How To Pick Gift And Holiday SEO Keywords

Best gift and holiday keywords to use in your Etsy shop or ecommerce store! Data based info on keyword research to sell more during the holiday season.

I have a great little retail Etsy Shop called So Glamorously Vintage that I am gearing up for the Christmas rush. With that in mind, I want to know which keywords people might be using to search for presents for their loved ones, friends and colleagues.

With that in mind I am checking to see EXACTLY which words are going to work best at a macro level (big) and at a micro level (small) for Gift and Holiday SEO Keywords.

I am going to use three tools to check this out:

• Marmalead – my FAVORITE Etsy SEO tool (promo)
• SEM Rush – great for finding seed keywords and things I haven't thought of (promo)
• Google Trends – which has lots of OLD data to help me do my research

That will be enough for me to start to figure things out.  They are in general order from the most searches to the least searches. Don't forget, sometimes being the best optimized for a less competitive keyword can get you more sales than being poorly optimized for a big keyword.

The Data

Keywords with a number after them have come from Google's Keyword Planner (I use Long Tail to make this easier). I have marked these with (LTP) for Long Tail Pro.

Views come from Marmalead and show how many have occurred over the preceding month.

The Results

General

personalized gifts – 74,000 (SEM), 679,051 views (ML) – trending slightly down from 2010 (GT)
personalized gift – 679,054 (ML) – stabilized down from 2011 (GT)
personalised gift – 679,054 (ML) – consistent upward trend (GT)
unique gifts – 27,100 (SEM), 701,104 (ML) – trending down since 2005 (GT)
cool gifts – 9,900 (SEM), 153,837 (ML) – super stable since 2005 (GT)
best gifts – 138,963 (ML) – slowly trending up (GT)
unique gifts ideas – 6,600 (SEM), 91,269 (ML) – trending slightly down from 2010 (GT)

Christmas

christmas gift ideas – 49,500 (LTP), 233,307 (ML) – stabilized down from 2010 (GT)
christmas gifts – 27,100 (LTP), 1,561,446 (ML) – slight tip in 2013, moving up (GT)
christmas ideas – 12,100 (LTP), 24,758 (ML) – consistently up from 2011 (GT)
good christmas gifts – 8,100 (LTP), 124,377 (ML) – slight downward (GT)
unique christmas gifts – 6,600 (LTP), 191,595 (ML) – consistent downward slide (GT)
cool christmas gifts – 5,400 (LTP), 157,745 (ML) – generally up since 2008 (GT)

General

gift ideas – 40,500 (LTP), 1,333,172 (ML) – super stable since 2008 (GT)
best gifts for ideas – 14,800 (LTP) – trending up since 2005 (GT)
cool gifts – 9,900 (LTP), 153,837 (ML) – super stable since 2005 (GT)

For Women

gift ideas for women – 27,100 (LTP), 135,638 (ML) – slightly down from 2013 (GT)
gifts for her – 18,000 (LTP), 1,773,033 (ML) – consistently up from 2010 (GT)
gift for her – 1,787,528 (ML) – consistently up since 2005 (GT)
gifts for women – 14800 (LTP), 409,717 (ML) – trending up since 2009 (GT)
unique gifts for women – 6,600 (LTP), 79,819 (ML) – peaked in 2014 (GT)
best gifts for women – 6,600 (LTP), 123,577 (ML) – trending up since 2005 (GT)
top gifts for women – 2,900 (LTP), 364,717 (ML) – slightly down from 2013 (GT)
cool gifts for women – 2,400 (LTP), 161,478 (ML) – stable since 2012 (GT)
christmas gifts for women – 2,400 (LTP), 112,311 (ML) – increased since 2007 (GT)
great gifts for women – 2,400 (LTP), 20,236 (ML) – down from 2013 (GT)
women gift ideas – 1,300 (LTP), 1,377,084 (ML) – slightly down from 2013 (GT)
christmas gift ideas for women – 1,300 (LTP), 175,838 (ML) – big drop from 2013 (GT)

For Men

gifts for men – 90,500 (LTP), 1,477,948 (ML) – up from 2005, stable since 2012 (GT)
gift ideas for men – 33,100 (LTP), 75,669 (ML) – good term since 2010 (GT)
best gifts for men – 14,800 (LTP), 154,955 (ML) – consistently up since 2005 (GT)
gifts for him – 14,800 (LTP), 1,789,181 (ML) – super consistently good since 2010 (GT)
unique gifts for men – 9,900 (LTP), 49,529 (ML) – up and down since 2009 (GT)
christmas gifts for men – 8,100 (LTP),  270,553 (ML) – up since 2007 (GT)
gifts for guys – 8,100 (LTP), 91,845 (ML) – already up for 2015, good mover (GT)
gadgets for men – 6,600 (LTP), 111,851 (ML) – similar since 2012 (GT)
mens gifts – 6,600 (LTP), 1,185,550 (ML) – big jump up in 2014-15 (GT)
great gifts for men – 5,400 (LTP), 12,946 (ML) – down from 2012 (GT)
mens gift ideas – 4,400 (LTP), 85,392 (ML) – slightly up from 2011 (GT)
christmas gift ideas for men – 4,400 (LTP), 170,372 (ML) – slightly down from 2013 (GT)

My thoughts on gift keywords

Okay, after looking at numbers all morning, I have come up with some observations!

Presents as a search term are WAY down the list (the generic christmas presents is the first one to show up at 18,100 searches). People are looking to give “gifts”.

Speaking of “gifts”, while a few of the macro level searches do have “gift” the overwhelming majority of popular terms are “gifts” related.

While there are slight variations in data, it does seem like Etsy treats all the semantic variations the same – for example, personalized gift, personalized gifts AND personalised gift all come up with relatively the same views. This means that I will focus on using only one form of this and saving some of my other tags or words for branching out.

Whoa does Etsy hit it out of the park for “christmas gifts” views… over a million!

Unique is a term that people are using when searching Etsy. “Unique gifts” had a higher search volume on Etsy comparatively than it did on Google.

Gift ideas is BIG, 1.3 Million on Etsy

Gift and Gifts For Her is even bigger 1.7 Million

I was super surprised that “top gifts” is better than “best gifts” by 3X and “cool gifts” is slightly better in the Marmalead search

The overwhelming thing that I find when comparing Google to Etsy is the buying intent of searches. For example, “gifts for her” is a huge term on Etsy and smaller set on Google. When searchers are on Etsy, they are not looking for how to make things, DIY or anything else. They are looking for products to BUY and that is what I think makes the tremendous difference in some of the terms.

Want more? Check out my Ultimate Guide To Etsy SEO or use my SEO Worksheet For Etsy Sellers.