Top Keywords on Etsy July 2024

Here at eRank, we’re back again with the top keywords on Etsy now. Let us take the guesswork out of your Etsy SEO and product research. We’ll show you the most popular search terms with US shoppers. Then we’ll analyze what these trending keywords tell us about what’s selling best on Etsy now.

Tip: See what the most searched keywords on Etsy were yesterday, as well as on dozens of other marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Google Shopping.

Reading time: 12 minutes

Rather watch our Pam Duthie do a video summary?

July’s Top 20 most searched keywords on Etsy in the US 

1. bruno mars

2. bruno mars shirt

3. bruno mars merch

4. run the jewels hoodie

5. wall art

6. dorm

7. stickers

8. trump

9. halloween

10. rings

11. jewelry

12. poster

13. keychain

14. earrings

15. tshirt

16. home decor

17. birthflower

18. womens clothing

19. shirt

20. necklace

Warning: Beware of trademarked terms. This report may contain keywords that are trademarked. USPTO Trademark Database

Interesting! The US has got five screamers this month, including all Top 4! Here’s what No. 1 “bruno mars” looks like.

Bruno Mars?! That’s what we data geeks at eRank have been discussing for weeks now. Our Jessica Serrano spotted it the first week of July. “Bruno mars,” “bruno mars merch” and “bruno mars shirt” were the top three “Trending on Etsy” keywords. In all six of Etsy’s top countries!

He’s got an album releasing in August, supported by a tour in the Americas and Southeast Asia. And according to a headline in Forbes, “Bruno Mars Remains Incredibly Popular, Even After Years Of Relative Quiet.” We are really happy for him, but here’s a word to the wise. Warning! (“Beware of trademarked terms. This report may contain keywords that are trademarked. USPTO Trademark Database”)

These top Etsy searches climbed highest the fastest in July

“Climbers” are what we call Top 20 keywords that didn’t make the previous month’s Top 20 list. We like to focus on these because they’re the hottest of the most-searched keywords on Etsy now. July had 10 climbers and half of them were “screamers.” So called because they seem to scream into the Top 20 out of nowhere. None of these made June’s Top 1000.

Having 10 climbers definitely indicates a higher-than-normal rate of turnover. And we do not recall the US ever having five be screamers.

So let’s get right to them, shall we? Here they are, listed in order with their current rank first.

#1 bruno mars (screamer: didn’t make June’s Top 1000)

#2 bruno mars shirt (screamer: didn’t make June’s Top 1000)

#3 bruno mars merch (screamer: didn’t make June’s Top 1000)

#4 run the jewels hoodie (screamer: didn’t make June’s Top 1000)

#6 dorm, up from #419

#8 trump, up from #81

#9 halloween, up from #40

#12 poster, up from #34

#16 home decor, up from #25

#17 birthflower (screamer: didn’t make June’s Top 1000)

Hopefully, we’ve expressed enough caution about Bruno Mars. And the same applies to our No. 4 screamer.

Ranking 4^th: run the jewels hoodie 

Run the Jewels is a critically-acclaimed hip hop duo featuring El-P and Killer Mike. The last time they toured was with Rage Against the Machine in 2022. Their last album, a remix, came out in November 2022. But then Killer Mike swept the 2024 Grammy Awards, winning Best Rap Song, Best Rap Album and Best Rap Performance.

Run the Jewels sell their own hoodies on their website. Now, we are not attorneys; we’re not qualified to give legal advice. But we suppose you’d need a license from RTJ to sell any merch on Etsy.

Ranking 6^th: dorm, up from #419 

Here’s one you guys can use! And it’s doing fantastically well Year on Year, too. This is “dorm.”

That bright-green banner shows it’s been popular on Etsy this past week (the last of July through Aug. 1). Even better: compared with our Top 4 screamers, “dorm” has an excellent 12-mo click-through rate (CTR). And that stat is a factor we prioritize when assessing what to sell on Etsy, because it indicates purchase intent.

Quick tutorial: “purchase intent” 

New to online selling? Click data reflects how many times shoppers using a given keyword clicked on listings in their search results. We care about these stats because clicks and CTRs signal purchase intent. That is, a shopper who’s searching with the intention to purchase (as opposed to one just browsing). 

For our Top 4 screamers, we didn’t even bother to show you the Keyword Statistics charts. Because their click data was abysmal. All four had Average CTRs under 20%. And it wasn’t that low because they were only charting in one month out of 12. We also calculated those Top 4 just for the month of July, when they were peaking. And their monthly CTRs? So abysmal. Have a look.

#1 bruno mars – July CTR: 6%

#2 bruno mars shirt – July CTR: 10%

#3 bruno mars merch – July CTR: 3%

#4 run the jewels hoodie – July CTR: 1.9%

Now compare those CTRs with dorm’s. It has a July CTR of 108%. And the reason our Top 4’s were so low? We bet there wasn’t much to click for shoppers searching Etsy for Bruno Mars or RTJ merch in July. That may change if sellers find out these artists are trending with Etsy shoppers. But remember: USPTO Trademark Database. Now, let’s get back to our climbers and screamers.

Ranking 8^th: trump, up from #81

As mentioned, we’re not attorneys so we can’t give legal advice. We’ve got no idea whether you can use the keyword “trump” or sell related items without infringing. So we’re just going to move on.

Ranking 9^th: halloween, up from #40 

Weird. Year on Year, the one-word search “halloween” is down 48%.

Nevertheless, we aren’t worried. Doing our monthly review of keywords populating our Monthly Trends feature, we saw slews of Halloween-related keywords everywhere. Halloween is always HUGE on Etsy. We don’t expect that to change. And as you can see (in red above left), “halloween” has the US seller competition to match. So what’s a mere mortal Etsy seller to do?

