This beginner tutorial will take you step-by-step through how to use eRank’s free Keyword Tool to improve your Etsy shop listings and help them to rank better in search. Bonus! Along the way, you will learn some Etsy “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO) basics.
In this demo, we’ll show you how to put eRank’s Keyword Tool to work, analyzing the top 100 listings in an Etsy search based on any keyword you specify. This free tool also displays the most popular tags that other Etsy sellers are using, how often all of those tags are searched for on Etsy, and lots more. Let’s get started!
Log in and Refresh your Data
Let’s log into our eRank Free account. (Don’t have eRank yet? Register for a free account at www.erank.com
Once you’re logged in, you will see your eRank Dashboard. The very first thing to do every time you log in is to hit that orange “Refresh Data” button.
This ensures you will be working with the freshest data drawn directly from your Etsy shop. So, make it a habit to give that Refresh button a click and then next, we’ll move on to the Keyword Tool.
To access the Keyword Tool from your Dashboard, there’s a handy row of quick-access buttons in the top left of your screen, or you can select from eRank’s Main Menu. Hovering over any of the Main Menu topics will expand a drop-down menu. You’ll find the Keyword Tool under Tools.
NOTE: Tools marked with the orange PRO logo cannot be accessed by Free-plan members, but here you can get an idea of the expanded suite of tools eRank offers.
Once you are on the Keyword Tool page, in the blue banner you’ll see a high-level overview: “This tool performs detailed analyses of the top 100 listings found in Etsy search results for the keywords you specify. The Keyword Tool will help you get a sense of the most popular tags used by Etsy sellers, how often the keywords in those tags are searched for on Etsy, common price points, and other data to help you select keywords and optimize your listings.”
Note that to help eRank gather your data quickly, the Keyword Tool has a usage quota. In the green banner where you will enter your search term, you’ll see the Quota counter in the far right. Free-plan members can use the Keyword Tool 50 times in a 24-hour period, Basic members 100 times, and PRO members 200 times. The quota count resets every 24 hours at 12:00 AM EST.
To start using the Keyword Tool, click in the textbox where it says, “Enter keywords,” then type in the term you want to research (for our demo here, we are using “leather purse”), and click the orange “Search” button. Tip: Once you have performed some searches using Keyword Tool, you can use the “History” drop-down menu. Click the scroll-down arrow, choose a previous search, then hit “Go.”
Once eRank processes your search term you’ll see lots and lots of information displayed in different ways: all sorts of tables and widgets and graphs galore! Mercifully, eRank has it all separated for you into bite-size sections.
Keyword Statistics
Here you’ll find the data that is specific to your chosen term. Populated by data from both Etsy and eRank’s third-party data provider, you’ll see widgets with Average Searches (US) – Average Clicks (US) – Average CTR* (US) and Etsy Competition**.
* CTR (Click Through Rate): a ratio showing how often people who see a search result end up clicking on it.
** Etsy Competition: how much competition you can expect for this keyword on Etsy search result pages.
(Insider Tip: Free users, take particular note of the data related to Average Searches, Clicks, CTR, and Etsy Competition that you are able to see here. Since this level of detailed data is considerably more expensive for eRank to get, in most of eRank’s tools and reports it is only visible in the paid-plan features. But in this spot in the Keyword Tool, you can see it for free: yay)
By the way, see the tiny orange question-mark icons in the screenshot above? These are eRank “Tool Tips.” You’ll find them sprinkled all over the site. Hovering on one will display a popup with a bit of information specific to whatever it’s linked with. Quite a few eRank tooltips end with a blue “Learn more” link to even more in-depth answers to questions you might have as you go along. And of course, there’s also Help!
Look for the green “Help” button in the top right corner of every eRank page, just beneath “Settings.” Clicking it will open a slide-out window packed with detailed information about what’s on that eRank page and how you can put it to work in your shop.
Search Results Analysis
Next, let’s look at the Search Results Analysis area. Here we see in-depth data drawn from the top 100 listings eRank found when it searched Etsy using this keyword.
Keep in mind that these search results will most likely differ from those you get on Etsy when you perform the same search. This is because Etsy search algorithms are individually personalized across a range of metrics: where you are and where the items are, geographically; data related to the sellers; data related to the items and their sales history; and most of all, by your own search- and buying history on Etsy.
Handily, eRank is able to strip out this personalization bias for you. This gives you an impartial, generalized picture of what a typical Etsy shopper would see when they search.
So, what you see displayed in this area of the Keyword Tool are averaged data points drawn from the top 100 listings for your keyword. Use this information as a high-level overview to help you quickly assess whether this term is worth further research. Here too, eRank gives you the average price of items with this keyword: a useful metric to have when you evaluate your own pricing. And “Total views” is the total number of views of all those listings in the top 100.
