Despite 50 percent of online
purchases being researched via a search engine, most eBay sellers ignore the
potential of search engines to drive traffic to their listings. By optimizing
your eBay Store, your products could improve their rankings in the search
results on major search engines and boost your sales.
High rankings can drive huge
amounts of traffic to your products, and even with limited resources, it is
still possible to apply techniques that will increase the rankings of your eBay
Store and listings.
How Search Engines Work
When looking for a product, a
customer visits a search engine and enters a search term or keyword, for which
the search engine produces a list of results that it considers most relevant.
It is by understanding how this list of results is produced that your eBay page
can be optimized. The ranking of a web page for a keyword depends on three
things:
* The position and frequency of
the keyword on the web page: When producing results for a search term, search
engines will rank your pages based on the keywords they contain and their
prominence on the page.
* The content of the page's
HTML tags: The search engine also looks at the content of the title and meta
tags of the page's HTML code. Humans don't read "meta tags" - they
are included on a web page to help search engines understand what the page is
about, so having good meta tags that describe your website pages is important.
An article from Search Engine Watch explains how to use meta tags if you want
to dig into this topic in more depth (http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=2167931).
* The links going to that web
page: Search engines consider an inbound link as a vote of popularity. Google,
for example, gives each web page a score of 1 to 10 (called a PageRank)
depending on the number and origin of inbound links. For a given search, the
page with the higher PageRank will appear higher in the list of search results.
Here's how Google explains its PageRank technology (http://www.google.com/corporate/tech.html).
When listing on eBay you have
direct control over the content - and hence the keywords - you include.
However, you can only access the page meta tags indirectly, through configuring
your Store and listings.
Step 1: Choose Your Keywords
The first stage of search
engine optimization is to choose effective keywords. To select keywords, put
yourself in the shoes of your customers and consider what keywords you would
enter if you were looking for your products online.
eBay Store traffic reports are
useful as they contain the search terms that users are entering in order to
find your listings (http://pages.ebay.com/help/specialtysites/traffic-reporting-basics.html). Note
that eBay Stores are called Shops in the UK.
You can also use Yahoo's
keyword tool (http://inventory.overture.com) for
popular web search keywords and eBay Pulse (http://pulse.ebay.com) to
find popular eBay searches. Choose more general keywords for your eBay Store,
and choose product-specific keywords for your individual listings.
For example a PDA seller might
choose Palm, Handheld and PDA as keywords for their Store. For the listings
they also use the keywords referring to the item model number and features.
Step 2: Optimize Your eBay
Presence
Repeating a keyword in a number
of different places such as your Store URL, title and item description will
increase the search engine's perception of how relevant your web page is to a
particular keyword. However, be careful not to go overboard - "keyword
spamming" is penalized by the search engines. Your description should also
be clear and readable.
Choose Your eBay Store Name
Your Store name appears in your
eBay Store's URL and ideally it should contain your most important keywords.
For example, a bike Store seller might choose "Mountain-Bikes-UK,"
which would give a Store the URL http://stores.ebay.co.uk/mountain-bikes-uk.
Optimize All Store Pages
The title you give your product
is very important, as it also appears in the "title" tag of the
listing web page, so you should include your search engine keywords.
Your product descriptions
should also include your keywords. Search engines attach the most importance to
words in titles and bolded words, so ensure that you have placed you keywords
prominently. For example a good item title would be Palm T3 Handheld PDA New
Boxed rather than Palm T3 New Boxed as the latter can not be found for searches
for PDA or handheld.
You should also create custom
pages for your eBay Store. Custom pages are a set of unique pages you can
create or edit for your Store to help showcase items and special promotions,
describe the history of your business, etc. (http://pages.ebay.com/help/stores/contextual/managing-custom-pages.html). Be
sure and include effective keywords on your custom pages too.
Every seller should have an
About Me page, and this is another good place to include your keywords and
links to your eBay Store (http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/about-me.html).
eBay now has a new feature
called eBay My World that goes one step beyond About Me pages (http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/ebay-myworld-ov.html).
Optimize Your eBay ID
eBay includes your User ID in
the "title" tag of your About Me page and feedback pages. Your eBay
User ID should reflect something about the product you sell, preferably
including your most important keyword. Try and choose a memorable and
individual eBay ID, as this will help customers find your eBay presence by
searching. For example an eBay name like "PDA-Wonderland" will be
easier to find in Google than "Online-Deals."
Optimize Your eBay Store Keywords
In the "Manage my
Store" area, eBay enables the selection of search engine keywords. These
keywords appear in the "title" tag for your Store pages, and so it is
important that you specify relevant keywords for each page. Also make sure to
include your keywords in your Store's description, as this appears in the
description meta tag of your eBay Store pages.
Reviews and Guides
eBay Reviews and Guides (http://reviews.ebay.com) are a
great way of driving traffic to your listings, from both inside and outside
eBay. Articles you write for eBay's Reviews and Guides containing your chosen
keywords and linked to your eBay Store have the potential to drive traffic to
your listings.
Use Search Tags on Your Content
Pages
eBay recommends using
"search tags" in your content pages, such as eBay My World, Blogs and
Reviews & Guides. Search tags identify topics and concepts in your content.
"So if you wrote about Pez dispensers in your blog, you could use tags
like "Pez," "dispensers" and "collectibles" to
increase your visibility in search results" (http://pages.ebay.com/help/account/search-tags.html).
Step 3: Build Links to Stores
and Listings
To improve the search-engine
ranking of your eBay Store, create as many links to your eBay Store as
possible. Encourage your business partners to link to your eBay Store. Enter
your Store into online directories such as Listmystore.com (http://www.listmystore.com). Do
not ignore the potential of links within eBay to boost your ranking - always
link to your eBay Store from your listings and also from all of your guides or
reviews.
Step 4: Track Your Performance
Once your have optimized your
eBay presence, it is important to constantly track your performance and make
improvements. All eBay Store sellers have access to traffic reports that allow
you to see the keywords used to find your listings and the search engines that
driving traffic to your Store (http://pages.ebay.com/help/specialtysites/traffic-reporting-basics.html). If
you wish to see more in depth statistics, use Sellathon (http://www.sellathon.com), which
can give you the traffic data for individual listings and pages.
Conclusion
eBay has set up a section that
describes the basics of optimizing your eBay Store for search engines (http://pages.ebay.com/education/SEO-introduction/index.html). Use
eBay's tips along with this article to optimize your Store. If your products
show up in shopper's search results on Google, Yahoo and other search engines,
it's bound to help increase your sales.
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