Etsy SEO 2025: COMPLETE GUIDE (NEW Etsy algorithm how to rank high in search)

Etsy SEO if you want to have success selling on Etsy SEO is one of the most crucial things you'll need to pay attention to as a multiple sixf fig Etsy seller trust me on this you don't want to skip over this strategy because it's the number one tactic that you can use to get your listings ranking and bringing in organic traffic now if you're just hearing the term SEO for the first time it stands for search engine optimization and that's exactly what we're doing we're using proven methods to optimize each listing specifically for the Etsy

algorithm since Etsy is a search engine to ensure that our products not only get shown to the right shoppers but that they rank high on the first few pages of search results instead of on the 110th so in this video we're going over exactly how Etsy search works and what you can do to get your listings ranking high and be sure to watch all the way to the end cuz I have a few extra Pro tips I'm going to throw in there for things that have really helped my shop and get it to the point

where it is today now before we dive in I want to let you know I have Linked In the description box below my Etsy quick start guide this is a free download for you if you're just starting out your Etsy shop or maybe you've already started but not seeing the sales and traction that you've wanted this is my master list of things that you'll need to pay attention to to get set up the right way and to bring in consistent sales so definitely click that link below to grab your guide after you finish watching this

video all right so I'm going to break this down as simply as possible it can feel a little intimidating but it doesn't need to so the Etsy search works in two phases the first phase is called query matching and the second phase is called ranking so like I mentioned before Etsy is a search engine which means that a shopper can go on and use the search bar to type in a word or a phrase for something they're looking for this is called their query the job of the Etsy algorithm in this first query matching phase

is to take that word or phrase that the Shopper typed in and then to scan all of the Etsy listings to First determine which of those listings are any match at all for the query The Shopper typed in so for instance if I type in bunny mom mug the Etsy algorithm is not going to find a listing for a green crochet sweater that has nothing to do with mugs and show that to me in the search results it's going to be left out because it's not a match for my query So within that first phase

it's Gathering all the listings that are some kind of match for the query that the Shopper typed in and then the second phase is ranking this is where it takes all of those listings it just gathered and then determines what order they should be ranked and shown to The Shopper in our goal as sellers is obviously to be shown on the first or second page of search results because most Shoppers are not going to go past the second page when they're searching for what they want to buy the higher we can get our listings ranking

the more they'll be discovered by Shoppers the more sales we should make now within the second phase of ranking the Etsy algorithm uses eight specific ranking factors to make this decision on which listings should be shown first so when we're specifically using SEO to optimize our listings we need to be aware of what these eight factors are so we can be creating our listings around these to best position oursel and give the algorithm a clue that hey my listing is really relevant for the Shopper rank me high so we're going to dive into what these

eight ranking factors are but we first have to have an understanding of exactly where in the listing we're placing keywords keywords are at the heart of what SEO is all about because that's the way the algorithm is going to be able to tell if our listing is a match for that Shopper we want to be plugging in specific relevant keywords that describe what our listing or product is about in five key areas on our listing these include the title the tag section the description category and attributes these five sections are the specific section of each

listing that the algorithm scans when looking for matching keyword phrases the closer the phrases that we have in our listing to what the Shopper typed in the closer a match to their query so this leads us into ranking Factor number one which is relevancy the algorithm wants to determine which listings are most relevant to that Shopper based on what they typed in if I have in my title and tags and description of my listing the exact wording match for what that Shopper typed in my listing is going to be considered more relevant cuz it's an

exact match than a listing that maybe is selling almost the same thing but they've worded their title or tags or description slightly differently so in this case using our example from before if a shopper typed in funny mom mug and that's the first exact phrase that I have in my title my listing is automatically going to have an edge in terms of relevancy then another listing that could be selling the exact same thing but maybe the first phrase in their title says funny mom coffee cup so when we're building out our listings we're being very

intentional with the exact keywords and keyword phrases that we're using a couple of notes Here is that number one when we're building out our title section specifically we want to use several different keyword phrases but we want to make sure our title is still easily readable by The Shopper we don't want it to be a jumbled mess of just a bunch of random words thrown together so we can use different phrases with separators using either commas dashes or lines to separate each phrase and make it more readable we also want to think about using a