Scroll down! Scroll down Halloween’s Keyword Tool page, that is. Here in the Keyword Ideas table, you can find popular search terms with more manageable competition.

Amidst a sea of red Etsy Competition, see that one with just a bit of green? Only 4,223 US Etsy sellers are using the keyword “halloween frames.” It had a promising 2,520 searches in July. And it’s got an Average CTR of 134%: wow!

You can use the same procedure with our next two climbers, “poster” and “home decor.” Being perennially popular, competition for them too will be daunting.

Ranking 12^th: poster, up from #34 

Here is poster; it never leaves the US Top 1000, and frequently makes the Top 20. As it’s doing now, perhaps helped by people shopping for dorm room decor.

“Poster” has got a stellar Average CTR: 108%. But to compete with those 2,899,446 US sellers using this keyword, you’ll need to niche down. Just as we showed how to do with “halloween.”

Are you new and here looking for what to sell on Etsy? “Niche down” is jargon for finding products and their “superstar keywords” that you can rank for in search. To begin your product research, enter a broad keyword like “poster” into Keyword Tool. Then scroll down to the Keyword Ideas table. There, use filter and sort to find “long-tail keywords:” the top Etsy searches with lowest competition.

Just watch out for trademarked terms! There are a lot of them in the posters niche.

Ranking 16^th: home decor, up from #25 

Here’s another broad term that always ranks high on Etsy.

Even though “home decor” is 40% down Year on Year, it still makes our Top 20. And your fellow Etsy sellers know it! Home decor’s got more than ten times the competition that “poster” has! But on the other hand, it is a far more roomy category. (In fact, posters frequently are home decor.)

Whether you’re a maker or sell vintage or party supplies, there’s a way to access these shoppers. But don’t expect to rank for any of the related searches with either “home” or “decor.” Competition for all of the ones with good search volume is too high. Instead, use home decor’s related-searches table to get product research ideas. Then niche down from there to identify the superstar keyword to optimize your listings for.

For those of you who are new to eRank, let’s do a quick demo to show you how. We’ve chosen “pillow” for our home-decor product research.

How to niche down to find superstar keywords using Keyword Tool 

We’ve entered our broad shopper search “pillow” into Keyword Tool and ticked the box for “Include Near Matches.” This will show us results with both the singular and the plural. We’ve seen that pillow/s has an Average CTR of 118%: awesome! But it’s got high competition: 720,704; ouch! So we scrolled on down to the Keyword Ideas table.

First, for Keyword Match type, we chose Phrase (circled in light orange here). This will show us all shopper searches with either pillow or pillows. Then we sorted the data by the Search Trend column (circled in green). This shows us the keywords trending most recently. And yes, we see the top three do have high competition from your fellow US sellers. But check out the next two!

“Needlepoint pillow” had 2,510 searches in July. It also has a spectacular average click-through rate (124%!). And competition for this keyword is much less: around 15,000 shops.

Now, the entry just below it, “ruffle pillow,” had nearly as many searches in July (2,350). Its 98% Average CTR is nearly as enticing as needlepoint pillow’s. Yet it has about a fifth of the competition!

Conversely, “ruffle pillow” doesn’t have as many months with search volume that “needlepoint pillow” does. Hmm. What would we do if we were a new vintage seller looking to crack home decor’s target market?

We’d source some vintage needlepoint pillows to list. We’d include “home decor” in our titles. But we’d optimize our listings for that niche superstar keyword we just discovered, “needlepoint pillow.” And meanwhile, we’d add “ruffle pillow” to a Keyword List. Let that tool watch it awhile for us. See if it continues to trend.

Ranking 17^th: birthflower

And finally, our fifth screamer. Have a look.

Quite the spike: zero to 40,840 in a single bound. Before July, the highest this keyword got in the previous 14 months was 10 searches/mo. Now, normally we’d advise not acting on single-month spikes like this. But this time let’s not be too hasty! Because look. Here is “birth flower” (two words).

No, it’s nowhere near as high in July (1,130 searches) as “birthflower.” In fact, “birth flower” didn’t even make July’s Top 1000, let alone the Top 20. But as you can see, unlike “birthflower,” there’s been months of solid interest in this keyword in two-word form. Which tells us “birthflower” is actually not a spike at all. Rather, we bet it’s Etsy promoting it like they do “birthstone,” which is one word. It’s just that shoppers don’t use birthflower to search; they use birth flower.

The takeaway? The results of Etsy’s promoting demonstrate there is quite a lot of shopper interest in this search, however it’s entered. We’d consider shoppers clicking on Etsy’s Call To Action button for birthflower to be for birth flower items. And there’s excellent purchase intent in the Average CTRs. Therefore, since birthflower’s is slightly less than birth flower’s 110%, we recommend optimizing for “birth flower.” Then just fit “birthflower” in a tag; see how it performs.

And now we’re off to find out what’s trending in the other top Etsy countries we cover here

And even if you only sell within the US, you might want to stick with us. We always discover more about US trends as we research what’s popular in the UK, Canada, and Australia. Parlez vous français? You can read our monthly reports covering French Etsy shopper trends here.

As always, we love hearing what you think. Got questions or suggestions? You’re welcome to join us in eRank’s private Facebook group. With over 28,000 members from around the world, someone friendly is always up and about. And don’t miss our weekly live Q&As on YouTube, where you’ll also find dozens of eRank tutorials, demos and more! For instance, we just added a new weekly series of eRank tool tutorials every Tuesday. And here we are on TikTok with lots of fun and quick how-tos.

RESOURCES: eRank’s Trend Buzz and Keyword Tool have 15 months of historical Etsy search data to help you understand trends in what’s selling on Etsy now, what did well this time last year, and to help you spot what’s new. Together, they are the best way to track what’s popular with Etsy shoppers now.