A little while back someone posted this in my Facebook group:
“To invest in my shop, I signed up for Marmalead, I have watched the tutorials, I have spent 6 hours trying to get two C+ ratings to at least B. No luck. I consider myself a relatively smart woman, however… I am just not understanding. Deb, do you have any video?”
First let me tell you: the seller who initially asked this question IS a smart woman – just like yourself – so if your eRank or Marmalead grades are making you feel a little dumb – I hope this video will make you feel better, because it’s not you, it’s them!
At the time she asked this question, I didn’t have a video about this, but now I do. This IS this video. Let’s dive in!
It’s time we talked about the grades you get in Marmalead and eRank when trying to improve your Etsy SEO. Quite simply, you must not obsess over those grades.
This isn’t to say they are not useful tools, but trying to get a listing from a “C” to an “A” without understanding what goes INTO the grading system of those 2 platforms is not what I’d call a super smart move and here are 3 reasons why:
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Marmalead and eRank are both great tools to help you brainstorm/research keywords and get data from Etsy – but they can NOT make the strategic decisions for you. They are just tools that should help guide your decision, but you can not base your strategy solely on them.
Both Marmalead AND eRank have detailed articles explaining what goes into their ranking system (the articles are linked above)… and essentially those A, B, C letter-based grades only represent how closely THEY think you adhere to Etsy’s best practices.
So what does that mean?
Well, for example, they know if you’ve used all your “13 tags” and so they would see this as a green light and the sign of a healthy, “optimized” listing, and put your grade up because of it, but they don’t know if those 13 tags are good or bad tags.
They don’t even know how relevant they are and how accurately they describe your product.
You could sell a pair of socks, for example, and have all your 13 tags be about jewelry and they would still think you’re doing great simply because your 13 tags slots are being used. Deciding if a keyword is “good”, as in likely to bring the right kind of traffic to your shop and to lead to sales… that’s your call.
Similarly, your ratio of long tail VS broader keywords might differ based on your niche and on your products and you could have a great combination of keywords in your title and tags that’s a “C” grade but that’s still bringing in tons of traffic and sales. In which case, DO NOT touch that listing! (more on that in a second)
Reason number 2 for not relying too heavily on those grades is that there is so much more going into the search algorithm on Etsy than what’s used in the calculation of those grades.
If you need a refresher on how the Search algorithm works and exactly what Etsy takes into account to decide how to “rank” search results, I have a video and a free PDF guide where I break down how the algorithm works that you can get here, but for now all you need to know is that Etsy doesn’t JUST look at your keywords, they also take into consideration things like:
So a listing could be performing really well because of any of those other factors and these are NOT reflected in the SEO grades Marmalead and eRank are giving you.
Based on all of this, 2 things could be happening:
Why? The main reason is what we mentioned just before: you could be using all your tags and respect Etsy’s SEO best practices but if your keywords are not relevant or not bringing the right kind of shoppers to your store – you won’t get sales.
…which is the perfect segue to reason #3 you should not take those grades too seriously.
It’s entirely possible to have a listing with a “D” grade that’s actually doing ok and bringing views and/or sales to your store, in which case – you must leave this listing alone.
I know it’s so tempting, especially if you’re a perfectionist and want to get that “D” to an “A+” but you must resist this urge.
There’s no need to fix what’s working. If you go changing up all your titles and tags just to try and get your grade up, you risk seeing your views drop VERY seriously which is the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve … but also sadly a mistake I see too many sellers make. I actually have an article about this exact issue that you can read here.
I hope this was helpful! Please remember to use those grades as guides but not as a decision-making tool.
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