[0:00]The best SEO strategy for 2026 has nothing to do with just stuffing random keywords or buying more tools. If your Etsy listings are stuck on page 55, it is not because you just need better SEO. It's because you're probably doing SEO tactics on SC from 2019 and then just sat there wondering why Etsy's not pushing you forward when the platform has changed significantly over the last few years. So, in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how to do your SEO, optimized for 2026, so that by the end of the video, you can write a killer title and 13 tags to get more views on your listings. And this is the exact same way that I do it, guys, on my personal Etsy shops that has resulted in a lot of traffic coming organically from Etsy. So, let's get into it. We're going to start with pillar one, and this is the truth about Etsy SEO. So, I don't want any of you guys to start getting confused by this, okay? SEO doesn't push your listings, it just tells Etsy and tells shoppers what your listing is. You will only be ranked properly on Etsy when somebody both finds your listing, clicks on your listing, and buys your listing. And that is why, although SEO is very important, and you do need to get it right to be able to stand a chance of showing up in searches, it is by no means the full equation, and I just want to get that out there right from the start. Having optimized images, fully optimized listing, having a decent product at the start, that is all still extremely important. SEO is not a silver bullet, but it is definitely an essential part of the process that you need to get right. As I said, always remember, guys, go back to my free pillar system: get seen, get clicked, get bought. Getting seen is a massive part, and that's where SEO and the targeting of the product really comes in, and that's the section of the system that we're going to be covering in detail today. And so, if I give you an example of exactly what I'm saying here, you could have the best ever, say, dog mug in the world, product, right? It could be the best product for the dog mugs, but if there is no mention of dog mug anywhere in your SEO, Etsy is just not going to know what the product is, and they're not going to know who to show it to, and they're not going to be able to match your product to any search queries related to dog mug that the customer is actually searching for. Likewise, if you have the exact same dog mug listing, right, but then you do put dog mug into some of your SEO, but then somebody is out there looking for pet mug, and you've got no mention of pet mug in your listing at all. Fine, you might still get some traction and some traffic because there's a little bit of a crossover there, but you're not maximizing on the traffic and getting more of those unique search terms. So, that's why SEO is very, very important to cover as close as possible within your listing, the search terms that you think people are actually going to be typing in to be able to find your product. The closer you can match the search terms within your SEO, within your listing, to what someone like me, as a shopper, on the other side of the computer screen is actually going away and typing in, the better that's going to be for you. And something I always say, guys, just remember, at the end of the day, Etsy is an algorithmic search-engine-based marketplace, right? So, there's not somebody sat on the other side of a screen running Etsy, you know, in their little lab, saying, "Oh, let's put this product here, let's show this product to this person." It's an algorithm. So, the more data and the more information you can feed that algorithm about your products, the better that's always going to be. And so, yeah, I just wanted to get that part out there right from the start, but now let's move on to actually looking at the proper system and the proper way to do your SEO for 2026. And we're going to start with a completely free system now, so this is going to take no tools, no guesswork, no fluff. If you just do this the completely free way, your SEO will already be better than 90% of shops out there. And so, the first place I want you to start, guys, this is a mindset thing now. And so, ask yourself that question: why would somebody buy my product? You know, is it going to be bought as a gift, is it because I've got a dog mug and somebody loves their pet and they want a custom dog mug, you know? Really think what's the purpose of the product, and if you just make something that, fine, might be a really pretty design, right? But if there's no purpose behind the product, I'm not saying you're never going to make sales, but it is going to be 10 times harder to make sales with that product if there's no purpose behind it. And then we'll move on to step two as well, and this is letting Etsy actually tell you demand and start working off some organic data. So, first thing I want you to get very comfortable with using, guys, okay? Shop Manager, Stats, Marketplace Insights. This is new in the last few months, and it's a game-changer because Etsy are now showing us real search terms and real data, like two or tea, real data which is very usable for what people are actually searching for on Etsy. So, we can use this to pull keywords that are direct matches for our products. And you can really use this, guys, to gather some incredible search data about, you know, even similar keywords that are really popping off that you can use for your own products. But before you start going like willy-nilly, just like finding every single keyword that shows up in the marketplace insights and trying to stuff them all into your products, I want you to remember one thing, all right? We're business owners here, and we're not just going to stuff keywords in that have not the biggest amount of relevancy to our product, because we still want to protect our conversion rates as high as possible. So, we always want to think with any keywords we're putting in our products, the more we can match the keyword to the buyer intent, and the closer that keyword is to what our actual product is, the more likely we have of the person finding our product and actually wanting to buy it because it's exactly what they're looking for, okay?
