On Etsy, a buyer finds your wall art with words. The terms they type into search are matched against the words in your title and tags. That makes controlling which words get pushed forward, and which ones never appear at all, an invisible but decisive part of selling. The "Emphasized Words" and "Banned Words" settings inside WallArtTools Store Parameters exist for exactly this: they let you add your own commercial judgment to the titles, tags, and descriptions the AI generates.
What emphasized words do
Emphasized words are terms you want the AI to prioritize when it writes copy. When the AI analyzes an image and proposes a title and 13 tags, it places these words as early and as naturally as possible.
Think of them as your shop's best-selling or most-searched themes. Examples:
- •A niche your shop is strong in: "boho", "mid century modern", "japandi"
- •A concrete use the buyer searches for: "living room wall art", "above bed decor", "nursery print"
- •A product feature that sets you apart: "extra large", "framed canvas", "set of 3"
One caution: an emphasized word is not a magic key. If you force a word that has nothing to do with the image, buyers click but don't buy, which hurts your conversion and your ranking. Only emphasize terms the image genuinely represents.
What banned words do
Banned words protect you in two ways. First, the AI will never generate them. Second, if one slips into the text anyway, it is automatically stripped out. So they work at both the writing and the cleanup stage.
The most common uses:
- •Trademarked or risky brand names: copyright/trademark terms like "Disney", "Banksy", "IKEA"
- •Misleading or unprovable claims: "best", "cheapest", "guaranteed"
- •Competitor shop names, or your own old shop name
- •Generic filler words unrelated to the image that the AI sometimes tends to add
Banning brand names matters most. Etsy can quietly take down a listing, or flag your shop, over a copyrighted term. Adding these words to the list once protects you across hundreds of future uploads.
Using the two together
Emphasized and banned words are two sides of one coin: one says "push this forward", the other says "never touch this". The best results come from tuning both per niche.
A practical setup:
- •Enter your shop's 5-10 core themes as emphasized words.
- •Add every trademarked brand name and exaggerated claim to banned words.
- •Review both lists before a bulk upload (say, 50 images at once), because every uploaded image runs through the same rules.
- •If you run cross-store, keep each shop's niche lists separate; your "boho" shop's emphasis should not match your "minimalist" shop's.
Keeping the lists alive
These lists are not write-once-and-forget. Update them as seasons and trends shift. In autumn you might temporarily emphasize terms like "fall wall art" or "halloween print", then remove them when the season ends. Use Analytics to see which tags bring views and favorites, and promote the ones that work into your emphasized words.
Takeaway and one action
Do this today: open Store Parameters, add your 5 best-selling themes to emphasized words, and add every brand name you can think of plus claims like "best/cheapest" to banned words. Then upload a single image and check the AI's title and tags: confirm the emphasized terms appear and the banned ones don't. This five-minute setup then works for you on every upload that follows.