Etsy new Search by Relevance - an experiment!

Looking but not finding? We try to get more proactive about who is finding us on the web!

I have noticed a sharp drop in Sales on Etsy in the past couple of months so I did a search for my items and they were pages deep. Ok, I just did a search for soap and expected to see my items, ones I just listed come up right away, but they were buried! My item "Blood Orange & Rose Artisan Soap" was 3 pages deep in the search but you know who had multiple soap on the first page? The guy who calls his soaps this "Bamboo Soap, Vegan Soap, Unscented Soap, All Natural Soap, Handmade Soap".  Those same words were in the first line of the product description as well!
In August Etsy switched from a "by most recently listed" search to a SEO based relevancy search and I am thinking my listings are just not "relevant" enough!

Yesterday I listed about 8 items on Etsy and noticed they were not getting any hits! With the recently listed search my items would have been in double digit looks within minutes but after 3 hours my numbers were 0-3 looks per item. Yikes!

I started looking around and found a GREAT blog post on the issue on the papernstitch blog, so I have used the guidance in this post to change my Etsy listings. I have to admit I never really knew how SEO worked and this post on How Stuff Works makes it easy!

I have changed all of my product descriptions and titles to include one or more of the following:

Shea Butter Soap, Olive Oil Soap, Clay Soap, Vegan Soap, Moisturizing Soap, Natural Soap, Scented Soap, Herbal Soap, Exfoliating Soap.

I hope it works and will follow up if I see an uptick in views to my items!

? Have you had the same issue with the new way Etsy allows buyers to search items? Have you found a successful method for getting seen?