How Double Your Etsy Sales Using Keywords

Keywords are how people find your products on Etsy, so I would argue they’re the most important aspect of running an Etsy shop. Given their importance, I’m surprised keywords are often underutilized and misunderstood. I’ve been guilty of this many times!

There’s a lot of confusion around how to use keywords on Etsy to get the best results, and today I want to clear things up. All of these tips come from my experience with selling on Etsy for five years, as well as research I’ve done along the way.

1. Make keyword search tools your best friend. I recently started using eRank, and it has make all the difference. It has a small monthly fee, but it’s totally worth it. Since keywords are how people find your products, you want to use the most searched words possible. Tools like eRank suggest hot keywords to use that are similar to ones you’re already using. It will even tell you the most popular keywords that are the least utilized, which is where the sweet spot lies.

2. Don’t repeat keywords in your listings. Instead of saying “Fish Art Print” “Ocean Art Print” and “Nautical Art Print,” say things like “Fish Art Print” “Ocean Wall Hanging” “Nautical Wall Decor.” Try to use as many different relevant words as possible. From what I’ve researched, listing a word multiple times doesn’t do much good. That being said, I do put important keywords once in my title, description, and tags - just not multiple times within each section.

3. Use all the keyword space you have. Max out your listing title and keyword tags with as many relevant words as possible. You still want your titles to be easy for a customer to read. I like using divider lines to separate out the words in my title, listing the most important keywords first. When filling out your tags, use multiple words per tag. For instance, don’t just say “illustration” as a tag, say “gouache illustration” if you have the space.

4. Make sure your tags are relevant. From what I’ve researched, Etsy tracks how relevant your tags are to the product. If you have your mermaid art print tagged as “beach towel,” that’s not going to do you any good, even if beach towel is a hot keyword. Use keywords that pertain to your item to see the best results.

5. Research the keywords that other shops are using. Take a look at shops that sell similar items as yours, and see how they have their items tagged. This has been a great resource for me. Sometimes it helps me think of obvious words I hadn’t considered.

6. Don’t worry about plurals. I used to think I needed to list things link “art print” and “art prints” as separate keywords. I recently found out that Etsy has a solve for this. Their search engine is able to pick up the singular and plural of any word, even if the spelling is different. From what I understand, words like “nursery” would also reveal results for “nurseries,” and vice versa, so don’t get hung up on this.

7. Fill out your attributes. Etsy has boxes for things like size, color, style, etc. Make sure these are filled out in your listings, because they act as keywords and help buyers find your item. This one might seem a little obvious, but I was guilty of this. It can be hard work filling out attributes, but it’s well worth the return.

Those are my tips! I’m still figuring things out, but I’ve seen significant growth in my own shop by applying these principles. If you want to learn more about keywords, here are some other helpful articles :

How Etsy Search Works

Etsy Keywords 101

Etsy SEO: 5 Must-Do Steps to Help You Get Found on Etsy