[5:57]So, we don't want to just stuff random keywords in to get more views, but not get sales, right? More traffic, fine, it may be good, we might look at it and it might really boost our ego, but if it's the wrong traffic without sales, that's not going to be good, and you really want to protect your conversion rates. This is something I always prioritize on my stores massively, and I always aim above 6%. If you look at your conversion rates and it's below 6%, or you know, even like below 4%, I'd say, you really want to be above four, then there's probably work to do somewhere. And then I want you to start looking at expanding your keywords the right way. And so, you only really need to look at three main sources to be able to get enough data to expand your keywords properly. And they are your own buyer logic, okay? So, you know, when you look at your product, who is it for, who is buying it, what's the event, what's the purpose, what's the targeting, you know, why is somebody actually ever going to land on this and and why is someone going to buy it? That's the first one. The second is looking at other best-selling listings and looking at repeating search terms that you see consistently used on best-seller listings that you can then use on your own. And then you can also, of course, always use our trusty friend Artificial Intelligence, AI, Chat GPT, for example, to really help us with the foundations of the SEO that we're going to be using. And so, if you're using keywords that don't efficiently describe what the product is and the buying intent behind the product, you're really going to struggle. Etsy never rewards just pretty SEO, right? Just loads of pretty words, you know? Etsy doesn't reward that. Etsy rewards somebody finding your product, clicking on your product, and buying your product. Remember, always remember, three-pillar system: land in front of somebody's screen, they click, then they buy. Tick those boxes, and do that consistently enough, you'll always get rewarded. And so, translating your SEO and what keywords that you want to be using into the proper structure, with the right intent, I know that's something that can be a little bit tricky. But it mostly comes down to just being an execution problem, not necessarily a knowledge problem, because I would hedge my bets that you could probably look at one of your listings and be able to answer a lot of what the main keywords are about the listings, you just might not necessarily know how to structure that. And so, that's why I built you guys a completely free tool for you to use. This is a game-changer. I can't believe I'm giving it out for free. It's my custom SEO GPT. It's been in my community for a while. You're now going to be able to get it for free. This is a program that's going to do your SEO for you based on data, not based on guesswork, and it's also going to structure all of your SEO in the right way. It's going to do your titles for you. It's going to do your tags for you. All you have to do is even just describe the product, put a picture of your product in even, it's very, very simple. And I really want to start building as many free things as I can for you guys to seriously take you to the next level. So, if you wanted to check out this custom GPT, it's linked in the video description for you. But now we're going to move on to step four now, and this is going to be actually building out your listings. So, very simple, guys, when it comes to your titles, the very first power phrase is going to be the most obvious keyword about your product, okay? Always put the most obvious one at the start. If it's a custom dog mug, first three words, custom dog mug, simple as that. Then you can start to layer the keywords after that based on clarity. So, we start thinking then who's it for, why is somebody buying it, why is somebody using it, and what's the difference maker? So, what's the unique factors about the product, and then you start to structure your listing keywords in this way. And also, just another quick, cheeky little tip for you guys, all right? You'll see when you search for anything on Etsy, the first 40 characters of the title, that's what shows up on the buyer's screen. So, always make sure to front load the most impactful keywords that you personally believe is going to match as close as possible to what a potential customer is actually going to be typing in. That's just a little buyer psychology thing. Yeah, the more you can match the intent, the better it's going to be. And another thing, this is why I keep pushing for you guys to make niche stores as much as possible, not just random generic stores. It's because the more niche targeting that you can get the hang of, the more patterns you're going to notice consistently, and then the way more chance you have then of making a listing, and you know the most impactful keywords for your niche, for that listing straight off the top of your head. And Etsy's going to see that appearing more and more on your screen. They're going to know who to show your products to. They're going to know that you are the top store for this niche, for whatever niche it is you're selling in. And yeah, I, I really think that's the way to go in 2026, guys. Anyway, now let's move on to the tags. So, first and foremost, let's start with a really quick win here. Use all 13 of them. And also, think of tags as the support network to your title. And again, I don't want you to start going crazy with the tags here and just trying to maximize views. I know that might sound a little bit counter-intuitive because we are talking about SEO here and an exposure. But again, just think, if somebody was to click on my product through one of the search terms that I've put in my tags, would they have a high likelihood of buying my product or a low likelihood? You'll see this data yourself. If you have a look at your products on ads, you go in the detailed stats and you see the keywords people are using to actually get to your products. You'll see some of them can be very, very random.