variety of different terms that could be interchangeable instead of the same thing over and over so with our mug example instead of using five different phrases that end in the word mug I might switch that out for the term coffee cup or use other interchangeable words to try to reach a wider range of people that might be typing in different words I also want to make sure I'm including long tail keywords and not just using short tail short tail keywords are just one word that's very broad it might have a lot of high search volume

but it's also going to be a very competitive broad Niche the more targeted and specific I can describe what my product actually is and tap into sub niches with longtail specific keywords the more likely my listing is to be found by a shopper when they're closer to actually making a purchase because by that time they've done the first preliminary broad search and hopefully they've narrowed it down and they know specifically what they're looking for now and they're ready to buy so instead of just using broad short tail keywords like sweater t-shirt coat I would think

of multiple word phrases that would be longtail keyword phrases that more specifically describe my product so I might say personalized bride jacket instead of just jacket so you might be wondering well that's great but how do I find these highly searched keyword phrases the keyword phrases that people are actually going and searching on Etsy a great free way to start is to go on the Etsy search bar and start typing in a word that starts to describe what your product is you'll notice that Etsy has suggestive phrases that populate underneath as you're typing these are

phrases that Etsy is suggesting to you that you might want to type in because these are phrases that have recently consistently been searched so that's a great place to start but once you're ready to take it to the next level you can actually use a research tool that's built for this kind of research there are lots of great ones out there but the one I really love for this is sales Samurai so I'm here on sales Samurai and I'm using their Search tool to type in a phrase I'm thinking of for a product I might

want to offer I typed in leather keychain and now I can see all of the data specific to Etsy on that phrase leather keychain so it's giving me an estimated monthly search volume this is the estimated amount of times that specific phrase is searched on Etsy each month and for this phrase It's 4,683 I can also see the amount of competition so I have an idea of how many other sellers are using that phrase in their listings but the part I love most about this Search tool on salale Samurai is to come down here and

get other ideas for trending related keywords we've got one section here for etsy's most trending and a section here for Google's most trending so I can see both and these are going to be related to what I first typed in so I've got keychain leather blue leather keychain laser leather keychain leather strap keychain chain and the list goes on for each one I can again see the search volume the click-through rate and the competition numbers so I can identify which of these I might use in my listing again the title the tags and description sections

that would capture the most amount of Shoppers that are looking for something like this on Etsy I can also scroll down a little bit further and under this tag section again see related keyword phrases that people are using in listings for leather keychains in their tag section so here I've got custom keychain leather key fob gift for him gift for her and I can see lots of different great ideas here as well I can look through actual Etsy listings that are ranking for this keyword phrase to see what other sellers have used as their title

and I can even click here on the little I to see more details on a specific listing and see the exact tags that that listing is using as well so if I can identify which of these are bestselling listings that are doing really well I can take inspiration from this by looking at their title tags and description taking a look at their photos and all of the different information on this listing to get an idea of what's working for this Niche on Etsy Sal Samurai has so many different great tools that you can use as

an Etsy seller even Beyond just the keyword search function you can connect your own shop and have a shop audit you can actually create your listings through sales Samurai you can track your competition and specify specific shops you want to look at you can use their profit calculator to help you with pricing and even look at the holiday calendar so you never miss a promotion opportunity I love sales Samurai for this type of keyword research and think it's it's a great next step for serious Etsy sellers who want to do well with SEO and make

sure that you're plugging in the right keyword phrases into your listings and if you never tried it before I do have a link in the description box below that gives you a free 3-day trial and if you input the code kate2 when you sign up if you decide to use it beyond that 3-day trial that'll give you 20% off of your monthly subscription I want to thank sales Samurai for sponsoring this portion of today's video and I can't wait to see what you think of it if you try it out all right moving on to

the second ranking factor which is shop quality as he does actually give a ton of information on what is considered under this category but it's your overall shop so here we're not looking at specific listings we're looking at the feel and the professionalism and the quality of your overall shop they do specify that it's great to have a branded shop that looks cohesive and aesthetically pleasing making sure that you have things in place like a branded shop icon branded Aesthetics and making sure your about section is Thoroughly filled out now once you've got your shop

homepage looking professional in quality then we do need to look at specific listing quality which is ranking Factor number three the listing quality factor is looking at each specific listing and assigning it a quality score based on several things specifically Etsy does specify that to have a higher listing quality score you need to make sure that you're using multiple high quality photos on every single listing this means you should never have a listing with just one photo in your photo slots you should be using as many of those slots as possible to demonstrate different angles

