I first ran across Nicole from Owl Naturals in the Business forum on Etsy. She was sharing some of her tips on how she had over 30 sales in her first month on Etsy. That’s right: 30 sales in 30 days. This lady knows what she’s talking about when it comes to optimizing her shop for search engines! She agreed to answer a few questions I put to her so that everyone can benefit from her wonderfully successful Etsy experience.

How do you make your titles in Etsy more SEO friendly?

“Google AdWords was a huge help to me. It shows you the words that people search for in Google. So if I put in “soap” it will give me the keywords that people search with and the percentages for that word. This helped me tweak my titles to try an increase the traffic to my shop.

I will caution you at this point though not to use all 12 (or 20 or whatever it might be) keywords that Google brings back with the highest percentages. From what I have read in the Etsy forums, most buyers like simple titles. They seem to think that it makes one appear desperate if they have too many keywords in their titles. From what I have read, Google might think it is spam and not rank your site high on their results because of “overstuffed” titles.”

Megan here: Nicole is right about overstuffing your titles. Google will rank you lower if it thinks you are spamming. Also, as a buyer, it’s generally a turn off if your title reads, “All Natural Organic Green Soap Handmade Bars.” (Yes, I did just make that up but I have seen some titles on Etsy that have to extend to a second line.) SEO is generally walking a tightrope of too little and too much in terms of key words. You want the reader to be oblivious to your keyword usage. If they start to count how many times you say “soap” or “fine art print”, you’re overusing them. I generally have someone else (like my mother or my boyfriend) read through my descriptions or titles and see if the number of times I say “print” or “pen and ink” bothers them.

Title: Vegan Gingerbread Bar Soap by Owl Naturals

Keywords: bath and beauty, soap, vegan, cold process,handmade, body, gingerbread, bar, clean,spice, kitchen, brown,upcycle

How do you use your title to write your description and thus your tags on Etsy?

“I try to make my title simple, my description a little bit more detailed and my tags I use for keywords as well as colors, etc. that I think Etsy shoppers or Etsy admin. might use to search for purchases or Treasuries. Yes, I like being on the front page of Etsy or in their Storque articles. :)

Who doesn’t? Haha. And Nicole obviously writes her descriptions and tags well because she has also already been on the front page within her first month on Etsy.”

Does repetition of keywords work?

“It seems to help to use the same keywords throughout your title, tags and description. However, from what I have read, you want to be careful on using too many keywords too many times because Google will again think you are trying to spam if you have too many. And that will hurt your page rank. We all want to be at the top of a Google search, right?!”

Title: Handmade Calendula Beeswax bar soap

Keywords: bath and beauty, soap, scented, body,beeswax, all natural, cold process,handmade, owl naturals, eco friendly, bar,upcycled recycled, vintage book pages,brown paper

How did you find which words were your keywords?

“I used Google Adwords, spent time in the forums on Etsy learning from others, and did Google searches to see the results, as to who was coming in at the top of the search.”

Can you recommend any websites, books, etc. to help other pump up their Etsy shop’s SEO?
“The forums on Etsy were a huge help to me. Did you know there is a search bar for the forums? You can type in whatever the topic is that you have a question about and it will bring up all of the posts on that topic. I love that! Etsians are so willing to share their experience and wisdom with others.

Etsy’s help guide to SEO is a wonderful resource also. I am still learning and will continue to research and tweak things, but it has been fun to learn about SEO and how to increase traffic to my site.”

Handmade Spark also has some great articles on SEO such as this one by Amber Jordan. I couldn’t agree more about searching the forums on Etsy. You can always find such amazing information thanks to other sellers.

I hope this article has been informative and very helpful! Well, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m off to use Google Adwords and then pour several hours into enhancing my Etsy shop’s SEO. If you have anything specific you’d like me to cover next week, please leave a comment! I’d also love to collaborate with another artist if you have information you want to share with others!!