Etsy Relevancy Search Tips

Quick- what is Etsy relevancy? It is the default “sort by” option on Etsy.

When a prospective buyer starts browsing categories for your items the “Most Relevant” option is selected automatically.

How does one item become more relevant than another?

More relevant items use keywords that potential buyers would actually type into the search box to find what they are looking for. These keywords are simply words with spaces between them and do not use punctuation or symbols.

More relevant items have their most important keywords at the beginning of their titles. The first couple keywords are the two words that best describe the item.

An item that uses two keywords can be more relevant than an item that focuses on one broad term. Likewise, a specific three word description is going to be more relevant than two words. The keyword “sculpture” may be relevant to everyone searching for sculptures, but “modern sculpture” is more relevant to a person that is searching specifically sculptures with a modern design. A person will be specific when searching so they will not have to browse through hundreds of sculptures to find the modern ones.

More relevant items have been listed or relisted more recently than other items.  To learn please see:

Relist or Renew on Etsy

More relevant items make use of keyword phrases in their tags. They have two words that best describe them and in addition to having those two words at the beginning of their title, they also have those two words in a tag. For more information please see my article:

What is a Tag?

Sellers looking to keep their items relevant realize that “relevancy” is an algorithm rather than a set of rules. The algorithm is ever changing to display the best results in the search. Sellers also pay attention and update their listings as necessary to become more relevant. They may need to update their titles and tags with more descriptive keywords when the market gets flooded with numerous items using the same exact words.

Sellers with many similar items also find multiple keyword phrases to specifically describe their items so all their items do not have the same titles and tags. There may be one keyword phrase that is most commonly searched for but there are still quite a few searches for the second most popular set of keywords.

Etsy Relevancy search is a good thing. The key to selling anything is to get targeted views on your items, not just a lot of views. It is the people that find specifically what they are searching for that ultimately buy. While the term “relevancy” is coined by Etsy, the general idea of using relevant keywords and tags is also the way to be found in Google search and many of the methods used to be visible in Etsy search will also help you with your personal website.

Richard

Tags: etsy, keyword research, relevancy, seo