Time to get your Etsy SEO cracking on 2020’s Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the winter holidays! To help, we pulled the most popular Etsy search terms and top trending keywords from August through October 2019 search term data to see what sells best on Etsy this time of year. We expected to see plenty of shopper searches for Halloween in August 2019’s Top 1000 Etsy Searches. But holy moly, we found Christmas!
Well, the highest-ranking Christmas search was for nightmare before christmas, so that’s actually more Halloween, right? But the other three were undeniably all about Christmas: christmas decorations, christmas, and christmas ornaments. So, wow: we’d best get cracking!
AUGUST 2019
Two Halloween-related searches made last August’s Top 20: halloween decor ranked 4th, and halloween was 17th. Other Halloween mentions in last August’s Top 1000 Etsy Searches were: disney halloween shirt, halloween svg, halloween shirt, halloween costume women, halloween decorations, vintage halloween, disney halloween, amigurumi halloween, and bitty baby halloween.
(As always, we remind everyone to beware of trademarks: here’s a link to the US Patent and Trademark database.)
Lots more searches were Halloween-related, from haunted mansion to ghostbusters trap to three mentions of the 1993 film favorite Hocus Pocus: hocus pocus svg, hocus pocus, and hocus pocus shirt. While cat wreath ranked 12th in August 2019 with 60,683 searches, when we do a lookup in Keyword Explorer, that was actually quite a bit down from a high of 84,557 searches in February 2019. From August, it dropped to 752 in October, and then poof! cat wreath disappeared from Etsy searches ever since, so clearly cat wreath wasn’t a Halloween thing. We do have black cat though: its ranking of #291 with 9,678 searches was highest of the year in August 2019, so get your black cat items listed in case there’s a repeat this August.
Other spooky mentions: five searches with witch: witchcraft, witchy, witcher, witch hat, witch, all of which made the Top 500 Searches. Witchcraft doesn’t appear to be Halloween-related though, since it peaked in January 2019, and again in April of this year. Witcher is of course about the hot Netflix show, and will no doubt rise again when the second season is shown. Witchy though: that search term hit a really noticeable peak in August of 2019: 25,872, and so far, searches in 2020 are following along the same track as 2019’s, so get those witchy things listed asap.
There seems to have been a noticeable uptick in moon-related searches last August. Think that is the Halloween effect? Let’s see. We have moon wreath, moon phase earrings, moonlight jewel, and moon necklace. All but moon wreath are jewelry-related. Let’s check Keyword Explorer for moon wreath. At 13,660 searches, much like witchy that search clearly peaked in August of 2019, dropping to 1,615 just a month later. And moon phase earrings? Even more of a single peak event in August 2019, with nothing so far in 2020. Moon necklace has had ups and downs through 2019 and 2020, so it’s probably safe to say searches related to moon jewelry are not about Halloween. And that search for moonlight jewel? Apparently she’s a Doll artist and Youtuber: good for her for making Etsy’s Top 1000 Searches!
Let’s turn to Fall. While Thanksgiving did not make the Top 1000 Etsy Searches last August, there were lots of fall entries. Ranked #52, there was fall decor, followed by fall svg, fall tshirts for woman, fall wreath, fall shirts, fall png, fall, and fall wreaths for front door. So get your fall tops and decor items up.
We reported last year that leather began appearing much more starting with August 2019’s Top 1000 Searches. Do people’s thoughts turn to leather as summer’s end is in view? From faux leather pillow covers with 15,762 searches (an 18-month high that peaked last August), lots of leather made the list, from decor to gifts to clothing and accessories.
As expected for this time of year, plenty of school and teacher mentions in the Top 1000 August Searches. Beginning with #79, first day of school sign, school appears in six searches. Pencil case was ranked #138, and homeschool planner at #448 with 7,853 searches peaked in August last year, and again in April 2020 with 3,412 searches. We expect we’ll see at least as much of a rise in homeschool-related items this year, so be sure to include homeschool in your relevant titles and tags.
And there were even more searches for teacher than for school: teacher first ranked at #106, followed by teacher shirts, teacher lanyard, teacher svg, teacher gift, teacher pouch, teacher gifts, teacher car decal, and teacher planner. And you know what hit a 15-month high in January 2020? Teacher stickers, with 3,624 searches. Stickers are crazy popular these days; all year so far, numbers are pretty much double Month-on-Month (MoM) over last year’s. If that search peaked in January at the start of the second semester, will it do the same in August? Might be worth a flutter for you sticker makers.