Most Popular Tags
Scrolling down, we come to one of eRank’s most popular features: the Word Cloud! Ideal for folks who process information visually, and just for assessing at a glance. The Word Cloud gives a quick and easy graphical representation of the most used tags for any keyword you specify.
Above we see the results for our demo search term, leather purse. Around it, the Word Cloud displays all of the other tags it found those top 100 listings using. The larger the font, the more times that tag is being used in listings tagged with our keyword.
The Word Cloud has another feature designed to save you research time. Just click on any of the words there and presto: you’ll be in a Keyword Tool page for that term. (Afterwards, just hit the back arrow on your browser to return.)
Tip: keep in mind when using the Word Cloud that each term you click on will increase your Keyword-Tool usage quota by 1. Remember, those on eRank’s Free plan get 50 lookups per day; Basic members get 100; PRO users, 200.
So now, let’s click on purse in the Word Cloud and see what that gets us.
Filter Keywords, Sort Columns, and Download Data
We’ve scrolled down past the Word Cloud to the Tags table.
Here you have several options for viewing your data (and for exporting once done).
Type the first few letters of any word into the “Filter Keywords” text box to find and display just the tags that have those letters in them.
In this example I entered “baby” and see that “baby shower purse” is being used as a tag. With the Free plan, we can see the Etsy Competition for that keyword, but other data reserved for PRO members is not shown.
(Insider Tip! Free users, as mentioned earlier, if you do want to see the Average Searches, Clicks, and CTR data for “baby shower purse” (or any of the other tags here), you can enter it in the Keyword Tool for a free sneak peek.)
Sorting Data
To see all my results for “purse” again, I just clear the “Filter Keywords” box.
The default sort for the Tags table is by “Tag Occurrences.” In the screenshot above, see the bright blue caret pointing down? That indicates that the prevailing sort is by that column, numerically, in descending order. Below, the bright-blue caret indicates that the sort order is reversed.
Working with the Tags Table
By now, we’re starting to home in on some terms we may want to use that are related to our demo keyword leather purse – always bearing in mind our “Prime Directive,” which is that above all, we employ terms that accurately describe our item.
By the by, don’t assume that you know what a term describes, lol. Some of us have been surprised by what appears when we paste a search term in Etsy’s search, or into a Google’s image search. Our own idea of what, for example, a “crystal purse” is may in fact be very different than we thought! It happens, so if ever you’re in even a little doubt, it’s worth taking a couple minutes to verify what’s what with a quick search of your own.
And another aside, this one on word order in tags. A shopper might start a search using just a single word – say, “purse” – and see a lot of items they are not interested in. At that point, if what they really want is a large purse, they might add “large” in front of “purse” in the search box, or they’ll just stick it in after “purse.” Either way, Etsy’s machine learning is smart enough to know what that shopper wants. This explains why you sometimes see long-tail keywords like “purse large leather -faux red.” You see this much more in eRank’s Keyword Explorer, which uses actual shopper searches. The Keyword Tool is based on the most effective seller tags, so we won’t see the extra-crazy word-salad tags here.
Sorting by the Etsy Competition column allows you to group the levels of competition and more easily see where keywords fall. Below, I’ve sorted the Etsy Competition column to get a feel for which terms might have the competition level I’m looking for. (Keep in mind you’ll do this for all 13 tags in your listing, so using the Word Cloud can be a useful adjunct for quickly finding descriptive terms for your listing.)
We know Etsy favors items that have a selling history and great reviews. So it can be hard for new shops or new product lines to rank for high-competition terms. However, we find that including a few high-competition tags can signal Etsy your intent to join the fray. Using mostly long-tail keywords like “frame purse” and “red clutch purse” is a way to enter the competition in a less saturated niche, while adding a few higher-competition terms to get your foot in the door.
Let’s click the Tag Occurrences caret now to sort our results by the number of times a tag has been used. In the Tags column, we see that the terms appear in blue, indicating that they are hyperlinks. In our demo, I’m interested in “evening purse” and so I’ll click that term.
As mentioned earlier when we were talking about the Word Cloud, clicking on a term in the Tags column will replace my current Keyword Tool page with a new one for that specific term, and increase my usage quota by 1. But we still have plenty of lookups left for our demo today, and since my leather purse could also be used as an “evening purse,” I’m interested in seeing the average data statistics for that term.
And look! Aren’t we glad we did! Below we see that evening purse has sky-high competition, yet less than 20 searches over the past 12 months. Well, then: we’ll make sure not to use this term any time soon.
Next, I’m going to click my browser’s back button once to restore my previous “purse” Keyword Tool results from the Word Cloud. And then I’ll click my browser’s back button once more to return to my original Keyword Tool search for “leather purse.”
Long-Tail Keywords and Google Trends
Let’s investigate some long-tail keywords that other shops are using as tags in their listings, shall we?
I’ll sort by the Long Tail Keywords column and look for those green Yes boxes, and we’ll also consider some orange Maybe’s.
