3 Etsy SEO Myths + The Facts on Why They Aren’t True

There is a lot of bad Etsy info floating around the internet…. of course. There is bad info floating around about everything. But nevermind that… I’m here with some FYI.

I’ve seen these three totally false suggestions being mentioned over and over and they simply are not true.

Listen up and make sure you aren’t falling for any of these Etsy SEO myths!

MYTH: You should copy your item title into the first line of your product description.

Not sure where this came form but people think it gives them extra juice in Etsy search. It doesn’t. Etsy doesn’t read anything you put in our descriptions for search results. As for Google, I’m no expert on that but it already READ your page title so why give it the exact same thing again when you could be using that space more wisely.

MYTH: You should give your image files keyword rich names before uploading them to Etsy.

This tactic IS true for many other platforms such as WordPress and Shopify. You do want to give your images file names that include keywords and also ALT tags, but this DOES NOT work on Etsy. Etsy overwrites files names upon upload. You can see for yourself by going to Etsy and saving an image for your shop to your computer. It will be a random string of letters and numbers.jpg. However – more power to you if you have your photos organized with names for each one! Holy wow, that is impressive. And if you do use the same photos elsewhere, those file names might be giving your search juice over there, but just know you shouldn’t do this file naming thing with the impression that it’s helping you in search on Etsy.

MYTH: Each listing can only appear in one search. AND Only one item per shop will appear in a search.

Noo. No no no. Not true. If LISTING A is optimized properly it can appear in a bunch of searches. If SHOP A has a lot of optimized listings you will see those listings spread out across a search. What Etsy DOES DO is sorts the items in search so that you will not see five items in a row from the same shop unless it is a search that only a few shops are optimized for, which rarely happens. Let’s say a search for “Glistening Elephant Bell Booties” probably yields a lot fewer results than “silver necklace” – in that elephant search, the two or three shops that sell glistening elephant bell booties will probably all show up over the course of just a few pages, and there might be some grouping – but again, this is a rare search. I’ve seen a couple of my own listings – the same listing – show well in multiple searches. And I’ve seen a bunch of my items as search results spread out across ten or more pages of a search with 1 listing per page in that search.

You are probably wondering “well if I can’t be sure what info is good and what info is bad now, why should I believe you?” That is up to you of course. My Etsy shop has generated 5 figures in sales this month so far alone and my strategies have helped hundreds of shop owners increase their visibility and profits through Etsy as well.