Okay, a lot of Etsy sellers have heard newer advice about very short titles and immediately probably thought, “Do I need to go and change everything?”

Worse still, the whole Etsy AI title thing has caused thousands of handmade business owners to change their titles overnight, which has effectively reset the algorithmic clock.

And to be honest with you, the AI has not really suggested titles that do anything, okay?

So all of this in this video is based off of Etsy’s newer guidance around buyer-led, clearer, friendlier titles, not random guru advice, right?

The answer is not going to be, “Make every single title tiny.”
But it’s also not going to be keyword stuffing, so it’s keyword soup.

Today is about understanding what to change, what not to panic-change, and how to make titles easier for buyers, but also for Etsy to understand as well.

Why your Etsy title matters

So let’s talk about why Etsy titles are so important, and why there are so many videos and so much advice, bits and snippets and hacks and tips and tricks out there about your Etsy titles.

Your title is one of the very first clues that not only buyers get about your product, but also what Etsy, what the algorithm, gets about your product.

What beginners do is that they write titles for the search bot rather than for actual buyers.
That’s a very, very common beginner mistake.

And what this does is that a messy title can actually make a whole product look really confusing.

If the title is really hard to scan, the buyer may not instantly understand:

• What the item is

• Who it’s for

• Why it’s relevant to them

Etsy’s newer title guidance pretty well points sellers towards clearer and more natural titles that put the most important details first.

Basically, you want to front-load the most important stuff in your first third of your title.

Here’s a simple example.

“Personalised silver birthstone necklace” is easier to understand than five different keyword-soup versions of:

“Gift for her, birthday, necklace gift, birthday jewellery, custom present,” etc.

What has actually changed?

So let’s now actually talk about what has actually changed.

Etsy has basically been encouraging sellers to essentially write titles that are clearer, easier to scan and a lot more helpful for buyers.

This does not mean that keywords no longer matter. It means that the title pretty well does not have to carry the entire SEO job by itself.

Etsy actually uses other clues and cues, such as:

• Tags

• Attributes

• Categories

• Photos

• Descriptions

• Reviews

To essentially understand what a listing is.

And what beginners often do is that they panic and think, “I need longer titles because I don’t want to delete all of my important words and tags.”

That is not the point.

The better aim is:

• Front-load your important words and phrases in the first third of your title.

• Don’t repeat words and phrases over and over again.

• Make sure that the title is clear for buyers to understand.

Wondering why your Etsy listings aren't selling?

I've put together a free 72-page guide to help you figure out what's actually stopping the sales and what to do about it.

✅ Find out why people aren't buying

✅ See what needs fixing first

✅ Get a clear plan instead of guessing

GET THE FREE GUIDE →

What I would change first

So with your Etsy titles, if you are looking to make them shorter, and you’re looking at Etsy’s new advice and you’re thinking, “I need to do something,” here is what I would be changing first.

Do not go into your shop and rewrite every single title in one chaotic afternoon - you don’t want to be doing that.

Instead, start with one listing.

Now, a little side note here... I don’t want you to change anything on listings that are already getting views and sales, because what that will do is that will reset things, algorithmically speaking.

So instead, I want you to find a listing that gets views and sales, make a copy of it, and then I want you to do the following.

Read the title out loud

Read the title out loud and ask yourself: “Would a buyer understand exactly what this is in two seconds or less?”

Put the main keyword phrase at the beginning

Put the main keyword phrase at the beginning, okay?

So if it is a “silver elephant birthstone necklace”, and that’s your keyword phrase that you’ve researched and that you want to use, front-load that in the first third of your title.

Remove repeated phrases

Remove repeated phrases that are pretty well saying the same thing.

How I find keyword phrases

One caveat here is that when I said about researched keyword phrases, you can use eRank, you can use the Etsy search bar, you can use Google, you can use Keywords Everywhere, the Google Chrome plugin (you can use any tool that you like)!

I personally really like using the Etsy search bar.
I really like using Google, and I really like using Pinterest.

Those are my three best free keyword SEO tools to kind of look at.

Essentially, what you are looking for is a phrase that real buyers type in to basically find or search what you sell - that’s all you are doing.

So what I don’t want you to do is I don’t want you to go, “Silver elephant necklace” and that just be your title.

You kind of don’t want it to be that short, but you also don’t want it to be keyword soup where you’re just putting the same “necklace, necklace, necklace” over and over and over again.

How I think about the space in your title

Now, that being said, my personal opinion is that if Etsy is giving us X amount of title space, I am going to want to use as much of that as I possibly can do without keyword stuffing.

So if you’ve got your main keyword phrase, you might have one phrase, you might have a couple of phrases.

Now, what I mean by phrase is basically you have your title, and you have phrase one, comma.
You have phrase two, comma. And you have phrase three, comma.

So when I say to front-load your most important phrases in your first third, I’m specifically talking about phrase one if it’s quite short, and phrase two if it’s quite short as well.
Or it might be phrase one if that’s a fairly long one.

Think about why someone would buy the product

Then I want you to think about other reasons, occasions or uses, or reasons why someone would buy your product...

So you might have a silver elephant birthstone necklace.

However:

• Could that be a really good travelling gift?

• Could that be a really good elephant-lover gift?

• Could that be a really good birthstone gift?

Now, these are just things that I’m pulling off the top of my head, but you see where I’m going with this...

You don’t just want to have phrase one and phrase two describe what the item is, and then waffle off into some more, like, jargony words.

No, you actually want to use words and phrases that your buyer would search in the Etsy search bar to actually find what it is that you are selling.

Putting your keyword phrases together

Just to recap here, I want you to think of your listings, in terms of SEO and in terms of titles and tags, as a series of long-tail keyword phrases that your buyer will basically go to the Etsy search bar and they will type in to find what your product is.

That’s the simplest way to think about this.

And simply, your title is maybe three to five of those keyword phrases (depending on how long they are) bundled together - that is simply what your title is.

Now, I’m not saying your title has to be espically long or keyword-stuffed.

What I’m saying is - hey, if you have three to five shortish phrases that you know your target buyer types into the Etsy search bar, all you’re literally doing is formulating those to create a title that’s buyer-friendly, but also keyword-engine-friendly as well.

Etsy titles should be clear enough for buyers to understand quickly.

Shorter titles does not mean you should strip them of all useful keywords, and that is pretty well what the Etsy AI was kind of doing for a minute there.

Test what works for your shop

The next best step is to just use one listing that’s doing well, make a copy and make the changes (the title changes) to that copy.

The good thing about that is that you can then A/B test it, which means you yourself can gather data as to whether shorter titles work for your shop, for your target market, or whether they don’t.

At the end of the day, this is just guidance from Etsy.

You actually want to be testing this yourself, because you might actually find that, “Hey, you know what? My longer-titled listings actually do better.”

And it’s a real 50/50... Some people say the shorter titles do better - other people say the longer titles do better.

So rather than carrying on watching YouTube videos, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, I would do yourself a favour and actually just A/B test it yourself... That’s the quickest way to find out.

Titles are only part of the picture

Titles are only part of why a listing might not be working.

For everything else, I’d highly recommend you to go and grab yourself a free copy of this...

It is my 72-page booklet - and by the way, 72 pages, it’s not scary! It’s very visual.
There’s drawings, there’s diagrams, there’s every mortal thing that you could ever need in here.

It is called Why Your Etsy Listings Aren’t Selling Yet and What to Do About It.