and different details about your product Etsy also recently announced that shipping price is is now going to be factored into this as well and listings that offer a shipping price of $6 or less are going to be prioritized in the search results now I do need to note this is only for us domestic listings and it does exclude several different types of listings including digital products items that are being shipped from the US to a non us destination items that are shipped from outside of the US items that are priced over $35 that offer a

free shipping guarantee listings that use calculated shipping and listings that use a thirdparty app that update shipping prices like a print on demand provider all of those types of listings are excluded so this shipping Factor won't positively or negatively impact any of those types of listings but if you have a listing that doesn't fall into those excluded categories you're going to gain a higher ranking if you offer shipping for $6 or less or if you've turned on the free shipping guarantee for your shop another simple thing you can do to up your listing quality score

is make sure that each listing has a return policy this is a really simple and quick thing you can do in your settings and on each individual listing to make sure that buyers know if they can return the item if they need to and what your policy around that is and Etsy rewards listings and sellers that have this clearly specified with a higher listing quality score moving on to ranking Factor number four which is customer service quality Etsy is big on sellers offering great customer service to their customers and expects every seller in every shop

to follow their clearly laid out customer service standards playing into to your customer service score is number one your average review rating so if you're getting lots of high four and five star reviews from your customers it's going to positively impact your score here likewise if you're getting a lot of negative reviews it's going to negatively impact the score and bring it down Etsy also looks at your message response rate expecting sellers to respond to every new message within 48 hours now note here this is only for the first time someone messages you it's not

for every single time within the thread after that they're just looking you to send an initial response within 48 hours and this doesn't include any messages you mark a Spam or any messages from the Etsy team themselves the third Factor playing into your customer service quality score is your case rate from the past 3 months if you've had any cases against you that have resulted in a refund being taken from your account that's going to negatively impact your customer service quality score so you want to do everything you can with Shoppers who maybe are not

pleased with their purchase or reaching out with a problem to settle that between you so they don't actually file an official case against your shop now Etsy has specified that this only applies to cases of over $250 that have actually resulted in a refund being taken from your account so if you had a case that didn't result in that then you're in the clear and it also doesn't apply if you meet etsy's purchase protection coverage but again I would just highly encourage you to work back and forth with your customers who reach out to you

and a really professional way that could bring a win-win situation to both of you without an official case ever needing to be involved and the last Factor here that plays into your customer service quality score is going to be ontime shipping and tracking this pretty much speaks for itself you want to make sure to set accurate turnaround times and processing times on your listing so your buyers have an accurate idea of when their items going to be shipped to them and you need to follow through with whatever you've promised so if you're not able to

meet things in the time that you promised you likely need to extend your processing time so that you can actually be meeting this and have all of your orders going out on time now one thing to note here is that the star seller badge is a great thing to have as a seller on Etsy it speaks volumes to customers when it comes to instilling trust in your brand but it doesn't directly affect ranking with the Etsy algorithm so definitely try to do your best to get that Etsy star seller badge if you can but don't

sweat it if a month comes and something's a little off and you miss the star seller for that month it's not going to directly affect your search rankings okay moving along to ranking Factor number five which is translations and language this one's pretty simple and straightforward it just means that whatever language you started with and set up your shop initially with should be the same language that you're using in your titles tags and description for your listings knowing that Etsy will automatically translate for you if there's a shopper that's searching in a different language to

show your listing to that Shopper if it's a relevant match for them all right next up we've got your listing engagement rate this is likely one of the most important of these ranking factors because we're talking about engagement and conversion how many times someone sees an impression of your listing decides to actually click on it and decides to follow through in and actually purchase it your conversion rate comes from the amount of Shoppers who click on and engage with your listing versus the amount that actually follow through with the purchase the more you can be

optimizing your listings for high conversion the better this score is going to be and the higher your listings are going to rank so Etsy gives a lot of different details about how to create high converting listings some of the most important being your thumbnail image your price point and offering special deals or discounts so when we're talking about your thumbnail image this is the first of your photos in your photo slot it's the image that buyers are going to see on the search results page with all of the other listings when they've searched and they're

looking through the results you want to make sure that your thumbnail image is of utmost quality and is Click worthy so that your listing is the one that gets the click compared to all the other listings that are showing around it as he specifies their suggestion for your thumbnail image is for it to be 2,000 pixels on the shortest side and a minimum resolution of 72 PPI this is going to ensure that it's the right size and it's the right resolution to make it high quality they also say you should never use a collage as

