How To Use eRank for Etsy Keyword SEO – Etsy SEO Tips for POD Sellers
Etsy SEO can be a daunting task for sellers, so it’s important to have the right tools to make it easier.
ERank is my keyword research tool of choice that helps me maximize my Etsy shop’s visibility, enabling me to reach more potential customers and increase my sales.
In this blog post, I will explain how to use eRank for Etsy, and how you can use it to help your print-on-demand Etsy shop succeed. I use the eRank Basic Plan (the cheapest paid plan).
There is even more functionality available with the Pro and Expert Plans, but you may not need it.
My Thought Process for Etsy Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Etsy SEO is different from Google SEO, but some of the key principles are the same.
When you’re starting out, you don’t want to be trying to compete with well established sites.
You need to start with low-competition keywords that show some search volume.
The same is true for new Etsy shops or Etsy shops entering a new niche.
Keep this in mind as I go through how I use the eRank keyword tool.
This blog post contains affiliate links. I may receive a commission if you purchase a product or service through an affiliate link on this site. This does not cost you or impact your purchase in any way.
Summary Of What I Use Erank For
eRank is an Etsy SEO tool but one can use it for more than this. Here are the key activities I undertake that I explain further in this article.
- Etsy Keyword Research (Obviously)
- Finding New Keywords
- Finding Supporting Keywords
- Optimizing Listings
- Product Research
- Niche Research
- Competition Analysis
eRank Dashboard
The eRank dashboard displays a wealth of information about your Etsy shop. The information is really useful, but I only tend to glance at it. The key area I regularly check on the dashboard is the Your Listings section.
A quick glance at this section and you will see some key figures that indicate you need to fix or at least check certain specific items in your shop.
Missing Tags – If you have any listings with missing tags its shown here (as above). You should make sure you use all 13 available tags to give you the maximum chance of your listing being found. So if this figure shows anything other than 0, click through and fix it.
Spelling Issues – If this is anything other than 0 you should click through and investigate to make sure you haven’t misspelled an important keyword. eRank may flag something as being misspelled, like Goblincore (a niche on Etsy), that isn’t, but you can exclude it from showing in the future.
Missing Images – I ignore this data as I always list items with images, I just may not have 10 images per listing.
Missing Attributes – You need to make sure you fill out your listing properly and populate all attributes. If this is anything other than 0, click through and update the flagged listings.
One Word Tags – As some of my tags are long words I don’t take much notice of the One Word Tags data.
Active Listings Feature
Under Listings in the top navigation bar, you will see an option for Active Listings. Clicking on this will bring up a long list of all your listings with key data shown. The following buttons are shown for each item:
I only look at two of these items, Listing Audit and Traffic Stats.
Listing Audit to Optimize
When I was just starting out on Etsy, whilst I was still learning what works, I would review the Listing Audit for every item I listed.
Now that I have built up years of experience selling on the marketplace, I don’t use it as often, but I do check the odd listing every now and again.
Its worth using especially if you’re new. Follow the guidance that the tool gives you so that you optimize your listing.
Once you’ve built up some knowledge you can then use the tool to check key data. This is what I would look at:
Grade – Dont be too bothered about this. Getting everything to an A can be difficult, but you should make sure listings are B and above.
Superstar Keyword – Check to ensure your superstar (most important) keyword is in your title, tags, and description. I don’t like to duplicate too many of my keywords in my titles and tags, but I do make sure my most important keyword is present in all three. See the image below. You can see how easy eRank makes it to see.
Top Tip: Use listing audit to review other sellers listing. Simply find the listing you want to analyze and copy the listing number (see example below) and add it to the listing audit URL as shown below
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/859274151/mountain-bike-hoodie-the-ideal-cycling
https://erank.com/listing-audit/859274151
Doing this can help you find the tags used in listings and to see if they are worth using in your store.
Traffic Stats
Traffic stats can be helpful to see what keywords & Etsy search terms your listing is being found for by shoppers. I check this for key listings as it can give you ideas for new keywords for titles and tags of similar products. It has also identified new niches to expand into also.
