In this week’s online business related post, I’m sharing how I use one of my favorite tools: the Google Adwords Keyword planner. I use this tool to choose keywords so I consistently rank in the first couple of pages of search results on Etsy.

To enlarge the screen of the video tutorial, click the square icon in the bottom right hand corner of the video (it will say ‘full screen’ when you hover your mouse over the icon).

My 4 go-to keyword search tools (all are FREE)

Google Adwords Keyword Planner tool (demonstrated in the video above)
Marmalead. I previously shared a video tutorial on how I use Marmalead to conduct market research and keyword research for my Etsy shop and online business
Google search results/Google suggest (the keywords/search terms that appear below the search bar which are based on popular keywords/products people are searching for)
Etsy search results/Etsy suggest (same as Google suggest but for Etsy)

How to choose keywords so people will actually find your products:

Let’s say you sell soap (although you can apply these strategies to any type of product you sell):

Choose one word. So for this example, it’s ‘soap’. Then niche down and get more specific e.g. ‘goat soap’ ‘australian handmade soap’ ‘soap for sensitive skin’
Choose related/similar keywords e.g. instead of soap try ‘body wash’
Location e.g. ‘buy handmade soap Australia’
By type e.g. ‘lavendar soap’, ‘unscented’, ‘goats milk’
Related products e.g. create a kit with moisturizer as people searching for soap are likely interested in moisturizes as well
Clientele e.g. soap for farmer’s hands, eco-friendly soap
Use variants of the same keywords. For example I sell organization tools and I use both ‘organize’ and ‘organization’
Think of synonyms (if you right click on a word in Microsoft word and hover your mouse over the synonms menu it will give you some suggestions. Searching the word followed by ‘synonyms’ on Google will also give you plenty of ideas

Piece together 3 to 5 keywords to create a long-tail keyword. Because everyone is searching for ‘soap’ you need to be more specific. So rather than just ‘soap’ , put yourself in your potential customer’s shoes and think what other search terms they would use such as ‘buy handmade soap Australia’

Then order the keywords in the listing title on Etsy. Make sure you place the most important keywords you want to rank and the most popular keywords FIRST. I apply this same strategy to my blog post titles.

Sidenote: Another keyword strategy is to consider the opposite of what people are searching. So for my graphic design related posts I use keywords such as ‘how to do __ without Photoshop’ and then also ‘how to do ___ in Photoshop’ with __ being the same keywords/tutorial.

The reason I do this, is because someone searching how to do something in Photoshop may be doing so because they simply don’t know how to use Photoshop. So they may be interested in a tutorial on how to do it both with and without Photoshop. By using both keyword phrases my blog posts are shown to more people. I don’t use this strategy for products, only for blog posts.

How many keywords should you use?

You should always use all 13 tags on Etsy and the maximum number of characters in the listing titles for everyone single one of your products. If you sell similar products, try not to use the exact same keywords for every single product.

If you’re a fellow blogger (you should be blogging if you have a business!) – I Use 100+ keyword phrases on each of my blog posts.

After I write a blog post (or as I’m drafting it), I open up a word doc and jot down a bunch of keywords separated by a comma. For example, for this post, these were some of my keywords:

SEO for Etsy sellers, etsy seller advice, how to choose keywords, keyword research, keyword research etsy sellers, how to rank on the first page of Etsy, how to use google adwords, google adwords keyword planner, keyword planner tool, google keyword planner tutorial…

Then I can simply cut and paste into the tags section of WordPress.

As I tend to post about products in my shop, I list out keywords at the same time as I’m creating a product I’m going to be doing a blog post for, and then I pick the best keywords for Etsy and add ALL of the keywords to the post about the product.

Want to learn more of my methods for choosing keywords? Enroll in my ecourse: How to Write Product Descriptions