Etsy SEO: the ranking formula, keyword layering, and writing the title, tags and description

This whole document is from the SEO class of Sir Zakria Afzal's Etsy course on YouTube, a separate course from the iSkills Etsy module.

What SEO is

• SEO means Search Engine Optimization.
• A search engine is any place where we search and get results. Its optimization, its correction, is what we do, so that it gives us authority and ranking.¹

The Etsy ranking formula

Visibility + Clicks + Sales = Higher Ranking

Together these make a high ranking.¹

• SEO is not everything. The real thing is ranking. Very often you put good keywords in and the video or post still does not go viral.
• Orders always come on the first page. We have to bring our product to the first page.
• If Etsy shows a product to 100 people and 80 of them click one of them, that one ranks and its ranking goes up. This is called CTR.
• In the same way, if one listing gets 10 orders and the others get 1 each, Etsy takes the one with more orders upwards.
• SEO ranks what people buy and takes it upwards. The most important thing is the sale.¹

Keyword layering

Select one keyword whose competition is low and that you can work on, such as "kaws wall art". Search it on eRank, and you will see different keywords.¹

The most important thing for SEO is keyword layering: write the low competition keyword first, then the mid competition one, then the high competition one.¹

Using these keywords, you move from low competition towards high competition.¹

The parts of SEO

• Title
• Description
• Tags
• Attributes¹

The title plays the main role in SEO. Write high search volume keywords in it: if the title is good and has high search volume keywords, the sale will come.¹

Building the title, tags and description

1. Search your main keyword on Etsy and add its top 10 listings to Compare listing.
2. Click Show all tags and copy all their tags. Give them to ChatGPT and tell it these are your competitors' tags.
3. Copy all their titles the same way, and tell it these are your competitors' titles.
4. Ask it for 13 tags that the majority used, giving priority to the most used ones first, then the less used.
5. For the title, change nothing inside it: just write the keywords that are repeated most in the titles. One important thing: your own keyword (in this example "kaws wall art") must be used, and at the start of the title.
6. Take the competitors' descriptions directly from Etsy, give them to ChatGPT, and ask it for a description for you, and to tell you where you have to make changes.¹

Never use anything in the title that you are not providing.¹

Now the title, tags and description for SEO are ready.¹

Why keep the same niche

• If we keep the niche the same, then even if we are not on the first page, our listing can show in the related fields of the listing that is on the first page. Through the tags, we can come in under the high listings.
• Whatever a person searches for, Etsy then shows them things related to it.
• So if someone does not like one of our listings, Etsy may show them our other listings because of cookies.¹

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Footnotes

1. SEO class of Sir Zakria Afzal's Etsy course on YouTube, notes taken by the record's owner. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹²