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When it comes to selling on Etsy, you have probably heard a lot about different tools in the space to help you develop your SEO strategy on Etsy. Many companies have popped up to offer additional insights that you just cannot find directly on the platform that you are selling on and these can be crucial for your Etsy success.
With that said, there are free versions of Sale Samurai, Erank, and Marmalead, but each one is going to cost money if you want to get the full versions that are not limited (Sale Samurai offers a full version trial).
Since you may just be getting started with your Etsy shop, you may be wondering if these kind of keyword tools are worth it, and if they are, which one should you go with?
Glad you asked!
Let’s get into it!
Etsy Search Engine Optimization
Before we really dive into the differences between these tools, we have to take a bit of time to talk about Etsy SEO, which simply stands for Search Engine Optimization. These tools primary focus is to help you as an Etsy seller get the most visibility as possible on the platform.
This is not ALL these tools do, but to really understand an Etsy SEO strategy, consider these crucial steps:
SEO Strategy:
The first part of any SEO strategy is to brainstorm and come up with ideas while doing keyword research to find search terms and keywords that customers (people purchasing items on Etsy), are using to find products.
You then will want to pick out the RIGHT keywords from this list in order to get in front of the customers that are actually buying!
Once you find the right keywords, you will then want to implement these keywords into your listings. This means you will want to launch new listings with the keywords/tags that you found that are most relevant and get searched for, or you will want to go into your Etsy shop and edit the listings you already have for increased visibility.
Then, once you have the SEO keywords implemented into your listing, you will want to monitor your Etsy shop to see if the process has worked for your business. You can then repeat the process over again, tweaking and improving on the research you did, to make sure that the long tail keywords you added to your listings are giving you increased sales.
This entire process CAN be a bit tedious, but you are really shooting in the dark if you are not taking advantage of any of the Etsy SEO software tools available in the market today.
Think about it, if you are not using anything to optimize your Etsy shop’s SEO, you are literally just guessing on what keywords you think will work, and not basing that on any sort of data.
That is where Etsy keyword tools like Sale Samurai, Erank, and Marmalead come into play.
They may not be necessary if you have already figured out how to make 6 figures a year on the platform, but for anyone started looking to use cold hard data to get results, they should be a tool in your arsenal.
Brainstorming SEO Keywords
When it comes to brainstorming SEO keywords, all 3 tools in the list have a basic search for a seed keywords, where they will then display other keywords. Something to keep in mind when looking at some of these screenshots is that all 3 of these tools connect to Etsy to help pull back some of this information.
For this example, lets go with “dog bone” as the seed keyword.
When you do a search on Sale Samurai, you will see this:
This shows us the keyword that we entered in, the search volume per month, and the competition on the right hand side. When the competition is above 50,100, this tells us that Etsy is saying there is over 50,100 products (this is how Etsy reports the number of products over 50,100).
Sale Samurai also gives us the Click Through rate, google search volume, Google CPC and a bunch of keyword suggestions that we can dig into.
On the left hand side, Sale Samurai displays the number of times a tag was used in the TOP selling designs which is super crucial information. This is useful because we know that the products that are getting the most visibility for those keywords, are using these tags throughout the best selling listings.
Erank on the other hand, is reporting a different average searches per month, and says the competition is 41,739.
An easy way to see if this is correct, is to head over to Etsy and take a look at that keywords and then check the total number of results:
Since this is over the 50,100 products that Etsy reports, Erank is off here and is not pulling their information back from Etsy.
Erank does however offer you the ability to export different keywords if you scroll down with the average searches, click through rate, and Google CPC.
That being said, if they are off with the number of products being displayed, can this data be trusted?
How do both of these tools compare to Marmalead then?
Taking a look at the same keywords, we can see that the searches are much different:
However, Marmalead does give more information on shipping and prices of the top selling products if you do scroll further down the page:
This is something that Erank does not have on their search page.
Marmalead also offers the popular tags and listings from the top sellers for these keywords, so this is a plus.
Sale Samurai also offers this information:
Between the 3 tools, it would look like Sale Samurai and Marmalead come out in the lead, but Sale Samurai does offer 1 thing that the other tools do not: a way to analyze induvial listings directly from the search page.
For this reason, Sale Samurai comes out ahead for brainstorming SEO Keywords and tags.
Analyzing Your Shop
Another big component of being successful on Etsy is always taking a look at your own shop to see where you can make changes that would benefit sales.
All 3 tools allow you to connect your Etsy shop directly to the SEO tool in order to bring back data that could be useful for your business.
Out of all 3 of these tools however, only Erank and Sale Samurai let you connect a shop and later remove it. Marmalead will make you email them to disconnect your shop if it has been connected with another account. For this reason, we will only be talking about Erank and Sale Samurai.
Erank splits out all of the tools for your shop into multiple different pages (which is not necessary at all).
You have pages for a tag report, delivery status, sales map, sales report, spell checker, spotted on Etsy, and Monitor.
The tag report will tell you how many times a tag was used with searches per month which is useful. The delivery report will show you what products were delivered (which you can see in Etsy anyway, so we are not sure why this is useful). The sales map is pretty cool to see, but you must click a button to actually have the sales map load in. The rest of the tools will just lead you to another page to track keywords, or spell check your listings.
Sale Samurai keeps all of your shop pages on a single page with tabs. This is better put together to display the information you may be looking for.