[11:24]For ads, for example, you could then be paying for clicks, like your own hard-earned money, and it's for keywords where the buyer intent is very low. So, yeah, always just try and think of this like a a business owner, right, business forward decisions, not decisions to just inflate views and boost our ego. Always protect the conversion rates. Next, I'll quickly just touch on categories and attributes. Fill them out if you can, guys. This is not a rocket science thing, okay? If you think they're applicable, fill them out. If not, don't fill them out, not the end of the world. It's not going to massively affect you, to be honest. And now I want to move into the fastest way to improve your SEO and most likely one of the more reliable ways. So, this is, you know, the one of the top level ways to improve your SEO that I'd say much more serious sellers do, and this is using paid research tools, but using them the right way. Because I see 90% of people probably that come to me, and I say, you know, how are you doing your research, what tools are you using? They show me the way that they do their research, they're paying a lot of money for some of these tools, and they're using them very, very wrong. So, if you think that might be you, listen up to this next bit. And so, there's a few different ways that you want to be using these tools, okay, to get the most out of them, and I'm going to explain to you all of the ways now that I personally use the tools. So, first thing you want to do, guys, open up Etsy, type in any product in your niche that you're looking at, building the SEO out for. Look at some top performing listings from top performing stores and then analyze a minimum of 10 of them using Everbee. Look at the keywords that they're using, and this is why Everbee's so good because it gives you this data. Look at the tags they're using, and then after you've looked at at least 10, ideally more than that, but at least 10, you'll start to notice some patterns of keywords that keep showing up consistently. This is the first very simple way to find keywords that are performing very well across a number of different listings, not just a one-off, that you can then start putting into your own. And then another really good way that I like to use Everbee, and I've shown this in plenty of videos before, but I'll go on top performing stores within my niche, and then I'll go on the listing section to see what products they're selling. I'll sort that to the last 12 months, look at which ones are making the most sales, and then I'll look at the trends, so the sales trends for the listings, and anything that's trending upwards, I'll then look at the SEO that they're using, I'll look at the product idea, and then I'll start building out my own listings and my own SEO, so my own keywords and search phrases from what I see is starting to trend up, and try to get ahead of the trend before the trend completely leaves us. So, that's some of the best ways to use the paid tools that I always do myself. I think it helps massively. I recommend that you check out Everbee. I personally think they're the best one. If you want to check them out, sponsored link, as always, in the video description. You can get started with them completely for free. And always just remember, guys, free methods of SEO that I talked at the start of this video, they help to build your understanding, but paid methods of SEO research and and what I've just shown you using Everbee, they help to buy back your time and get you ahead of the game and make you more certain. And now I want to move on to the fourth pillar, guys, which is how you can interpret your listings to actually see if your SEO is currently working or if the problems you have on your shop are maybe not even SEO related at all. And so, first of all, if you're getting a ton of impressions, but you're not getting very many clicks, this is not an SEO problem. Etsy is actually working just fine. It's putting your products in front of people's screens, but your thumbnail images are not performing anywhere near as good as what they should be. You should be getting click-through rates, if you're running ads, above 1%. If you're not, go back, redesign your thumbnail images. Then scenario number two, if you're finding you're getting a lot of clicks, but you're not making many sales, again, this is not an SEO issue. SEO is doing the job, it's putting you in front of people. Your thumbnail images is doing the job, it's getting you clicks. If you're not getting sales, this is a conversion-based issue. You don't have your listing set up right. The pictures aren't high quality enough within your listing, you're not answering customer questions, and you're not using infographics to help the buyer trust your product more. Then we move on to the third scenario, which is you are getting no views and no impressions at all, right? And you've got over 25 listings, and you're still at, you know, zero, one, two, three, four, five views a day, and that's it. This is SEO, and this is product buyer intent and targeting of the products not working well enough. And so, if this is the case for you, and you've got a decent-sized catalog now, and I'd say 25 and above listings, you should be getting some sort of traction, go back to the start of the video and rewatch all of the tips to get you back to this point and start improving your SEO to get more views and more traction on your products. And guys, if you're feeling a bit overwhelmed after listening to this whole video and watching it, and you just really want to fast track your progress, you don't want to keep guessing, you don't want to keep making mistakes, and you don't want to keep wasting time. That's exactly why I built out the Etsy Accelerator community. I made this for the serious sellers that are actually looking to make a full-time income on Etsy. It's got all of the exact framework, the resources, step-by-step guides that I use to personally generate over 300k on Etsy through multiple different businesses, and clients like Craig have used to make well over five figures on a monthly basis. And so, if you're serious about getting to the next level on Etsy and making a full-time income, check out the link in the video description. It's going to be to a form that you're going to fill out just to make sure that you're the right fit to get into the program. Like I said before, spots are way more limited now, we're not just letting anybody in. And so, after watching this video, now you know how to do your SEO. You might be faced with the problem of getting views, but still having inconsistent sales, and if you are, that's where I want you to check out this video here, because it should really help you on that front as well. Take care, guys. I love you all. Thank you for your time today. I'll see you on the next one. Cheers.