Competition Tracking
Under Competition, there is the Your Competition Sales option. On this page, eRank shows you the estimated sales data for shops that you have chosen to track. I find it helpful to know how well I am doing chasing down a bigger shop’s total sales. I also use it to track key competitors in my niche to see how I am performing against them.
Top Sellers – Finding New Keywords
When searching on Etsy you are bound to find Etsy shops that have lots of sales on Etsy. One way of finding new keywords is to use the Top Sellers feature and run a tag analysis on the shop.
The data presented will include the tags used by the shop. I get great ideas from this and build a list to investigate further.
Trends
Getting inspiration for new keywords can be difficult. Luckily eRank makes it easy to find trending terms with its Monthly Trends feed, which is under Trends in the header navigation.
Every month or so I go to monthly trends and click on Clothing on the categories on the left and to see the trending terms. A quick scan down the right hand side and you can easily & very quickly spot any terms that are trending upwards. You can then investigate these further.
A specific POD section has been added to the Trends page, which includes:
- Embroidery
- Hoodies
- Mugs
- Phone Cases
- Shirts
- Stickers
- Sweatshirts
- Tote Bags
Simply click on each one and scan down the results returned.
I use the Trend Buz feature in much the same way. A quick scan through to see if there are any terms / ideas worth delving into deeper.
Keyword Tool – For Keyword Research
This is where the action happens. Once you’re familiar with Etsy, and how to post listings that place well in the Etsy search results, SEO keyword data becomes the main use of eRank.
The Keyword Tool has recently been merged with eRank’s Keyword Explorer tool.
Now you can see:
- Related Searches
- SERP Analysis
- Top Tags
- Top Listings
The top tags shows an analysis of the top 100 listings found in Etsy search results for the keyword you enter.
To make the best use of the tool you need to come up with your initial keyword. You want to go down rabbit holes, so the first word doesn’t need to be perfect.
Do some browsing on Etsy and see what comes up then enter it in the Keyword Tool search box.
Your aim is to find low-competition keywords with acceptable search volume that are trending. Using these will help grow your Etsy shop.
By way of example, as it’s the year of the rabbit, let’s search for that and see what comes up.
The information shown at the top of the page gives an idea of the key stats for the search term. Here is how I analyze the top section.
Average Searches – In this example, eRank is saying 820 searches per month. This can be misleading as shown in this example. 820 is the 12-month average search volume for the term. However as we can see there were no searches Jan to October, the numbers are skewed. In November there were 3450 searches and 6330 in December.
This paints a very different picture, which is actually nicely displayed by the trend graph. The term is trending massively.
The Average Clicks and CRT are both good. But the competition of 11,516 is not ideal especially if you are a new shop.
In this scenario, I either get more specific (add shirt, sweatshirt, hoodie etc) with the search term or scroll down the page and see what other terms eRank has returned.
Here is an example of the sort of data we are looking for.
Whilst the average search volume looks low, remember that is a 12-month average. So 93 is actually 1110 in November, so a really good volume. The competition is very low competition at 245 and as a bonus, a high click-through rate.
The trend graph is really important as it shows which are the best keywords. If the trend is going up and the competition is low, you could be on to a winner.
There is no point going all out on a keyword only to find it’s past its peak and coming down.
Keyword Tool – Keyword Ideas
Erank says you can use this feature to discover new growth opportunities for your Etsy shop. It analyzes the keywords that Etsy shoppers use to search and provides a variety of visuals and statistics to help you choose the best keywords for your tags, titles, and listing descriptions.
eRank released a really helpful update that enables you to exclude or include certain terms. This makes searching much more focused as it helps remove lots of keywords that arent relevant.
You can also decide whether you want a partial match or exact match which again make it easier to find new keywords to use in your store.
Check out this video that explains it in more detail.
How To Use eRank – Conclusion
eRank is a great tool and my tool of choice. The one tool I have had since the beginning of my Etsy shop. There are so many features and so much data that you can easily get lost in it and lose hours of your day.
Many Etsy sellers use eRank or Marmalead and if you arent then you are missing out big time!
