Etsy Keywords - Tuesday Tips

Hello everyone, and happy Tuesday! This is another post from the series I'm creating along with a group of other bloggers from the Etsy Gift Guide Facebook group. And today's Tuesday Tips theme is keywords.

Keywords, tags, where to start?

When I opened my Etsy shop a year ago I had zero knowledge about keywords, other than the general concept. 

After two months with no sales, I couldn't help but wonder what I was doing wrong. I joined a few Facebook groups and asked around, and people either sent me some SEO bullet list or told me to include the keyworks I would use to search for my items. 

Now, that may work for a lot of people but, sadly, didn't work for me. The SEO bullet lists made sense in theory, but I needed someone to show me how to put them to practice. And as I would never buy the items I can make (duh!) I also had trouble trying to come up with efficient ways to tag them. Add it to the fact that, no matter how it may look to you, English is not my first language.

Sooo...after all this time on Etsy you're thinking that by now I'm an expert on keywords and SEO, right? Well, no. And probably never will be. 

But my traffic from Etsy (especially the one coming from Etsy searches) increased exponentially during the last months of 2019 when I caved in and decided theory and trial and error weren't taking me anywhere. 

So what works - moderately well, but way better than before - for me? Whenever I'm listing a new item I search for similar items on Etsy - if I find them, well, there's one keyword there already. And then I look for the best sellers in that category, scroll down to the bottom of those listings and study the keywords there. There's no need to copy them exactly - all items are different and most of mine are one of a kind anyway - but that's the best way for me to see SEO working in practice. 

I've been doing this for new items and slowly reviewing my older listings as well. Someday, maybe I will be an Etsy SEO expert standing on my own - but for now I'm limited to taking cues from those that are better and more experienced than me.

Now have a great Tuesday and don't forget to check out the other Tuesday Tips posts from some amazing Etsy sellers and bloggers:

Jems and Jewells 
Donella Browne 
Swears and Stitches 
Kelsey's Crafts