Friday’s Fast Five: Etsy Search Changes

on Aug 12th, 2011 | in Fast Five | 2 Comments

Etsy changed the default sorting on searches to Relevancy instead of Most Recent on August 9th. Wondering how to cope? Have no fear. These quick tips will have you improving your search placement in no time. For a more in-depth look at the search changes, check out my Etsy Relevancy Search Explained article.

Friday’s Fast Five is a series on Brittany’s Best where I share five quick tips that I’ve found helpful as a seller on Etsy.

Now that titles play a larger role than tags, it is imperative that you title your items correctly. Say what the item is before a long description. Example: Sun Dress – Pink with Bunnies and Frill is more relevant than Pink with Bunnies and Frill Sun Dress.

Your item’s main title (Sun Dress) should be stated in your title, your description and your tags. Also, put this title at the beginning of your description when possible.

Don’t change your relisting strategy just because of this change. If you were renewing your items daily, you may want to keep doing it, especially if you are in a saturated category (jewelry or soap). Not only do the four most recently listed items appear  at the top of each search page, recency is still a big factor for broad searches and category listings.

Use your Shop Stats! Take a look at your top keywords of all time and use them for your titles, descriptions and tags. I know I love to name all my items with fancy names but since no one will be searching for them by that name, it is best if I give people what they are asking for. My Persian Treasure Napkin Rings became Beaded Napkin Rings – Set of 4 – Persian Treasure.

You may be tempted to stuff your tags (adding more than one word in a tag ie. green purple). Don’t do it! Not only will you be following Etsy’s Terms of Use, you’ll be better off with the new search changes. It’s not often that customers will be searching for green purple. Do yourself a favor, stick to the rules.

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2 Responses

  1. MerCurios says:

    This is so helpful, thank you. I do take advantage of my shop stats. I’m wondering though, how to get views on items where search terms are not showing up in stats…

    For example, my shop is 75% rings so of course my shop stats reflect those key words. But how do I know what key words are driving traffic to the other sections of my shop if they are not showing up in stats?

    I hope I’m making sense. Feel free to email me.

    xo,
    MJ

  2. Sean says:

    Thank you so much for this helpful post!

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