the relevant listings. Etsy also uses context-specific ranking technology here, meaning no 2 people putting in the same search term will get the exact same results, as the results will be based on the user’s search and purchase history.
Rankings are mainly based on the information in your listings. There are a lot of factors Etsy takes into account here, which is what we’ll be covering in this blog, how to nail your product listings on Etsy to increase sales.
Ranking factors:
These are the factors Etsy will consider when positioning your listings on search result pages. Let’s talk about what you need to do for each of these points.
- Relevancy
This is all about how relevant your shop title, listing title, attributes and categories are to the potential buyer’s search term. Make sure your shop title describes what you sell as this will be the title people will see on search engines. Your keywords (especially if they are an exact match) will also play a big part here but we will talk about those in a little bit.
- Shipping price
Shipping costs can have a big impact on the buyer’s decision to buy, that’s why Etsy prioritises listings that offer local free delivery and people can also filter by shops that offer free delivery, so that’s one way of getting ahead of your competitors.
- Listing quality score
This score is something Etsy calculates based on how likely people are to convert from your listing. The more people view your listing, the more people favourite it and buy it, the higher your search result placements will be as these are all signs of people liking what they see.
- Recency
When you create a new listing, Etsy will give that listing a temporary boost. This is Etsy’s way of encouraging shop owners to add new products to their shop and be active on the platform.
- Shoppers’ history and habits
This can be explained really easily with an example. If a buyer keeps looking for dog products on Etsy, and they searched for ‘bandana’ they will likely see a lot of results for dog bandana listings. So what your potential buyer has previously searched for or bought is pretty important for your rankings for that specific search. This is obviously not something you can control, but still has an impact on your rankings.
- Customer and market experience score
Your shop will have a score that’s based on your reviews, star rating, negative feedbacks and how complete your profile is. Make sure you have a look at your about section and fill in as much as you can. This is marketing 101 really, people are more likely to buy from you if you tell them your story and they see that personal touch, especially on platforms like Etsy where most shop owners sell handmade products. We know it’s probably handmade, but what makes you special?
There are a few more things you’ll want to know before you start working on your Etsy Shop. The first one of these things is knowing which keywords to use and where to use them. Your product title, description and tags all need to be created with the relevant keywords in mind. Etsy search bar is my go-to place to find the right keywords. When you put a search term in the bar, Etsy will show you a list of recommendations based on that search term, these keywords will give you an idea of which words people are using so you can build your keyword list with them. However, you can also use tools like e-rank that will give you an idea of the average monthly search volume that keyword gets.
Using the same keywords for your product tags is good practice as this will give you a boost in the search results due to relevancy.
The next one is something a lot of people forget – links in your product descriptions. They will help your listing score massively. So add links to your other product listings, or even external websites and build your listing’s credibility.
So go ahead and take another look at your shop and see if you can make some improvements and increase your sales. Remember even if it’s on a marketplace, SEO is still the long game, so be patient as it might take a while for the platform to crawl your listings.
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