Etsy tags are the magic wand that make your products appear in searches. Tags can consist of one word or a short phrase that best describe your product. The search engine of Etsy will take your tags and match them with the searches that your potential customers enter. Simply put: if you have no tags or have the wrong tags, you are losing business. Big time.
I collected the most important aspects to consider, when you choose your Etsy tags to make you show up for the right customers and in the right searches.
Some technicalities first
Use all 13 tags per item listing. The more the merrier when it comes to Etsy tags so reach the cap with 13 tags. More tags will increase your chances to show up for searches of your potential customers.
Etsy tags can be as long as 20 characters, which may not seem like a lot but you can squeeze tremendous value in them. Punctuation is not allowed, and only the ™© symbol is accepted. Use it when appropriate.
What should go in tags?
There are two things that should go in tags, and which are also interlinked. Make sure that your tags reflect your titles – but make sure that your titles reflect the most important keywords. (Titles and keywords are another story, we’ll talk about that soon.) At the end of the day, keywords operate the whole of the Etsy search system, so use the most frequently searched relevant words in your titles and set your tags according to your titles. It’s like killing two birds with one stone.
How to put your tags together?
As we said, a tag can be as long as 20 characters, which means that you can – well, not can, but SHOULD – use phrases. First of all, do your homework and select the best performing keywords that are relevant for your shop and products. When you have a handful, start to combine them. Instead of “ski” and “helmet cover” as two tags, use “ski helmet cover” as one tag instead. Answer these questions to help your research and tag writing:
- Who is your product for?
- What color is it?
- Are there additional important colors?
- What kind of method or technique was used in its making?
- What size is it?
- What kind of materials are used?
Not all tags are created equal
You can have a variety of products and a huge list of tags – but not all of them will be equally successful, just like not all keywords are equally popular. Check your statistics, and if you have tags that perform really well, don’t touch them for all the tea in China. You don’t have to know why they are successful, you only need to know to leave them alone.
Tag writing is an iterative process
Start with tags that underperform, do your research to see what kind of popular keywords you could use that are relevant in describing that certain product. Set up new tags and give it some time to run. Check the statistics and see if your new tags perform any better. If not, repeat the process until you get proper results. Tags can be changed anytime, even according to seasons, so only hold on to them if they perform well.
Dialectal differences
For an even greater reach, it is worth considering dialectal varieties of your keywords. You can have gown and robe, jumper and sweater, waistcoat and vest listed, these are equally valuable keywords and tags. You don’t have to choose, use both varieties – unless you specifically want to cater for a certain market.
Things you shouldn’t waste your precious 13 tags on
- Don’t worry about spelling
Etsy has a very smart search system, it will connect misspelled words with the proper spelling, sort of correcting the mistake in the background and it will bring up the right results. - No need to translate keywords
If you are selling bookshelves and are based in Germany, you might consider including “Bücherregal” in your keywords. You can, but is not necessary. Etsy will display your bookshelves even if your customer is looking for Bücherregal, save your tags for something more worthwhile. - No point in repeating attributes and categories
Etsy will automatically list the attributes and categories of your products under your keywords, so you are wasting precious tags on something already listed.
• Singular or plural are all the same
Etsy works with the stem of the word, so it makes no difference if you use a singular or a plural form. If the plural of the word is not formed with an -s suffix, Etsy is still smart enough to deal with it.
There is a lot more to say about Etsy tags, but this is how much can go in a post. However, if you have any questions.