How long does it take for Etsy SEO to REALLY work? Immediately? 1 month? 3 months? (2024)

Etsy SEO is a hot topic that many of you with Etsy stores work hard to master, so given my line of work, it’s no surprise that I quite often hear this one question:

“How long does it take for Etsy SEO to work?”

So here’s what we’re going to cover in this article:

First, how long it takes for Etsy to know that you’ve made a change to your listing,

Second, how long you need to wait to decide if the changes you have made on your listings have worked or not, and

Finally, how long you can expect it to take for your Etsy SEO efforts to actually turn into views and sales.

Plus, I have a free Guide to Etsy SEO that you will want to be sure to download!

So, ready? Let’s dive in.

You can watch the video or read the written version below.

How Long Does It Take My Etsy SEO Changes To Work?

There has been a lot of confusion on the internet over the years about how long it takes for Etsy to know you’ve made a change inside of your listing.

Some websites say a month, some say 2 months, some say only a week — so how do you know which is right??

Let’s get to the bottom of this.

Step 1: Etsy Registers Your Changes

When you change your Etsy listing, there are a few things that happen.

The first is that Etsy registers your changes.

What I mean by this is that Etsy notices that you have changed up your listing in some way.

This step actually happens very quickly — Etsy will notice you have changed your listing in a matter of minutes, it’s pretty much immediate.

It doesn’t matter if you’ve changed a description, a title, or a tag, Etsy registers that change very very quickly.

Now – registering that change, however, is a different thing than seeing the results of that change in Etsy SEO.

So the next question we’re going to answer is how long do you have to wait before you can tell if those changes had a positive or negative impact on your listing?

Step 2: Those Changes Bring Results To Your Listing

First, let’s get clear on what “results” mean!

The results of any change you make can be positive or negative — but remember, both are progress! Even though you will be aiming for positive results, negative results tell you important things as well.

In general, it actually takes 30 days minimum for you to see the results of your listing change.

Now (contrary to what the internet will have you believe) this isn’t because Etsy hasn’t registered those changes because as I just explained, Etsy registers the changes immediately.

So why do you have to wait 30 days?

This is to give enough time for Etsy to essentially gather some data about those changes.

So for example, if you change your keywords, Etsy needs time to gather enough data to know whether people react well to your listing with the new keywords.

Say one the keywords you’re testing is a long tail keyword that’s only getting a couple hundreds searches a month … you’re not going to get enough data in a few days.

Also, when Etsy shoppers search your new keywords, Etsy will try showing them your listing to see if shoppers engage with it or buy it.

They track shoppers’ reaction to your listing to build what is called the listing quality score, and it takes a while for them to collect enough data to tell them how they want to rank your product when your new keywords are searched.

Although 30 days is the minimum you should wait to decide if the change you made to your listing helped your listing, I actually prefer 45 days — from my experience, it gives you slightly more data on if your change worked or not.

If there was a trend in the month right after you made a listing change that made your new keywords be searched more or less, that possibly could exaggerate the results of your listing change.

Waiting 45 days buffers that possibility and makes sure you aren’t making a decision based on a month where the search term was – for some reason – really high or low.

I also find that those extra two weeks bring a fair bit more data than just waiting 30 days so waiting that extra bit will help you feel a bit more confident interpreting your results and deciding if your listing changes worked.

Which brings us to the next point: making sense of your results!

Step 3: Your Listing Gets More Views and Sales

Once you’ve waited at least 30 days, you get to find out the information you really want to know, which is “did my changes impact my views and sales?”

You’re either going to be saying “Hey COOL! I’m getting more views and sales of my listing!” Or . . . you may be saying “well shoot, my views and sales haven’t improved- so that listing change didn’t help me at all.”

If you are getting more views and sales, then you know that your Etsy SEO is working – woo hoo!

But even if you are not getting more views and sales, that is also a result, because the lack of views IS a “result”, it tells you that something in your strategy – in the changes that you’ve made – is not really working.

So this means you will tweak your keyword strategy, and wait another month to see if that’s effective.

It may take a few rounds of testing and that’s OK, it’s all part of the process. You may spend a month or two or three testing different strategies to see what works and what doesn’t — but by doing it that way you will end up with the best results!

Resist the Temptation To Make This Very Common Mistake. . .

Now I’m guessing some of you are hearing me talk about 1 or 2 or 3 months and you’re probably saying “Oh hell no Deb – that’s too long – I want my results like tomorrow!”

And I want to stop and give you my absolute most important piece of advice in this article which concerns something that you will be very tempted to do.

I see so many makers make this mistake and it absolutely kills their results. It not only ensures they don’t know what’s working and what isn’t, but it also usually takes them longer to actually find what is working and get proper results.

The mistake they make is to rush things and to not be systematic in the way they test the changes they are making with SEO.

Let’s say you go in, you make some changes, and after 2 weeks you don’t really see any results. You start thinking “this isn’t working, I’m going to go in and change a few more keywords.”

So you change some keywords and shortly after you see a slight increase in clicks . . . but it’s also around a long weekend so you aren’t sure if it was the keywords that helped or the long weekend.

Or let’s say you changed your thumbnail image shortly after changing your keyword. And then your clicks go down. And you don’t know if your keyword change caused it, or if your keyword was good but people weren’t clicking because you changed the picture.

By the end of 2 months you’ve changed a bunch of different things at the same time so you have no idea which changes caused the results that you’re seeing. . .

And you have missed an opportunity because in that same time you could have completed 2 rounds of “keyword tests” and know if they worked or not.

You can see that you need to take a scientific approach to testing your SEO or you are going to make it so much worse for yourself!

So if you are tempted to make more changes instead of giving your keyword change at least 30 days to see the results, I want you to hear my voice in your ear saying “NOOOOOO!! Don’t do it!!!”

Ready To Level-Up Your Etsy SEO?

So there you have it!

Now that you understand how long it takes for Etsy SEO to work, you are ready to dive in and use Etsy SEO to get some clicks and purchases on your listings.

I have a very helpful FREE guide for you to download called “The Complete Guide to Etsy SEO,” be sure to check it out!

Thanks for reading, and until next time, aurevoir!