Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your eBay Listings

 

Your title is the most important part of your eBay listing: so take care creating a great title for your auction and make sure your product gets seen by 100% of your target market.

Your chance of achieving multiple bids and unexpectedly high realisations for your listing depends on one main thing: the title you create for your listing. 

 

There's an art to creating winning titles, used by all successful eBayers, and revealed here so you can start attracting an avalanche of keen bidders to your eBay listings.

 

This is why the title is the most important part of your listings: eBay says 70 per cent of members use the site's search boxes to find items they might want to buy. 

 

But the search engine returns only listings containing the actual key words in the title and ignores key words in sub-titles or descriptions.  The exception is where users actually tick the 'sub titles and descriptions' box, which very few do, to add those areas to the search.

 

That's bad news, because:

 

*  Few sellers realise this and waste time taking great photographs and writing detailed descriptions. But if their title doesn't contain relevant keywords the listing will be missed by 70 per cent of potential buyers.

 

*  More than 20 per cent of people search entirely by category (some viewing all listings, most studying just the first few pages).  List in the wrong category and you won't be found by these people even with a great title.

 

Your title must include keywords potential buyers use to find products like yours! 

 

This is how to do it:

 

*  Take a pen and paper and brainstorm words to describe your product, start making a list of key words.

 

*  Study completed auctions for similar products, sort 'highest price first', look for common keywords in the top ranking returns.  Add these to your list.  Vitally Important: Duplicate ALL keywords listed earlier in this and the following steps.

 

*  Think like a buyer, that's easy if you know your product well.  Imagine yourself describing the product to a friend.  Add words used to your list. 

 

*  Find keywords people use outside of eBay to locate items similar to yours.  These searches closely resemble searches used on eBay. 

 

*  Look for sites featuring high in search engine for companies selling products similar to yours.  Go to Google, key in words to describe your product, then click to search.  Next, click to open the first few listings: go to 'View' top of your screen and choose 'Source'.  A mass of gobbledegook will appear. This is html code, and somewhere you'll see keywords responsible for sites appearing high in the rankings.  Add these words to your list.

 

*  On the same list, study the bottom line of early listings for actual eBay sites for products like yours.  These are regular sellers of items like yours and keywords in those listings are the reason they rank high.  Add words used in the title to your list.  Click on 'View Seller's Other Items', right of screen, look for multiple listings of similar items.  Notice any differences in title, add words used to your list.  Spot any listings attracting multiple bids, higher prices, add title words to your list.

 

By now you should have a long list of possible keywords, keep it safe, you will be using it often.

 

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Eleven Quick & East Ways to Kill Competition and Maximise Your Sales and Profits on eBay 

by Avril Harper

Read Here

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Now it's time to make money from your keyword list.

 

You do it like this:

 

*  Get a dozen or so highlighter pens - all different colours.  Starting one word at a time, look for duplicates, use a different colour to highlight any words featuring four or more times in your list.  Add these words to a separate list, ranked most often used, down to least frequent. 

 

*  Starting highest ranking words first, brainstorm titles for your product, include at least three common words.  Use 'telegraphese': eliminate the clutter, delete words like 'a', 'the', 'and'.  Use acceptable abbreviations to save space, for example use

 

& not and

 

/ not or

 

New not **~NEW~**. 

 

Now create as many titles as you can because:

 

*  Where you have several similar products or ongoing same product supplies, it's wise to create different listings for each item, using different keywords to attract maximum interest from eBay's search engine.  Top PowerSellers say, rather than create multiple same product listings, using one title for ten or so products available, reverse the process and create ten different titles, one for each product.  This is best used for Buy It Now and Shop Items or auction items listed sparingly, say at two day intervals.  List auction items together, even with different titles, and bidding will spread across your auctions and restrict finishing prices.

 

*  Study bidding and sales levels for various titles, see which work best, cut poorer performing titles and replace with better performing titles.

 

*  Add unused high ranking keywords to sub-titles.  They won't show in search listings but they will make your listing look bigger, more important and more likely to be opened.

 

*  Be specific!  For example, in 'Doll's, you'll find 'reborn' dolls, looking like real babies.   'Berenguer' describes a particularly collectable type, 'Reborn' is a term commonly used by collectors.  Some potential buyers will use 'Berenguer' or 'Reborn' in their search, some will use both.   Add both to your listing for Reborn Baby Dolls bearing the Berenguer mark and you'll appear in all listings for this hugely collectable, regular price breaking doll.   

 

*  Use every millimetre of space.  Longer titles attract more interest than short ones.   Fill surplus space with power words like 'Limited Edition', 'Rare', 'Unique', 'One Day Sale', 'Stunning', 'New', 'FREE', 'New', 'Proven', 'Guarantee'.  Avoid concocted words like 'Wowee' and 'Yikes' which no one searches for.  They might get your listing opened, once found, but they look unprofessional and might also deter people to click through.  Other silly space wasting techniques to avoid: 'L@@K', '!!!!!!!!', '+++++'.

 

*  Spell check your title and throw in a few misspellings of vital words if space allows. Google says that 33% of all search keywords are misspelled.  Check possible misspellings of each prime keyword at www.fatfingers.com.  Fatfinger listings are mistakes made by sellers, people who should be taking care, you'll probably find many more similar misspellings used by potential buyers.  Make a separate list of misspelled words, add one or more to your title.  'Laptop' is commonly misspelled 'labtop', hence the reason currently 31992 listings in the UK alone have 'labtop laptop' in their titles.  Under Consumer Electronics > Gadgets > Breathalysers (note eBay UK  used 's', in the USA it's 'Breathalyzer') I saw a UK seller using 'Z' but not 's' in his listing.  He doesn't list in the USA, he's unlikely to sell in the UK, so his listing fee is wasted.

 

*  Use acceptable, commonly used, well-recognised abbreviations, like 'PC' and 'P/C' for postcards, 'nr' and 'n/r' for 'no reserve', 'hb' and 'h/b' for 'hardback.

 

So, now you know how to get your listings in front of potentially thousands of  buyers, it's time to make sure your listings are opened and attract bids that will make you the envy of your competitors.  I'll show you how to do exactly that soon.

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