Etsy SEO Strategy Review

Per someone’s request, I decided to review Etsy’s SEO Strategy.

There are a lot of case studies and observations about Etsy, as shown in the Sources section. It gave me a sense that Etsy gets where they are today despite their poor SEO in the beginning.

Overview & Intro

Etsy
Market cap21.5 B (as of June 2021)
TypeP2P & B2C marketplace
Overall /mon439.8M
Search traffic /mon90.7M (20.62% of overall)
According to SEMRush data

This is an example of how important basic SEO is when you have high domain authority.

Branded search vs. non-branded

non-branded search: keywords not containing “etsy”
Etsy-branded-search
Branded search: keywords containing “etsy”

Structural SEO to scale eCommerce

Etsy hasn’t taken full advantage of structural SEO. However, even just basic SEO helps Etsy get hundreds of millions of visits (basically for free).

What are the basic SEO tasks they’ve done?

  • Properly categorizing product listing using static URLs
  • Internal links
  • Speedy and mobile-friendly

Sources

  • https://growthhackers.com/growth-studies/etsys-crafty-growth-to-ipo-and-a-2-billion-valuation
  • https://www.inc.com/magazine/201312/tom-foster/etsy-growing-rapidly-but-deeply-troubled.html

I am trying to find out if you’re interested in this subject.

DM me on Twitter if you want me to do this one.

Conclusion

Etsy gets 439.8M overall traffic/month and 90.7M search traffic/month. They actually didn’t spend a lot of time on their SEO. But because they have such a high domain authority (92), they can rank very well for many terms. More people find them on Google from non-branded key searches (e.g. handmade wall clock) without looking for Etsy first.

They haven’t unlocked their full SEO potential. The basic SEO tasks they’ve done that have been effective are:

  • Properly categorizing product listing using static URLs (e.g. nail art)
  • Internal links
  • Speedy and mobile-friendly

Etsy hasn’t fully taken advantage of structural SEO, the process of structuring your site in a way so your pages can rank for keyword combinations like nail art online or nail art on sale etc. They could have more optimized keywords on the page URL, page title, and header.

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