if you want to be successful on Etsy this video isn't for you because I'm about to reveal several ways to absolutely murder your Etsy Shop overnight like bury that sucker in the backyard [Music] dead for anyone who may be new here my name is Starla Moore founder of the handmade elf Academy for Etsy Sellers and manager at e rank.com etsy's most popular Co tool and working at e- rank has given me a bit of a bird's eyee view when it comes to things that can go wrong with Etsy seller accounts with hundreds of thousands of users all reporting on things that have permanently damaged their shops or Worse led to permanent bans which we won't be touching on too much in today's video but if you're curious about all of the reasons that shops get suspended on Etsy be sure to check out this video up here for now though we're going to be covering things that can make your traffic vanish overnight dropping you completely out of search pages and destroying your rank hopefully by watching this video you can avoid these devastating mistakes a few years ago sellers found a bit of an exploit on Etsy that would help them to rank on page one within minutes all you had to do was go into the back end of your shop select all of your active listings then pay to renew them all each day it was like a jolt to the Etsy heart floating those listings to the top of Sur search pages every time you renewed them until Etsy caught on while it's true that Etsy gives a boost in search to new listings this boost has a purpose which means that if you abuse the Boost you may find yourself losing etsy's favor listings on Etsy rank based on what's known as their listing quality score and listing quality scores are accumulated through a lot of different metrics in this free Workshop up here I cover all of the factors that Etsy discloses if you're interested in learning more but when a new listing is added to your shop it obviously won't have a quality score yet because it's brand new right in order to help you build your initial quality score Etsy gives each new listing a slight boost during this time they observe how Shoppers interact with that listing in order to determine where to place that listing in search so what happens when you repeatedly pay the 20 cents to renew all of your listings it makes those listings look not very good and over time these listings will likely Begin to Fall further and further down in search if you're a daily SEO tinkerer you may unknowingly be killing your Etsy Shop Etsy SEO isn't an instantaneous magical thing that results in fast sales in fact etsy's algorithm takes a long time to assign placement to your listings based on how Shoppers interact with them remember that boost that we talked about a few minutes ago when you first list an item Etsy gives that listing a slight boost and search in order to gauge how Shoppers interact with that listing then within 60 to even 90 days Etsy is able to decide where to assign your listing in search so as you've probably already guessed changing your tags and titles every single day can interrupt this process making it harder for Etsy to determine what your listing is and who should see your listing this is why it's insanely important to treat every listing as a science experiment by giving them time to grow when you make changes to an Etsy listing you never know if those changes are going to help or hurt you even when you have the best of intentions you could spend hours on keyword research you could be confident that you chose the very best terms for your listings you could be positive that your listing is going to perform well but there's no way to know without testing because ultimately keyword optimization also known as relevancy is just one factor that Etsy uses in order to rank your listings in search which means that if you go into your listings and make a ton changes to all of your listings tags and titles and those changes end up not being good for your listings you won't have just hurt one listing you will have hurt all of the listings that you edited when making changes to existing listings always experiment in tiny batches and keep an eye on the impact of those changes before attempting to edit another listing remember losing views on one listing really stinks but losing views on all of your listings is way worse when you have a listing that is selling repeatedly it means that etsy's algorithm has identified what you want to be known for you've nestled into your own little spot in Etsy search and Etsy has carved a nice little place for you unfortunately some sellers want to see if they can do just a little bit better so they remove a few keywords from their listings swap them out with terms that they assume are better and Bam they lose all their traffic and stop making sales you've just told Etsy that you no longer want to be known for the term that they were showing you for and now Etsy has to figure out where your listing belongs which can take a lot of time many sellers report that they were never able to regain their traffic and sales after tinkering with best sellers let's look at a quick example maybe your Etsy listing title is floral Pink Kitty mom ceramic mug birthday gift from the cat and maybe Christmas is coming up so you want to try swapping the word birthday out for Christmas you don't feel like the word birthday gift from the cat is bringing you much traffic so you assume it's safe to remove but what you can't see and what Etsy isn't sharing is that while you weren't getting traffic from the term birthday gift from the cat you were broad matching for the term ceramic cat birthday mug because Etsy doesn't just read your keywords in the exact order that you've written them also known as exact matching they also read your keywords in every possible scrambled combination which is called broad matching so by removing the main keyword that Shoppers were using to find your store and basically telling Etsy that you no longer want to be known for ceramic cat birthday mug you're essentially destroying the road that was funneling Shoppers to that listing if you want to experiment with a well-performing listing it's totally fine to swap out photos to tweak or add to your description or to adjust things like pricing or processing times but if you have a listing that is bringing you sales and traffic leave your title and tags alone that's it for this video but I do have a pretty exciting announcement I've literally never left the us but on September 26th I'll be flying to lva as a headliner of this year's Amplified event by printify the world's first and only online event for print OnDemand business owners normally this online event costs $5 but if you use the code Starla at checkout you can bypass the checkout system in order to get free access to the stream q&a's and opportunities to win tons of prizes from Big names like Wix Adobe play it and I'll even be giving away a few e-rank expert plans too to sign up with your 100% discount you can head over to pri.com samplified or click the link up here and in the description down below hopefully I see you there until next time Pooky [Music] [Music]