Let’s say that I’m seeing some interesting possibilities for long-tail keywords here. And I’m liking some of the tags I’ve found, and so now I’m almost ready to download some data. Before we do though, there is one more feature to explore here: the Google Trends data.
Let’s imagine that our demo “leather purse” has a long strap, and that it could also be used as a messenger bag for men or women. So, let’s check out the Google Trends for “leather messenger.”
(Insider Tip: If you’re considering using Google Ads either through Etsy’s Offsite Ads, or for your own website, eRank’s Google Trends feature is a quick way to research terms that you find on Etsy.)
Clicking the Google Trends button for “leather messenger” opens a new tab in my browser and in the blink of an eye, I find myself in my own Google account looking at the Google Trends for that specific term.
It seems that leather messenger has had its ups and downs since 2008. I hover over that little “Note” I see just above the timeline midway between May 1, 2015 and Jan 1, 2019 and get a popup from Google: “An improvement to our data collection system was applied from February 21, 2017.” And sure enough, from that point on, the line graph indicates fewer searches. Yet, when I glance just below at the “Interest by region” chart, I can see that our current demo keyword is still popular in many countries where I sell.
So, let’s hone in to look at just the past 12 months of searches.
I do this by returning to the top of the page, just above the line graph, where I see “2008 – present.” I click the caret there to open a drop-down menu and select “Past 12 months.”
And from this new line graph – check out that rise at the end, which was just a month ago at the time of this post – I regain a bit of confidence about including leather messenger among my tags in my Etsy listing.
And since we’re finished exploring in Google for now, I’ll simply close that new browser tab and I’m back in eRank’s Keyword Tool.
Downloading Your Data
While I’ve got my data filtered and sorted the way I want it, I’m going to go ahead and download it before I move to the next area of data that the Keyword Tool provides further down the page.
Just above the Tag table’s top margin in the upper right are Export buttons offering five different options. Often, I’ll just click Print to get a quick list to work with (less handwriting: win!)
For our demo, I’ll use the list that we’ll pretend I just printed to make notes on as we look at the next sections of the Keyword Tool.
Price Range
I find this section to be really helpful when researching my pricing. Here we see a bar chart for our original demo keyword, leather purse. Again, the data shown is drawn from the top 100 listings that ranked highest for that keyword.
I can hover over the graph and see how many listings are using any particular price. This feature makes it easy to discover the lowest-, middle- and highest-priced listings that are using our keyword and ranking well on Etsy.
Top Listings
If you’re wondering whether your listing appears among those top 100 listings, and how well it ranks, you’ll want to check out this section. Here you’ll also get to see your competitors’ rank for that keyword, along with listing images, titles, tags, listing age, total views, daily views, hearts, and price of their items.
The default is set to show the first 10 listings. You can use the Show entries drop-down in the bottom left of the widget to view 25 entries, 50, or all. Otherwise, just click the numbered buttons to move one page at a time through all 100 listings.
Most Popular Categories
If you’ve ever wondered which Etsy categories your competition selects for their items, or if you just want to get a quick look at what categories are available, then the Most Popular Categories section of eRank’s Keyword Tool is here for you.
We discover that of those Top 100 listings for our demo keyword leather purse, 22% of them are in Bags & Purses – Wallets & Money Clips – Wallets.
And here you might get ideas for other categories to use for other items you make. Spreading your wares over a range of categories can attract a wider range of shoppers.
Synonyms and Trademarked Terms
At the bottom of the Keyword Tool page we find a few more handy aids that we can put to work as we build our listing.
There’s a thesaurus showing synonyms for each individual word in our search term, leather purse. (Free users, note that clicking on any of the synonyms shown will generate a new Keyword Tool lookup, which in turn will increase your daily usage quota for this tool.)
Below the Synonyms section, a convenient link is provided to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database. It’s prudent to research terms before using them in any listing title, description or tags to ensure they are not trademarked.
And to help you move around all the eRank tools, you’ll find our “top of page” button (circled in red here).
And should you need help or have a problem, use our trusty blue Feedback button to contact eRank’s tech support; they’re always happy to help.
And wow, that’s it for now!
Hope you enjoyed this demo of eRank’s Keyword Tool, and learning how to put it to work to make researching keywords for your Etsy listings easy.
To learn more about Etsy SEO, check out The Ultimate Guide to Etsy Search.
And you can find other blog posts about eRank, its tools, and online selling at https://erank.com/blog. To watch how-to videos, visit eRank on YouTube here.
You’ll also find more eRank videos in our cozy eRank Facebook group, under Videos (circled in red below, on the left).
If you have any questions about this or any eRank tool, feel free to bring them up at the next live Q&A. Or just start a thread in the group. I’d love to hear what you think, and look forward to hearing from you soon in our friendly eRank community on Facebook!
