An Easy 6-Step Guide to Optimizing Your Etsy Shop for Organic Traffic

Let's talk Etsy traffic. Etsy is obviously an excellent site for makers who don't have the time / knowledge or desire to create their own brand or stand-alone site. However, even though Etsy comes with a whole lot of built in traffic and users, simply putting your products up on Etsy and waiting for the sales to roll in, isn't quite how it's going to work.

Etsy is essentially a search engine – albeit a much more targeted search engine – and to be successful you'll need to learn how to optimize your posts and listings to get views and traffic. Etsy will encourage you to pay for ad placements to increase your views, which may be a viable option for you, however, I want to talk about how you can optimize your posts to earn as much organic traffic through Etsy as possible.

1. Know your keywords.

The most important thing you'll want to start with is establishing the keywords you are going to target.

What are your customers going to type in search to find you?

Starting out with a comprehensive list of words and phrases that your customers will use when searching for your product should be your first task. I have a few tips for creating this list.

• Think like a customer. If you were trying to search for items in your product category, what would you type in to Google or the Etsy search menu?
• Look at the Keywords your *successful* competitors are targeting.
• Pay attention to the words used in their titles
• Take a look at the "Related to this item" tags at the bottom of their listings

2. Crafting the perfect Etsy title.

Optimizing your title is EVERYTHING in Etsy search. That's why often times you will see crazy long titles on Etsy postings that aren't readable or pretty to look at. But generally they WORK in getting you to show up in Etsy search.

The first words of your post titles should be your most important keywords. If you are selling a Pink Gemstone Charm Necklace your title may read something like:

• Necklace with Pink Charm Gemstone | Long Chain Necklace with Pink Gemstone Charm

It doesn't matter that perhaps you have a creative name for this necklace such as the "Rosy Charm Necklace", that doesn't necessarily belong in your title, because people aren't searching for "Rosy", but they are probably searching for things like "charm" "gemstone" and "long chain".

Using some kind of divider character such as one of the following: / | * - – will allow you to provide a little bit of organization to your product title.

3. Earning views and sales with a strong product description.

Once you get your product title hammered out, the product description is the next place to focus your writing energy.

The product description gives you plenty of room to accomplish a number of goals:

Provide your customers with enough information to make an informed decision about purchasing your item.

Things like sizing, colors measurements are super important to include within your product descriptions. Provide as much detail as you can and this will help minimize returns and bad reviews and also help customers know whether your item is one they will love.

Get your viewers excited about making the purchase.

Use your product description to really sell up your item. Tell your customers why they want your item. Help your viewers get excited about your item through your product description.

Optimize for Etsy search. 

Finally, the listing description is another place where you need to make sure you're using your keywords. They should be used in a much more natural way within this section, as the primary focus of your listing description is to provide information to your customers.

4. What to use for Etsy Tags

Etsy allows 13 "tags" for each product listing. This allows you to enter your keywords to help Etsy know what your product is and when it should be showing up in search.

Definitely use all 13 tags with the keywords from your list to help optimize your posting. If you find yourself running short on ideas before you've used up all 13, look at some *successful* competitor listings to see what they use.

5. Optimizing your photos

Etsy allows five photos per listing and it is highly recommended that you use all five images to show different angles and viewpoints of your product.

Keep in mind, the photo is most likely the main way a user will be drawn to your listing in the first place. Make sure that first photo is clean and shows your item in an excellent shot.

6. Continuing to optimize once you start to get traffic

Once you complete steps 1-5, you may think you are done – but you're not!

In fact, for best results, it is important to continually monitor your Etsy stats and evaluate them to help improve your listings. Your stats will show you what keywords are driving traffic to your listings. Use this data to help improve your listings.

You can also see how many views each listing is receiving, compare the ones that receive high traffic vs. the ones that receive lower traffic to continually improve your listings and maximize your views.