eBay SEO Tricks: Promoting Your Listings Beyond Cassini!
- You uploaded a listing to eBay.
- You started your first eBay store.
- You are a seasoned eBay seller trying to expand his or her business.
Whatever the case may be, you are looking to expand your revenues. Maybe you feel stuck or like you are treading water or maybe you have actually gained traction in terms of sales but not enough. The bottom line is that you want and need to increase sales but you are not entirely sure how to go about doing this. That is when you intuitively reached the conclusion that eBay is a search engine based site and therefore need to rank higher in results. That is when you figured you would Google ‘eBay SEO tricks’.
I want to tell you that intuition is a very powerful tool and includes a strong component of subconscious intelligence. Your intuition has brought you to the right place in order to understand the best eBay SEO tricks currently at your disposal which I will lay out for you in this post.
eBay SEO Trick # 1 – Build Your Own Blog
Many buyers begin their retail journey on Google and as such eBay SEO has as much to do with ‘general’ SEO as it does eBay-specific SEO. In order for Google to rank your items higher in search results as well as eBay, you want to create blog posts with backlinks to your eBay store.
As far as writing a blog goes, you want to create quality content which genuinely helps and interests your target audience. Once you create blogs which provide value for potential customers I would then recommend linking to your eBay store or specific listings. I do want to say that I would not use more than one of these links per post and I would try to insert these as naturally as possible.
eBay SEO Trick # 2 – Contribute to eBay Guides
eBay has a variety of guides pertaining to different item categories which sellers are welcome to contribute to. I recommend choosing one or more topics from eBay’s guides section which is highly relevant to your target audience. Once you do that, do your best to apply your professional knowledge of your niche and make that knowledge approachable and accessible to the general public. At the end of each one of these eBay guide entries you are able to add a link to your eBay store which helps your SEO in general and can also drive highly relevant traffic to your store and listings.
eBay SEO Trick # 3 – Make Email Marketing Count
eBay has very clear rules as to whom you are able to contact via email and who you cannot. You can only email those people who have purchased an item from your store as well as those who have ‘liked’ or chosen to ‘follow’ your eBay store. In the latter instance you are allowed to send these eBayers your newsletter as long as they choose to ‘subscribe’.
Take advantage of this channel which is open to you as email marketing has been proven to be one of the most powerful and effective marketing channels!
Consider adding a link to your store or to items that you are offering a special promotion on. This is both good in terms of ‘proper’ backlink building and SEO as well as driving high interest traffic with a high conversion probability.
eBay SEO Trick # 4 – Run a Google Adwords Campaign
If you have decided to run your eBay store as a serious eCommerce business then I assume you will not be surprised that investing in your business can have a very positive effect on SEO and conversions. Google as I am sure you already know is the most used and consulted search engine globally, a fact which includes the initiation of many buyer inquiries
I would first of all suggest that you use Google Keyword Planner in order to identify which keywords you want to target with your listings and eBay store. I would then consider running a Pay Per Click (PPC) Google Adwords campaign which you can limit in terms of budget. This is a great way to increase both store and listing visibility, brand awareness as well as SEO and direct conversions.
eBay SEO Trick # 5 – Leverage Your Listing Copy
Listing copy is a marketer’s way of referring to the text which appears in your eBay listing. Many sellers underestimate the importance of this text and very often copy and paste a product description from an external source. This may be the manufacturer’s website or another eBay listing – in any case there is no bigger transgression one can commit in terms of SEO than copying and pasting a body of text. Search engines such as Google and eBay’s Cassini ‘crawl’ text and index it, they are able to very easily detect content which is not unique. Most algorithms are programmed to ‘punish’ items (listings, websites etc) with copied content – in this case you will be doing yourself more harm than good in terms of listing placement.
What you should be doing is creating totally unique and engaging content for your listings which include keywords you have researched (potentially using Keyword Planner ? Totally up to you).
eBay SEO Trick # 6 – Item Specific Are Crucial
Item specifics are crucial to your eBay SEO strategy as buyer-driven filtering is becoming the norm. Let me illustrate this for you with an example. Say you are in the market for a new laptop yet there are so many options and your needs are so specific that you not only want but need to start filtering eBay search results:
· In terms of Price you don’t want to spend over $1,000.
· In terms of make you really don’t like the apple interface and have grown used to Windows and particularly like Lenovo for some odd unexplained reason.
· You work in a design oriented field so you need a computer with excellent graphics and a good graphic card.
· And finally, you are located outside the US and are looking for free worldwide shipping and prefer that the item arrive within the week.
Yes, I agree. Not all of the above are item specifics but the things which are such as make and price can make your listing invisible to potential buyers who filter for a field which you have been lax in filling in. Shipping is also one of the most important aspects buyers filter for usually expecting free shipping so do consider offering that even if the shipping cost is ‘included’ in the final item price.
eBay SEO Trick # 7 – Leverage Keywords in Your Listing Title
The importance of your listing title cannot be overstated. It is like the sign in front of your store – it is usually the first thing a potential buyer notices about a given listing (other than the item picture). But putting customers aside for half a second, titles are uber important as far as search algorithms go. In eBay’s case we are specifically talking about Cassini. And although the intricacies of eBay’s search algorithm have not been disclosed to the general public, one thing is for certain – listing titles matter! When creating the ‘perfect’ SEO optimized listing title first and formostly try and create a title for people – try and thin- how would a potential customer search for this? Would they use a phrase like ‘black turtleneck’ or would they write ‘black polyester cotton blend’ which is most likely what the shirt’s label says and that most sellers just copy directly from item labels. It is most likely that the former is more popular among real customers. Once you have figured this first bit out move on to naturally incorporating keywords from research that you preform.
Summing it up
Although there may not be any proper ‘tricks’ or shortcuts in the world of eBay SEO, there are definitely best practices which can be interpreted as eBay SEO tricks. The list of SEO best practices in this article are relatively straightforward though I understand these changes may be overwhelming especially if you are a seller with tens or even hundreds of listings. Consider first implementing these changes in your worst converting listings first as these are the ones which really need a boost as far as SEO is concerned.