SEPTEMBER 2019
What changes in September? Well, first off, several of the climbers we spotted in August just moved higher. In September 2019’s Top 20 Etsy Searches, now we see halloween ranking at #2, halloween decor #3, and fall decor #6. Leather zoomed up from starting at #200 in August to take two spots in September’s Top 10: leather tote at #7 and leather bags at #8. Then, back to more Halloween: halloween stained glass at #12, and halloween svg ranking 16th.
On the other hand, autumn did not factor in any searches in August 2019’s Top 1000. But suddenly come September, it popped up out of nowhere to take 20th place with 46,223 searches for autumn jewelry. And altogether, there were seven more searches in September’s Top 1000 that had the word autumn: autumn wreath, autumn decor, autumn statement earrings, autumn scarf, autumn candles, autumn, and autumn linen. Who knows how autumn is going to do in 2020 (so far there’s been nothing, but that is unsurprising: it’s July). Keep an eye out.
As we mentioned above, in August 2019 there were eight entries with the word fall, the highest-ranked being fall decor, #52. By September, fall decor had soared to Sixth place. There were only two more entries than we had in August, but when you add them to those for autumn, collectively it’s a substantial rise for all things Fall and Autumn in September.
By September, school had already dropped out of the Top 1000 Etsy Searches, and teacher was in only two: teacher shirts and teacher gifts, and they both dropped well down in rank.
Leather though, that was quite a climber up from August: while the number of entries was down slightly from 14 to 12, leather zoomed up from August’s highest-ranked entry at #200 to place two entries in the Top 10! Leather tote (7th), leather bags (8th), followed by personalized leather, leather, leather wallet, leather earrings, leather journal, leather bracelet, men leather backpack, leather, tigers eye bracelet for men, faux leather pillow cover, and leather wallet pattern.
Next, let’s look at all things Halloween and spooky compared with August. Halloween is huge on Etsy (especially when you compare it with Thanksgiving, but more about that in a bit). Searches for halloween and spooky things were already big in August, with four searches making the Top 20, and altogether 24 ghoulish entries in the Top 1000.
By September, good golly! There are 28 searches containing halloween (compared to 11 in August.) Way too many to itemize here. And costumes? 11 mentions (there were two in August). Pumpkin? One in August; seven in September. We counted 80 searches altogether that were Halloween-related. 80 out of the Top 1000 Searches: that’s impressive!
And Christmas? 11 searches in September contained the word “christmas.” Well up from August’s three. Plus one for holiday decor. One for personalized ornament. Whereas, for Thanksgiving? There was one search: thanksgiving decor. As we noted in last Fall’s monthly trend reports, compared with Halloween and Christmas, Thanksgiving just wasn’t that big on Etsy in 2019.
OCTOBER 2019
In the Top Ten? Halloween, halloween costume, and halloween decor take the top three slots; unique halloween takes fifth, and halloween svg is seventh. Then christmas decorations is 8th, holiday decor is 9th, and in 10th place: christmas svg.
In the entire Top 1000 Searches for October 2019, poor Thanksgiving makes only four appearances: thanksgiving decor is #58, followed by thanksgiving svg, #114; thanksgiving shirt, #319, and thanksgiving at #472.
Compare that with the total just for halloween searches (not including related searches for other spooky stuff): in October 2019’s Top 1000, halloween figured in 27 searches. And Christmas? There were 34 searches containing the word christmas.
Let’s see how our big Fall favorite leather did in October: 11 searches – so, down one from September, and much lower in rankings. Leather’s first mention doesn’t chart until #93. (Remember it took two of the Top Ten spots in September?) Better get your leather (including faux) goods out in August and early September in case we see the same trend this year. Except for a single one-month plunge in March 2020, the trend line for leather has roughly matched 2019’s so far.
Much more certain will be all things Halloween and Christmas, even if in the US we don’t do as much in terms of parties and kids trick-or-treating this year. We expect masks will certainly be huge 😉 Wouldn’t it be fun to see masks be more fun? In our neighborhood, we’ve seen masks with cat whiskers. Maybe we’ll see Halloween and Christmas-themed ones?
A year ago in October, customized mask as a search term soared! First charting in May 2019 with 20 searches, customized mask steadily shot up to 2,320 in October 2019. So far for 2020: a single blip in May with 591 searches. Then: zero. Now, custom mask: that did better, with a peak of 2,746 searches a year ago in September. This year (and doubtless most of these 2020 searches were for cloth masks), custom mask peaked back in May 2020, with 8,661 searches, and then dropped quite a bit down to 2,572 searches in June. Wonder if custom and customized masks will climb back up this Fall, and for fun masks? We’ll see!
