with the holidays right around the corner now is the perfect time to begin freshening up your Etsy shop in anticipation of the annual Etsy Holiday Rush when it comes to SEO you're probably already aware that Etsy looks at your titles tags and descriptions when assessing the relevancy of your keywords consistency of keywords from your titles within your tags or basically making sure that all of these words are also shown down here is important for etsy's query matching phase but where exactly does this leave our descriptions the answer to this question may surprise you for anyone who may be new here my name is Starla Moore founder of the handmade Alpha Academy for Etsy Sellers and manager erank.com etsy's most popular SEO tool and over at e-rank it's my job to understand how Etsy search algorithm works as well as how sellers should be optimizing their listings in order to appeal to that algorithm and while keyword optimization of tags and titles has remained a pretty consistent strategy for the last 10 years the proper strategies for optimizing descriptions has changed a lot and because of this many sellers are still utilizing outdated practices for example 10 years ago sellers would copy their entire title and place it at the top of their description in hopes that this added keyword consistency would help Etsy to better identify what they wanted to rank for that was until Etsy clarified that descriptions were actually not a factor analyzed by their search algorithm instead they explained that it was actually Google that utilized our descriptions and fun fun fact if you know anything about Google SEO you probably also know that it's dang hard to rank over there since you're competing with the entirety of the internet rather than just Etsy sellers for years most sellers didn't even worry about optimizing their descriptions at all which remained the case until 2022 when Etsy made the announcement that they would in fact begin analyzing our descriptions when ranking listings are you getting Whiplash yet stick with me because it goes further than that for nearly a year sellers assume that this announcement by Etsy meant that utilizing keywords from their titles within their descriptions was now best practice and many even reverted back to the 10 year old strategy of copying those titles into the top of their description which let's be real it was never a good strategy to begin with however three months ago Etsy dropped a huge bomb that you probably missed during their Etsy up event Andrew through Stanton etsy's product director of search briefly explained how descriptions actually work in relation to the algorithm and search ranking we pull out many of the same things that were teachers talk about Styles material sizings and we don't use it for candidate matching so that query matching phase but we do use it to help understand if a buyer has a particular Affinity toward a particular style we might use that to help rank that item up or perhaps down depending on their personal interests this sentence is extremely interesting because it's the first time Etsy has ever given us true Clarity on what exactly the algorithm is doing with our descriptions essentially what Andrew was saying is that Etsy isn't looking for keyword consistency across tags titles and descriptions as we previously thought instead Etsy is utilizing our descriptions for context which we can speculate helps with matching products to the perfect buyer for example let's say that Betty frequently supports black owned businesses on Etsy Etsy May catalog this Shopper habit and utilize it to further cater Betty's shopping experience for future searches if Betty were to suddenly find herself in need of a birthday card for her mom it is quite possible that Betty might see a listing from Janice who happens to utilize the phrase black owned business in her descriptions even if Betty's initial query did not specifically utilize keywords related to Black owned businesses and this is just one example context could indicate a specific style such as mid-century modern a theme such as Halloween or gothic or even a specific color palette like Earthen tones as a part of etsy's machine learning technology this process helps Shoppers to more easily find items that they're most likely to buy and this added consideration of context is a great thing it means that rather than competing against the entirety of etsy sellers are able to more easily Rank and search for the customers who are most likely to buy their items almost like Etsy is playing Matchmaker so what does this mean for us it means that you don't need to to focus so much on stuffing your descriptions with as many keywords as possible nor does it mean doing this don't don't do this instead when filling out your descriptions take time to incorporate key details about your product that may help to provide additional context in order to help connect with Buyers who are searching for a specific style palette theme or even a material the key is to think like a shopper not like a seller for example if I'm selling this groovy shirt with a peace sign rather than simply describing the design I might use words like 70s aesthetic or even retro vibe in order to Target shoppers who specifically lean toward retro themed designs When shopping for clothing as you kick off your holiday cleanup initiative be sure to focus on the actual human customers who are shopping remember catering listings to etsy's algorithm is important for being discovered but when it comes to conver hurting those Shoppers into buyers accurately describing your items and positioning yourself as a human brand is equally important and in terms of appealing to the algorithm be sure to click the link up here and down below to grab my free Etsy SEO toolbox it's loaded with videos and trainings to help you optimize your listings in time for the holidays and yes it's free overall success on Etsy sometimes means watching etsy's events and broadcasts in order to stay up to date on current best practices for the platform and with a little science a lot of data and some help from a trusted Etsy expert you'll be well on your way to Etsy success cue the funky Lo-Fi beat [Music] [Music]