your thumbnail image and you should never use a thumbnail image with a your text here product it should be an actual image of your actual product and if it's something personalizable instead of saying your text here you'll want to put an example of what that actual product could look like as a finished end product you'll also want to make sure that your price point is competitive enough to be appealing to buyers while still being in a healthy range that gives you profit to keep there are lots of different ideas and methods on how to come

up with pricing for before selling products online but one tool I love to use is sales Samurai profit calculator you can go on there and they already have the Etsy percentages and fees built in so you can play around with the numbers and see what your profit would be if you set it at a certain price point the more appealing and competitive your price point is obviously the more likely it is to convert into a sale and then you also want to consider giving special offers or discounts this is going to make your already quality

listing even that much more irresistible from time to time if you can offer seasonal discount accounts special discount codes for your audience or really any type of special offer this is going to give you the edge and hopefully push those customers over to purchase your listing instead of a similar one that they might have been considering all right next up we're talking about recency this ranking factor is specifically looking at how recently a listing was created or renewed newly published listings get a small temporary boost in the search results so that Etsy can more quickly

determine what listing quality score to assign to it similarly recently renewed listings get a temporary boost a little bit smaller than a brand new listing but still a small temporary boost so this is one of the ranking factors that the algorithm uses now Etsy does note that this is not enough of a boost to be constantly renewing and trying to come up with new listings just for the sake of recency your time and effort are going to be much better spent on optimizing in some of these other ways for clickability and conversion and moving on

to our next ranking factor which is shoer habits Etsy uses context specific ranking technology to be able to tell what a specific person who shopping has been interested in in the past what they've searched for what they've purchased in the past so that they can use that context and show them the listings that they're most likely to buy so because of this technology what you see in your search results might be completely different than what I see or what someone else sees so looking for your own listings in your search results is not really a

great way to really see where it's ranking because it's using context around what you've been interested in in the past a better way to tell is to look at your Etsy analytics on your dashboard and look at the data so those are the eight ranking factors those are the factors that the Etsy algorithm is going to be using in determining how high your listings should show up in the search now I mentioned at the beginning I've got a few Pro tips for you in addition to those basics of knowing how SEO works on Etsy a

few things you can keep in mind to really optimize well and give your listings the best chance of meeting the query matching and ranking high pro tip number one is to frontload your titles with primary keyword phrases this means when you're doing your keyword research you're going to select one or two of those longer tail keyword phrases to be your primary focus keywords these are the top two keyword phrases you really want to rank for then you're going to frontload your title with those which means that you're going to put them in the very beginning

of your title when you're filling out that section to give those two primary keywords the utmost focus and priority in your title this comes especially into play with Google results when people are searching on Google your listing could very well come up in the search results but the whole title is not going to show only the first first few characters are going to show so you want to make sure that your most important keyword phrases that you want to rank for are there in the very beginning Pro tip number two is to Think Like Your

Shopper a lot of times we business owners can get a little bit into the weeds when we're thinking of how to describe our product when our Shopper might not even be describing it the same way I might think of a product I have as an alphabet printable which I could use as a keyword but maybe my shopper is typing in something like teacher gift you want to make sure that whatever keywords you're using would actually be something that your ideal Shopper would be typing in and pro tip number three is to use backlinks this is

specifically thinking of optimizing for Google search which could actually be as important as optimizing for Etsy search but the Google algorithm actually really likes and favors pages that have backlinks pointing back to them from other quality websites and Pages simply put this just means that if my listing has other people linking to it maybe it's linked from a person's blog or from a social media account the more links that are out there in the online space pointing back to my listing the more that's showing the Google algorithm hey this is a quality page people are

liking this people are linking to it let's show it to more people so there are lots of different methods you can go about to get people to link to your page and to refer people back to you but one easy free organic way to start doing this is to reach out to influencers to other business owners even to family and friends and ask them to refer people back to your page by adding your listing links to their blog to their website to their social media all of those back links are going to help boost your

listing with the Google algorithm so there you go friend I hope that was helpful for you in optimizing for the ety search and the Google search using best practices with SEO definitely comment down below if you have any questions I'd love to clarify if you need any help in this area and don't forget to click the links in the description box below to try out S Samurai for free and to grab your free Etsy quick start guide happy selling I don't know yet I'll some and I'm dying tell you