Whether you’re a new seller or already have an established store on Etsy, your Etsy titles and tags are a major game changer when it comes to traffic and sales. By using the right keywords in your products’ titles and tags, your listings will get found in Etsy search more easily by potential customers. Thus, generating more sales and exposure for your shop. Check out our 3 step-by-step guide on How to Write Your Etsy Titles and Tags!

How do titles and tags work? And why are they so important?

In order to understand how titles and tags work, you need to put yourself in the shoes of a potential buyer/ online shopper. We all do online shopping sometimes. And most of the time we have an idea of what we want to buy. So, we start searching for it online, and usually things go like in the infographic below:

Let’s say today we want to buy a cute ceramic mug for a friend’s birthday. With this in mind, we turn to Etsy, Amazon, or Google shopping, and we type in the words “ceramic mug” and wait to see what results come up.

Then, we start adding attributes, to get results that are a closer match to what we have in mind. For example, we think a polka-dot ceramic mug might be cute. And maybe we can find one that is ethically-produced, by a small business. And what if the mug was personalized? With a cute birthday message for your dear friend.

So let’s review the words we’re going to use to search for this product:

“ceramic mug”, “polka-dot ceramic mug”, “personalized ceramic mug” or “custom ceramic mug”, “handmade”, “environmentally-friendly”, “ethically sourced mug”, “personalized birthday mug”, “birthday gift”, etc.

Now let’s say you are a seller on Etsy, and you are selling exactly that!

Make up the title and 13 tags for your ceramic mug based on the exact search terms we have used above. And your product will definitely get found by the target customer.

This is how titles and tags work, and this is what SEO-optimization (search engine optimization) is. Essentially, it’s a way align your product titles, tags, and description, with the exact words your target/potential customers will use in search engines to look for that specific item.

In this way, your product will get found by the right people. There is no doubt about it.

So, let’s break this down into 3 simple steps you can use to create great titles and tags, even as a beginner.

How to write your Etsy product titles and tags in 3 simple steps

In order for you to understand these steps more easily, we will use a product example. Since jewelry is a major niche on Etsy, we will use the clay earrings in the photo below for our example of titles and tags.

Photo by Gabrielle Henderson

Step 1. Look at your product and establish exactly what it is

Many people make the mistake of cramming a lot of product attributes in the title, before writing what the product actually is. Some omit writing what the product is altogether, choosing to write other things like “birthday gift” or “boho jewelry”, etc.

But let’s not forget the essential: these are clay earrings. These two words need to show up in the first 4 words of the title!

Step 2. Hands-on product attributes

After we made sure we established what our product is and added the words to the title, we start looking for hands-on attributes. This means, we look at the attributes that are obvious for almost anyone looking at the product photo.

Colors, materials, shapes, maybe sizes. In the case of our clay earrings, we have attributes like: pink and blue, clay, handmade, tassels.

With these 2 steps, you can create the first and most important part of your product title. Here are 3 examples with the keywords we have so far:

“Pink and Blue Clay Earrings, Handmade Clay Earrings with Tassels”

“Handmade Clay Earrings with Tassels, Pink and Blue Earrings”

“Clay Earrings with Tassels, Handmade Pink and Blue Earrings”

All good, all containing essential information about your product.

Step 3. Find other keywords that may describe your product well. Do some competition research.

When you look at these earrings, what else comes to mind? Here are some questions to help you find other relevant product attributes:

• What’s a good occasion/celebration to wear this item or to offer it a gift? – You could wear them at a party, or a festival. You can offer them as a gift for a Birthday, Sweet 16 party, Valentine’s Day or Galantine’s Day better yet.
• What type of item is this? Hanging earrings, large, colorful earrings, etc.
• Who would you give this item as a gift to? They would make a great gift for your best friend, sister, roommate, daughter, etc.

Now if we look at the words we have used to answer to all of these questions, you can easily create your full Etsy title and 13 tags.

But don’t forget that the titles cannot exceed 140 characters on Etsy, and each tag 21 characters. Try to use all 13 tags to best describe your product. Here is an example of an SEO-optimized title and tags that you could use for these beautiful clay earrings:

Now apply this method to your Etsy products.

If you’re listing your first products on Etsy, this is an easy 3 step guide to help you create SEO-optimized product tiles and tags. And if you’re already a seller on Etsy for some time but your sales volume is not as high as it used to be, you can use this method to refresh some of your Etsy listings.

Keep in mind that if you change the title and tags for a product that’s already been listed on Etsy for some time, it will take a couple of weeks for the re-indexation to take place. The best traffic comparison can be done after 30 days. That’s how long it takes for the Etsy algorithm to start ranking your products for the new keywords.

All done with the titles and tags? Learn how to write an optimized Etsy product description!

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