even with the best products in the world if customers can't find you they can't buy from you so today I'm demystifying the process of researching keywords and optimizing your listings for Etsy search step by step so that you can start generating more sales on Etsy in [Music] 20124 for those who are new here my name is Starla Moore founder of the handmade Alpha Academy for Etsy Sellers and manager at rank.com etsy's most popular SEO tool and if SEO or search engine optimization feels like a complete mystery to you I promise you're not alone in fact
one of the most common comments that I see on my channel comes from sellers who say okay I did my SEO correctly but I'm still not seeing sales even as a manager at the world's most popular SEO company not even I know if I've done my SEO correctly because that's just not how SEO Works instead think of etsy SEO as an ongoing science experiment in order to know if you've well optimized your listings for search you have to test an experiment monitor your results and tweak your strategy which is exactly why I don't recommend SEO
services and Consultants who offer to do this work for you Trends change every single month so unless you want to pay this guy a pretty penny every single time that you need to make changes it's better to just learn this stuff on your own and I promise it's not that hard your first step is to head over to to rank.com to begin doing keyword research this is an important step because without a datadriven keyword tool you won't know if Shoppers are actually searching for the words that you're placing in your listings titles and tags if
you don't already have an e- rank membership you have a few different plans to choose from just be aware that if you choose the free plan you will only be able to do so much research each day before you hit your quota so use your searches wisely but to help you guys out I'll also add a free 30-day trial link down below along with The Specific Instructions to follow to set it up that way you can try out one of our paid plans after you've logged in and connected your Etsy Shop click on the tools
Tab and select the keyword tool when doing our keyword research we want to start Broad and narrow our way down if you're selling this beige wool chunky knit blanket it's better to start our search with blanket because e- rank will be able to suggest more specific ideas based on this search it'll also help you to not use up your quota as quickly if you're using the free plan once you've typed in your broad single word keyword we want to spend some time on this page e- rank will display several important pieces of information including the
average monthly searches average clicks click-through rates and competition for this term and most likely all of these things will be really high since we've typed in a broad phrase so don't worry so much about these numbers right away take a quick glance around the page then scroll down to the related searches box down here from this list we want to begin looking for possible keywords to experiment within our tags and titles I highly recommend clicking this button down here and creating a keyword list to save these words in so it's easier to keep track of
them to save a keyword to your list create or select a list from this box then begin clicking the Stars next to keywords that you'd like to add to that list this will allow you to go back to them later while looking for keywords to add to your listings I recommend working with a combination of lwh hanging fruits and one or two high hanging fruits the low hanging fruits are the keywords that may not be searched as much and may not have the best clicks and clickthrough rates but the competition is lower which means we
can hopefully rank for these faster a few terms that I might consider to be lwh hanging fruits are Grandma blanket wool blanket chunky blanket so the blanket on its own is going to be a little too hard to rank for we may be able to rank for some of these terms now before we move on to find more keywords let's work with what we have so far and start crafting our titles when it comes to Etc SEO there are two sides of the algorithm that we want to appeal to one side likes to see our
keywords exactly as the Shopper types them in this is called exact matching and it will result in stronger keyword matching for example if someone searches for chunky knit blanket we would want to have the phrase chunky knit blanket completely intact in our tags and title to make an exact match I like to call these keywords our Superstar keywords because they're the VIPs of our listing we want to make sure our Superstar keywords really shine because your Superstar keyword is ultimately what you want to be known for the other side of the algorithm is a little
less powerful but still important for ranking it's called broad matching during the process of broad matching Etsy plays a fun little game of mix and match where they put words from your tags and titles together regardless of whether or not those words are next to each other for example in the keyword phrase beige wool chunky knit blanket we would exact match for chunky knit blanket but we would broad match for wool blanket beige blanket beige knit blanket wool knit blanket chunky blanket beige chunky blanket and so on keeping etsy's broad matching capabilities in mind it's
unnecessary to craft our titles in a way that repeats the same words over and over again for example rather than saying beige knit blanket chunky knit blanket wool blanket we could instead say beige wool chunky knit blanket because we will exact match for our Superstar keyword chunky knit blanket and will'll Broad match for the terms w blanket beige blanket beige knit blanket and so on now that we've started our title with the most important aspects of our product we still have plenty of room to add additional keywords if you choose to ideally you'll want to
find more terms closely related to your product that you could broad match for but after a while you may find yourself struggling to find terms related to your item this is where I recommend tossing in a closing keyword related to a potential Target customer style occasion or gift recipient these keywords typically won't bring in a lot of traffic but they're good to experiment with after you've already catered your title to the item itself we still have plenty of space so let's finish off the title with a potential recipient for Shoppers looking for gifts I like