You can connect a shop and disconnect a shop from the same page with a click of a button.
It will then display the active listings you have on each shop, missing tags, total views, and if you are missing any images for each listing.
Simply clicking on the missing tags or missing images will immediately show you an opportunity of which listings you can edit to increase visibility on your products.
On the right hand side, it will show you the products you have in your store, the price and shipping days, but more importantly, how many views and likes each product is getting along with a link to examine each product further.
We find this way more useful than the other tools available, and don’t think they didn’t forget about the sales map!
There are tabs at the top which allow you to switch to the sales map to show exactly where your products sold from, the number of orders and sales, as well as a button to share this information on social media which is great to see:
Sale Samurai easily wins this one hands down.
Creating a Listing
Wouldn’t it be great if you could create a listing with the optimization and keywords you found INSIDE of these softwares and push the listing directly to Etsy so you have all of the information in a single place?
We think so too!
After using all 3 of these tools though, only Sale Samurai gives the ability to fully create, and push a listing to Etsy.
The other tools offer listing audits, but no way to edit directly inside of the interface. This is a huge win for Sale Samurai:
Competition Analysis
Something you should always be on the lookout for is what other sellers in your market are doing (to see if you need to make similar changes, or need to model some part of your business on theirs).
Once again, Marmalead does not seem to offer any tool to allow you to look at the competition shops (only keywords against each other).
Erank and Sale Samurai both offer options to track shops and look at the competition.
Erank gives you the ability to see all of the Etsy Top Sellers on the marketplace.
Clicking on this will show you categories, but the top sellers on Etsy as well as the shops with the most sales the day previously.
This information is really helpful if you are in the same category as some of these large shops and something that Sale Samurai does not offer.
Erank also offers the ability to add different shops as competitors, and then view their results over time, showing daily sales, 7 day sales, and total sales/active listings.
Sale Samurai on the other hand, offers the ability to add shops, look at total sales, listings, and likes (something Erank does not show)…as well as age of the shop.
Clicking on the details button will open up the sales/likes/active listings popup to show you how the shop is performing over time in a nice interface:
While we prefer the interface of Sale Samurai, the addition of the top selling shops of the day and top selling shops of yesterday in Erank makes them win this one.
Etsy SEO Tool Pricing
Pricing is typically a large concern for people who are just getting started with selling on Etsy and less so if you are a veteran seller.
Marmalead is by far the most expensive plan in the list:
They do NOT offer a free version, or a free trial, and are double the price of the other tools (with the least amount of options once you are inside).
Sale Samurai comes with a 3 day trial with the monthly option being $9.99 per month after the trial is complete:
Something to note here, is that the 3 day trial has FULL functionality, something that Marmalead does not offer, and that Erank limits results.
Erank pricing looks the best:
However, you will notice that there is a free plan, but this free plan has very limited functionality.
Even if you upgrade to a basic or pro account, you still have limitations on what you can do each day.
For someone that is looking for a tool and are really diving in, limitations are never good. Sale Samurai or Marmalead do not limit what you can do once you are inside.
For this round, we would go with Sale Samurai or Marmalead if you are willing to pay double the price.
The Fluff Argument
When we use software, we like to have data available to us for our Etsy shops, without any of the additional “fluff”.
Marmalead and Sales Samurai both offer great interfaces with the data that you WANT.
They offer that data, and that’s it.
Erank on the other hand, seems to have the same amount of tools, but split across 100 different pages.
We think they are doing this to make their tool look more inclusive or “larger”, but 90% of the tools you see once you are inside will NOT be used, making all the extras a bit of a waste if you are paying.
We like how Sale Samurai and Marmalead lay out their UI in an easy to read and use platform.
Research ON Etsy Directly
One of the things that EVERY Etsy seller is doing if they are using an Etsy SEO keyword tool or not, is doing their research directly on Etsy.
They go to Etsy.com, type in keywords, look at listings, and look at competition.
While all 3 platforms are great, we noticed that Sale Samurai has a chrome extension that assists in research ON the platform we are selling on.
You would think this would be included in all of the tools, but only Sale Samurai has it, and it’s pretty neat.
To use it, just install the extension, head to Etsy, and all of a sudden, your results from the drop down menu start to show the search volume per month for each keyword!
Not only that, but on the right hand side, you can click on the numbers that will open up the extension and show hundreds of more keywords to get ideas or go after:
This tool has an incredible amount of filters, shows search volume, competition, and a bunch of great keywords that you can download on your computer and take a look at later.
Since no other tool offers this, this makes Sale Samurai seriously stand out!
Are These Etsy SEO Tools Worth it?
When it comes down to it, is it really worth using an Etsy keyword tool like Sale Samurai, Erank, or Marmalead?
The answer is: Absolutely!
All of these keyword tools are incredible helpful.
Each of them offers different sets of tools at different price points. What it really comes down to though, is can you use these to get more visibility that leads to more sales for your Etsy shop?
You sure can!
We have extensively used all of these tools during our Etsy journey, and in the end, the one that we ended up keeping is Sale Samurai.
We do like a lot of what Erank has to offer, and think that Marmalead is a bit on the expensive side with the least amount of tools at our disposal.
We would recommend that you try out Sale Samurai (it’s 100% free for 3 days), and give it a shot.
Whichever one you go with though, you should be able to get a good amount of value and insights out of them for your Etsy shop.
Good luck!