Today is a long one, but so worth it. We are going to be talking about the beginners' guide to the Etsy algorithm. No doubt you’ve seen the click bait YouTube videos about how to be #1 on page 1 or get ranked fast... 

I'm just going to straight up talk to you about how the algorithm works in the hope you can take this away and plug it into your business and, into your mindset.  

A lot of the info I’m going to be sharing today is directly from the horse's mouth ... or Etsy. So, there’s no cool new ‘SEO hacks’ or ‘get rich quick’ schemes. I’ve tried that and it doesn’t work. 

Unlike having your own website or selling from a platform such as Facebook or Instagram, Etsy already has a huge, loyal fan base of customers who are wanting to buy from you. And this is one of the best things about Etsy. 

Etsy is spending millions, billions even to bring the right, warm customers to their platform. And those people are looking for something unique. They are looking for handmade goods. 

It's like plonking your business in the middle of the world's busiest craft fair. You are there, you have your product, your pricing's right, your photos are right. Everything is good. Hopefully, fingers crossed and if it's not, I can certainly help you with that.   

And saying, hey, I'm open for business and getting a flood of people waiting to be served. Imagine a massive craft fair that will refund you if things don't go right, you can always be in contact with the shop, browse their products, see their offers and reviews. 

Because of this Etsy are a trusted household name. They have that know, like and trust factor. 

If can be difficult for me, when people say, right, I have an Etsy shop, it's going well, and I want to open my own website. A lot of the time, I think, that's a really good idea.  

But only if you already have a large e-mail list and social media following. Because if you don't, driving your own traffic is going to be difficult and expensive.  

Whether that's monetarily expensive such as Facebook ads, sponsorships, influencers. Or whether it's time expensive AKA you having to blog 2-3 times a week, writing emails out, etc.  

This is where Etsy really wins, because they already have that loyal fan base.  

There are 7.3 million Etsy shops, which might make you go eeekkk...that's a lot. That number has fallen since 2021 and that figure includes shops that are not active. 

I would hazard a guess to say probably a good 70% of them are people who opened a shop and thought “Yeah, I'm going to add some things to it. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that.” And I never actually get there. 

There are also 95 million buyers...a huge difference. Even if you spread the buyers evenly between the 7.3 million Etsy shops every single month, you would still get a fair number of sales.  

And as we know, they're not split because of the Etsy algorithm. 

Don’t forget Etsy wants you to make sales because it gets its fees. And Etsy wants the customer to get exactly what they want and have a pleasant experience, so they keep coming back to the platform. Because when you make sales, Etsy makes money.  

Which is why they have the purchase protection programme, why they really put reviews front and centre and why they are always talking about the star seller. 

The greater experience as a person has when buying, the chances are they will come back and spend more money with you and other small business owners as well. Which is why are Etsy showing you know similar items when people are looking at your items - I scratch your back, you scratch mine.  

The clock 

If you are playing around with your listings and you're changing SEO, titles, tags and description doesn’t give your listing time to rank within Etsy's algorithm. 

In case you didn't know, it takes between 60 and 90 days for your listing to be indexed and for your changes to come into fruition. If you keep changing your titles and tags, you’re never going to see the results of those changes because the clock keeps getting reset. 

Etsy wants to see how people interact with your listing and depending upon what you’re selling it can take a different amount of time to settle. Someone selling a gold heart necklace that gets thousands of views every day may settle within the algorithm quicker than someone selling a recycled kimono lamp shade that might get two or three views every month. 

When someone searches in the Etsy search bar, two things happen simultaneously. 

Query matching 

#1, is query matching. Etsy will look at the titles, tags, descriptions, categories, attributes and create a nice little list in the backend of Etsy. This list must match the keywords your customer has types in the search box.  

If someone is typing in silver elephant bracelet, Etsy is going to its database looking at all the info Etsy sellers, like you, have put in the titles, tags, descriptions, categories, attributes, alt text, etc. They’ll use this to create a list to match what your customer has searched. 

Can you imagine if the search stopped there? There was no sorting, there was no ranking. People would get very bored very quickly. There would be a lot of listings that's not relevant to their search because often list their items wrong.  

So, if a shop selling a silver elephant bracelet also describes it as a silver elephant necklace or a silver elephant ring, in the hopes that they will get ranked and seen they’re not giving customers what they want. 

It really shows why it's important to make sure things your keywords, titles, tags and attributes are relevant to what you sell.  

Ranking 

#2 is ranking, this is where we are sorting those search results.  

Once Etsy have gathered all the listings that match from that search silver elephant bracelet. They use the seven ranking factors to sort the listing, basically trying to rank them by what has sold the best before, what is the customer most likely to buy, what shop has got good reviews?  

The 7 ranking factors 

There are 7 main factors to Etsy's algorithm...Etsy tells you the ins and outs of some, but not all. So, if someone says to you, I am an Etsy SEO expert, I have the inside scoop run away because they don't only a very few select people on the planet know. 

All the ranking and sorting factors are just as important as one another.  

Imagine 7 floaties ... the rubber rings you get in pools. They’re all holding up a car within a within a pool. If one starts to deflate, the whole car might sink...this is how the Etsy algorithm works.  

As well is that there is no such thing as page one anymore, because page one is different for everybody depending on where you live, your search history, and so much more. 