to start by searching the phrase gifts for in the keyword tool because if you remember e rank will recommend a list of suggestions for us from this list we're going to scroll down and begin noting some of these keywords from the suggestions it looks like gifts for Grandma has high search volumes that carry through until Mother's Day I also noticed that while searching for blanket related keywords that Grandma blanket was a loow hanging fruit and if we do a quick search for Mother's Day the trend graph shows us that searches for Mother's Day gifts typically
begin in February since it's currently January we can actually kill three birds with one stone by using keywords related to Grandma and Mother's Day adding this term into my title it now reads beig wool chunky knit blanket cozy Mother's Day gift for Grandma so we'll be exact matching for terms such as chunky knit blanket knit blanket Mother's Day gift gift for Grandma and so on and will broad match for beige blanket Grandma blanket Grandma gift wool blanket and so on and just a quick disclaimer the idea that you should fill out all 140 characters of
your title is a myth remember how I said that Etsy can mix and match all of your words through broad matching every time you add a new keyword to your title you basically increase the number of combinations that you could be matching for both exact matches and Broad matches So in theory more keywords in your title would equal more opportunities to be discovered in search but big giant butt Etsy specifically tells us in their Ultimate Guide to search that sellers should focus on writing short clear and descriptive titles because titles like these make it easier
for Shoppers to figure out what you're selling it also helps to set your listings apart from those ugly keyword stuff titles that we're used to seeing on sites like Amazon and eBay so which are better I always recommend testing both both work and both can help to get you found in search but everyone's unique Target customers will respond respond differently to your listings some may not care about the long titles some may assume that they look scammy and spammy so test both but keep in mind that there's no magical algorithmic benefit to using exactly 140
characters now that we've created our title we next want to head down to our tags section and begin filling these out tags are an area that Etsy will also exact match as well as broad match for so we'll do our best to keep some of our keywords together when possible our Superstar keyword chunky knit blanket is a little too long to have a tag on its own so we'll need to break it up a bit in a way that makes the most sense we could either break it into chunky knit or knit blanket and since
I doubt anyone is searching chunky knit on its own our best bet will be to enter it as knit blanket next we could add chunky wool gift for Grandma and Mother's Day and just for the sake of getting an exact match I'm also going to add the term Grandma blanket technically you don't need to repeat keywords over and over again because we'll still broad match for Grandma blanket here and here but when it comes to really good lwh hanging fruit terms with high searches and low competition that also fit within a single tag sometimes it's
worth it to try for an exact match to now that we've used all the words from our title we still have some room to experiment with this is a great opportunity to use some of the keywords from our initial search that didn't quite make the cut for our title these terms may have been too competitive or too broad for your title but they'll be great for our tags so let's go back to our original search for blanket in the keyword tool okay so I saved daughter blanket mom blanket crochet blanket aesthetic blanket woven throw blanket
handmade bedding neutral home decor granny gift engagement gift and I'm also going to add the term Cottage core Decor because I think this could fit into the overall Cottage core style let's add some of these into our tags now you may be saying Starla you just said that we don't need to repeat the word gift because Etsy will broad match it and yes this is true but often times you'll end up out of ideas before you hit 13 tags and it's better to repeat a word and try to aim for an exact match for some
terms like granny gift or or engagement gift rather than adding a one-word tag like granny or engagement this is all about testing and experimenting once you've published your listing it's important to remember that etsy's algorithm can take an average of 60 to even 90 days to build a quality score for your listing every time you add a new listing Etsy begins collecting data based on how Shoppers interact with it and after a period of 60 to 90 days etsy's able to decide where ins search that list listing should be placed with this in mind it's
important not to continuously edit this listing again during that 60 to 90day window we want to make sure that we aren't interrupting Etsy as they assess your listing quality so be sure to give your listings plenty of time to grow the last thing I want to show you is how to keep an eye on your keyword so that you'll know if search Trends change later on as I'm sure you already know something that was popular this year may not be as popular next year so it's important to keep a close eye on the search status
of your keywords that you've used in your listings if you're using the keyword list feature that we talked about earlier this process will be a lot faster but if not you can manually type in the keywords from your listing to check their status since I'm an e- rank expert user I'm going to click here on my tools Tab and open my keyword lists from here I can select the list I want to look at I'll click on my blanket list and from here I can check back each month to view the search volumes for my
keywords if I notice that one of my listings has suddenly stopped selling my first stop is always my keyword list that way I can check to see if the search volumes for my best keywords have changed one of my favorite things about - rank is that we update this data every single month so when Trends change you'll be the first to know and the first to act ideally before your competitors do in this video we discussed search engine optimization through keywords which is a very powerful and necessary part of ranking on Etsy but keywords are
just one part of etsy search algorithm and if you want to be successful on Etsy it's important to appeal to the other ranking factors as well in my free Etsy etles toolbox I cover the mechanics of etsy's algorithm as well as the seven factors that contribute to your overall rank or visibility on Etsy to grab that free toolbox so you can start influencing all seven ranking factors be sure to click the link up here and down below overall SEO is the max that leads customers to your listings and with a little science a lot of
data and some help from a trusted Etsy expert you'll be well on your way to Etsy success cue the funky low F be [Music]
