Shoppers are coming to Etsy looking for special items like yours. Make sure they can find them by optimizing your shop, listings, and customer service quality for Etsy search. A lot of factors go into Etsy search ranking, but you control some of the most important ones. Follow these best practices to create more opportunities to match your items with shoppers’ searches and improve your placement in those results.
Explore our Ultimate Guide to Etsy Search for more on the factors that go into Etsy search and tips for optimizing your shop.
1. Use the Etsy search visibility page to identify key actions you can take
The Etsy search visibility page in Shop Manager shows you how your listings are performing in three key areas that factor into Etsy search—your shop, listing, and customer service quality.
Plus, the Etsy search visibility page is also available on the Etsy Seller app. You can see all your personalized insights and recommendations there, and it makes it easy to take photos on your phone and quickly make updates to your listings.
Visit the Etsy search visibility page
2. Prioritize customer service standards
We know that as an Etsy seller, you do everything you can to ensure a smooth and trusted shopping experience for your buyers, that's why shops that consistently follow our customer service standards are prioritized in search. We include factors like a shop’s average review rating, message response rate, and case rate from the past three months into search ranking.
How Great Customer Service Can Improve Your Search Ranking
3. Use all 13 tags
Each tag you add to a listing is an opportunity for it to appear in a shopper’s search. Unused tags are missed opportunities, which is why you should add 13 tags to all of your listings. Your tags should be multi-word phrases and use natural-sounding language. One rule of thumb to follow: If you can’t imagine someone typing a phrase into Google, it shouldn’t be in your tags. Add variety to your tags, too. There’s a lot that makes your item unique. Add tags that describe what your product is, how it’s made and who it’s for.
Read Keywords 101: Everything You Need to Know
4. Offering compelling shipping prices while recovering shipping costs
Shoppers come to Etsy with expectations based on their other online shopping experiences and our research shows that presenting a lower shipping price to buyers can help you make sales.* To help make sure that buyers see shipping prices that better meet their expectations when shopping on Etsy, and help encourage them to make purchases, starting October 1 we’ll be updating how shipping price is factored into search for US domestic listings. This means that listings with shipping prices lower than $6 will be prioritized in search (with some exceptions). Learn more.
Our data also shows that high shipping prices can prevent buyers from making purchases. This means that shifting some of your shipping costs into your item price while keeping the total price the same can be an effective way to improve your sales. Our new tool is designed to help make it easier for you to set more competitive shipping prices by optionally moving some of your shipping costs into your item price. (Currently US only)
5. Add relevant attributes
The attributes you add to your listings also act like tags and can help your item match with a shopper’s search. Attributes describe specific characteristics of your item including primary color, secondary color, holiday, occasion, height, and width.
When you add more specific categories to your listing, you may also be able add more specific attributes that are unique to that category. For example, when listing a necklace in the jewelry category, you can add attributes for the chain style or number of strands. When listing beads in the craft supply category, you can add attributes for the bead size and shape. Choose the option that best fits your item, even if it’s not exactly how you would describe it.
All these super-specific keywords can help shoppers who know exactly what they’re looking for find your item in Etsy search. If a phrase appears in your attributes, you don’t need to add it as a separate tag.
6. Grab shoppers’ attention with short, easy-to-understand titles
Listings that are popular with shoppers perform better in Etsy search. While the order of words in your title doesn’t have a direct effect on search ranking, putting your most important keywords first makes it easy for shoppers to see what you’re selling at a glance and may result in more clicks and sales from search, which can improve your search ranking over time.
7. Put your best photo first
The first photo on your listing is the thumbnail shoppers will see when browsing search results. Encourage them to click with a photo that clearly shows what’s for sale. Whether you photograph your items on a clean white background or in a more editorial, lifestyle context, your first image should help shoppers imagine your item in their lives—and in their shopping carts.
While the first photo is what shoppers see in search results, using all 10 photos gives buyers more information about your item. Get more photography tips in The Ultimate Guide to Product Photography.
8. Add clear shop policies
Clear shop policies let buyers know what they can expect when they make a purchase from your shop. Having shop policies has a positive effect on your search placement and using Etsy’s shop policies template can give you an additional boost. Learn more about customer and market experience score and its influence on search results in How Great Customer Service Can Improve Your Search Ranking.
9. Add titles and tags in your shop language
Your titles and tags should be in the language you chose when you opened your shop. Adding tags in a language other than your own shop language won’t help your listings appear in search. Etsy will automatically translate the titles and tags you add into a shopper’s language. If you speak multiple languages, we recommend setting up your shop and tagging your items in your native language. You can choose to add your own translations for any additional languages you speak. Learn more about translating your own listings.
10. Experiment and adjust your strategy
Your search optimization strategy shouldn’t be “Set it and forget it.” Look at your stats on a regular basis to see which listings could be bringing your shop more traffic and refresh the tags and titles. The start of a new season or before a major holiday are great times to give your keywords a refresh. Scan your listings for tags with lots of repeated phrases—those are opportunities to try new tags.
Go back > The Ultimate Guide to Etsy Search
Note: Etsy search is always changing and every shop is different. These are some of the current best practices we recommend and we’ll regularly update this content to keep you informed. Updated as of August 2024. Results may vary and are not guaranteed.
*Based on Etsy market research of a nationally representative survey of 6,000 US adults in Q1 '24; these findings are from a subsample of 2,052 respondents.
Words by Etsy Staff
