The Goblin has audited a great many Etsy shops, and he has audited them at a particular point in their life: the moment when their listings have stopped ranking. The shop owner writes to me, frequently in a state of mild despair. Two years ago this exact listing was on page one. Now it is on page seven. I have changed nothing. Etsy will not tell me why.
Etsy will not tell you why. Etsy will, in fact, tell you the opposite of why, in a help article that has been updated forty times in three years and now contradicts itself in approximately seventy places. So let us not ask Etsy. Let us, instead, perform an autopsy.
The first thing I check: did the listing change, or did the world change?
Most shop owners are sure their listing has not changed. They are usually wrong about this in small ways — they uploaded a new photograph in February, they edited a typo in the description in March — but they are correct in the broad sense. The listing is roughly what it was.
The world, however, almost certainly has changed. Five new shops have entered the same category. One of them has hired a person who knows about SEO. The search term you used to rank for has shifted in meaning slightly. The seasonality of buyer behaviour has done its annual thing. Etsy has, quietly, adjusted its algorithm three times.
The first question of the autopsy is therefore: has the position changed relative to the field, or absolute? If your listing is at position 47 and there are now 200 competitors instead of 50, you are doing fine; you are simply in a more crowded room. If your listing is at position 47 and there are still 50 competitors, the listing itself is the problem.
The second thing I check: the tags.
Etsy gives you thirteen tags per listing. This is not a generous offer; it is a strict allocation. Most shops use them poorly.
The two common errors:
- Single-word tags. “Necklace.” “Gold.” “Gift.” You are competing with literally millions of listings. The Etsy algorithm prefers multi-word phrases that match how people actually search. “Dainty gold necklace,” “minimalist gift for sister,” “layering necklace gold.”
- Duplicate tags. “Necklace,” “gold necklace,” “gold chain necklace,” “dainty necklace,” “chain necklace” — five variations of the same phrase, all wasted. You have thirteen tags. Use them on thirteen different ideas.
The Goblin’s rule: each tag should be two to four words long, and no two tags should share more than one significant word. If you can hand me thirteen tags that meet this rule, you are in the top quartile of Etsy sellers, in my experience, and yes, the Goblin keeps count.
The third thing I check: the title.
Etsy gives you 140 characters in a title. Use them. A common failure mode: titles like “Gold necklace handmade.” Twenty-six characters. The remaining 114 are doing nothing. Meanwhile, the listings ranking above you have titles like “Dainty gold necklace, layering chain, minimalist jewellery, gift for her, sister birthday gift, handmade in UK” — 110 characters, each of them earning Etsy a reason to surface the listing.
The rule is not use all 140. The rule is use as many as you can without the title sounding like a list. Read it aloud. If it scans as something a person might say to describe their product, you are fine. If it scans as the contents of a search bar, you have gone too far.
The fourth thing I check: the photographs.
Etsy will not tell you that the first photograph is part of its ranking signal, but it is. The proxy is clicks. Listings that get more clicks rank higher; clicks are driven, far more than anyone admits, by the thumbnail.
The Goblin’s shorthand: if the first photograph would survive being shrunk to a one-inch square on a phone screen, it is a good thumbnail. If not — if the product is small in the frame, if there is a lot of negative space, if the lighting is dim, if there are five products competing for attention — the listing will lose to better thumbnails regardless of how good the rest of the page is.
The fifth thing I check: the SEO-by-cargo-cult.
This is the most painful part of the autopsy, because it is usually the shop owner’s fault and they will not like to hear it. Two years ago someone wrote a blog post saying “Etsy SEO is all about putting keywords in your title and tags.” The shop owner read this, did it, and ranked. Then Etsy updated its algorithm to penalise listings that read like keyword soup. The shop owner did not update their approach, because nobody told them to, and now they are sliding down the results page despite doing exactly what worked two years ago.
This is the cargo-cult problem of SEO: the prayer-rug is rolled out years after the airfield has moved. The Goblin can usually identify a cargo-cult listing in fifteen seconds. The fix is to delete the keyword-stuffed bits and rewrite in plain English. It feels, to the shop owner, like backwards motion. It is not. It is the correction.
Etsy SEO is not a black box; it is simply a box whose contents are renegotiated every few months without telling you. The autopsy reveals which of the contents have shifted, and the fix is usually a careful rewrite rather than a wholesale change.
If your Etsy listings have stopped ranking and you would like an audit that goes deeper than this, the Goblin is, as ever, available for hire. He works in pounds sterling for sentimental reasons but accepts your dollars.
— The Goblin, who has read every Etsy SEO thread, so you do not have to.