Optimizing an Etsy Listing

Big news at Etsy! They are working on improving how an Etsy item page appears to Google and other search engines. They have re-designed the way the Title and Keyword META tags are written, so they are more attractive to Google and other search engines. By writing your item titles and descriptions in a certain way and choosing the correct Etsy tags, you can increase the likelihood of being found in an internet search. Etsy has hired SEO experts to help them figure out how to put your listings in front of as many shoppers as possible. This is great news … it should help our items get a lot of exposure. The first change is … Your Item Title will come first … THEN your shop name and finally at Etsy. So, if a listing looked like this: Jewelry24Seven on Etsy: Handmade Silver Earrings … now it will look like this: Handmade Silver Earrings by Jewelry24Seven on Etsy This is a HUGE difference. Search engines look for the most important search terms first in the title, so putting the name of your item at the beginning of the TITLE tag should make a big difference. Try to use terms people would search for on Google when writing your title - terms like handmade silver earrings, as shown in the example above. Don’t forget that Etsy will add your shop name and the word ETSY to your title, making it unique … and longer. So writing a short and descriptive title will get better results. The next change is that the Keywords META tag will now have only the tags in it you choose when you create the listing. This solves a couple of big problems. Because every word in your keywords tag must appear as visible text on the page, listings could look spammy to a search engine in the past. We didn’t have control over the terms Etsy put in the Keyword META tag, and might not have added those terms to the description. If those words they put in the META tag were not on the page, the listing would not be picked up for searches. Choose your tags carefully. They should be descriptive and popular search terms. When you write the listing, make sure you use these search terms one or two times as visible text (no more than 2 times) in the item description. A good way to figure out what to choose as a search term requires a friend who is willing to help you. Someone who shops online, but who never shopped online in your shop would be ideal. Show your friend a piece of jewelry you made and … ask them what they would search for on Google to find it. Take note of the number of sites listed for each given search term. Popular searches turn up a much higher number of results. Keep in mind that most people who are looking to buy something search for very specific things, which means they use 3 to 5 words in a search term. So “silver ring w/ 8mm faceted garnet” is more likely to be used by a serious shopper than “garnet ring”. Garnet ring is a good search term but is very general in nature and probably would be used by someone who is just browsing. Serious shoppers know what they want and look for it. Time to go over all my listings … I’m going to use this knowledge to make them stronger. I hope all JETS do the same … it should help a lot!

Robert Edwards is a proud member of the Jewelry on Etsy Team - JET. He is a jewelry designer and metalsmith in New York City with over 30 years experience in the jewelry trade, specialzing in handcrafted silver jewelry. This article may be reproduced as long as it contains this author's statement and all links remain intact. ©2009 Robert Edwards