Back in 2015, page one was a thing, if you ranked on page one, you ranked on page one for most people. However, that is not the case anymore. If you ever hear someone, say I'm going to help you rank higher, they're not necessarily talking about being on page one because page one is different for everybody.  

1. Relevancy 
2. Listing quality score 
3. Recency 
4. Customer and market experience score 
5. Postage price 
6. Translations and language 
7. Shopper habits 

BOSS! Do you want to make more sales on Etsy? Then you need to increase your conversion rate! DON'T PANIC! I'm going to explain exactly how to do that in my FREE 90 minute masterclass - The 3 Step System To Skyrocket Your Etsy Conversion Rate 🙌🏻

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Relevancy 

How relevant is your listing to what the buyer typed in the search? 

People who are looking for silver elephant bracelets, don't want to see anything else because they have an image in their mind, they know what they want. You must think about how you shop, and how you want your shopping experience to be. 

If you're just browsing, that's very different because you might not know what you want to buy. And that is where you might type in elephant gift or gift for her or bracelet for her or something. A bit more generic.  

If you are shopping with intent and you know exactly what you want to buy, and you’ll search differently. This is why you need to do key word research – to find out exactly what people are searching for and what key word phrases they use. 

When you have found a keyword phrase that works well, use the exact phrase... don't split it up.  

This is where some people get tripped up. Some so called ‘experts will tell you not to repeat words, which is good unless you’ve found 2 key word phrases that work well, and they have a repeating word.... use that word. 

For example, one that's silver elephant bracelet and one that is 925 silver lucky elephant bracelet and you have researched these two phrases, they are phrases that are getting a very high search volume, they don't have a lot of competition and they are overall doing well. Use them both, exact matches always rank better.  

Listing quality score  

Etsy will look at clues as to what people might like depending on your customers shopping habits, how your listing has historically performed, reviews and conversion rates are important, quick delivery, geographical location also comes into play.  

New shops in this do have a neutral score, so don't be disheartened. When you are brand new, it might take 60 to 90 days before your listings even start to get seen... its normal. 

That means that your listing quality score is starting to go up, which is what we want. You might see at times people with bad SEO or rubbish photos performing well...that’s because of their listing quality score. 

This also answers why you will not sell this one listing for weeks, months, maybe even years, and then suddenly, it's like BOOM. You get a sale and then a review and then within two weeks you get two more sales and then two more reviews. And then within a month you get 5 sales. All this is giving Etsy a thumbs up saying you should be ranked higher. 

Recency 

If your listing is new, you’ve made no sales and have no reviews you might be thinking well, how do I build my list and quality score?  

Don’t panic, Etsy helps new shops and new listings out by implementing something called recency. Listings get a very small boost in search so that Etsy can see how shoppers react to it because at the end of the day we don't want new listings to get buried by the ones with a higher listing quality score, right?  

This is where the 60 to 90 day clock really comes into play. 

So really when you think about it for new listings, recency then gets overtaken by listing quality score once the newness wears off.  

Customer and marketplace experience score 

Etsy doesn't want the negative vibes of a scorned customer, that's why your shop has a secret score that very few people on the planet knows how it works. 

Great reviews are paramount, Etsy take an average score from last 12 months. 

A completed about section and shop policies are all things that Etsy have said help, you don't want recent cases, copyright strikes or intellectual property notices. Those are all things that go against you. 

Postage price 

Research has always shown that buyers are more likely to buy something with free postage or a low postage cost. If US free shipping guarantee is turned on you might find that you have higher search rankings. Items with free shipping are also shown to convert better, helping your listing quality score eventually too.  

My general recommendation is if your postage price is under £10 add the cost into your price and charge free postage.  

Language and translations 

Your main language should be the one that you list your items in. You can get a slight boost by translating listings yourself for Etsy, because these translations will basically override the automated Etsy ones, which are not very good.  

Shopper habits 

Have you ever wondered why you click on one ad for Nike shoes and then you start to see them everywhere? It's not magic. It's a common cookie tracker that's been placed on your browser that checks what you look at, shows you personalised ads and items that you're more likely to click on based on what you've shown interest in previously.  

More specifically for Etsy, they use specific ranking, or CSR technology. It’s basically a nifty bit of AI kit that serves up what you like today based on what you showed interest in yesterday.  

If you are clicking on one shop, it's going to show you more products that are similar.  

So that has been the beginner's guide to the algorithm, and hopefully has really opened your eyes to how it all works. 

Don't obsess over controlling all these things, because at the end of the day, if you are trying to control everything, you're going to drive yourself insane. If it’s not something you know, for example the language or translation, if you don't speak French then it's not worth fretting over because you can't speak French...it is what it is. 

Focus instead on the things that you can control like listing quality score, relevancy, customer and market experience score, etc.  

If I was to say there were three to focus on as soon as you can, I would say relevancy, your list and quality score and your customer and marketplace experience score... and postage price because that's an easy fix. 

I really hope that this blog has helped you get into the Etsy algorithm, how it all works and how you can start, in real time to implement this within your own business. It's not all about keywords, there's so much more that goes on behind the scenes. 

Another little tip is to set your listings to manually renew when they expire, it gives you a chance to go through them and edit the keywords, edit the photos, the attributes, edit the tags into something that's going to work a little bit harder for me.  

Keep crafting and stay inspired because the world really does need those special creations that only you can make. 

 Love Steph xox

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