Neil Waterhouse

Get the Best eBay selling tips, We need to know the eBay selling tips. Most people who have been selling online for some time know that keyword selection is important however… 9 out of 10 eBay sellers have not optimised their keyword selection and are missing out on tons of free traffic and leaving money on the table from missed sales. The third most important best eBay selling tips is “correct keyword selection”.

If you don’t choose the correct keyword phrase, it dramatically effects where your listing appears in not just the eBay search results but also in other search engines like Google, as eBay listings are also indexed on Google.

For SEO (search engine optimisation), keyword selection is by far the absolute most important task to do first as the chosen keywords are used throughout the listing. Choose the wrong phrase or a phrase with low traffic and you are missing out on valuable sales.

Once the correct keyword phrase is selected, it needs to be used for not just the eBay title but for the half a dozen other locations which are required to optimise a listing for the eBay and Google search engines.

The biggest mistake I see eBay sellers making is they “guess” keywords.

Recently I helped a seller called Sue to optimise one of her listings so it would rank higher in the eBay search results. The 1st question I asked her was “what is the keyword phrase that you would like this listing to appear in the top of the search results”? After a long pause, Sue announced she had not considered this question so we went to the Google Keyword tool and found the most popular phrase for her listing. Next we typed the phrase into eBay and found her listing half way down the second page of the search results.

30 minutes later we had moved Sue’s listing to the top of the search results just by choosing the correct keywords and placing them in the relevant places.

Last month I did a presentation for the Sydney eBay sellers group and in the presentation I put up a picture of a lounge room sofa and asked the audience to tell me how they would describe what it was i.e.; their keywords.

After several minutes we had a fair list of keywords i.e. coach, lounge, leather, etc. however after all this brainstorming, the audience and myself had still missed one important keyword ‘Modular’. The point is, we all come from different walks of life and have different vocabulary. Different “words” are top of mind for everybody. Some people see a lounge as a ‘sofa’, some people see it as a ‘modular lounge’ etc. etc.

So… how can we take the guessing out of keyword selection? Should we just look at which keywords other eBay sellers use?

The problem with that strategy is we are assuming other eBay sellers got it right however, in my experience this rarely happens.

We use 2 strategies to find the best keywords.

1. Google’s Keyword Tool is a free resource which tells us not only which “similar” keywords people search for, but also tells us how many times each keyword is searched for every month “popularity”. This tool is brilliant and it is free.

2. Find the best-selling “similar” item to what you are selling and see which keywords the seller is using. Always remember to check eBay in other countries too i.e. Canada, USA, UK, Australia
Other points to note are that eBay allows us to use 80 characters in the title and every extra “relevant” keyword brings more traffic to your listing. EBay quotes that listings with more than 60 characters sell 1.5 times more often.

When constructing the 80 character title, try to only use words which potential buyers will enter into the search box, not words like “RRP” etc.

Please leave a comment below, love to hear from you. 

This might also be interesting for you:

How safe is it for eBay sellers to import from China?

How to market your own web store

Step 2 – How To Sell On eBay

Read More »eBay Selling Tips 3 – How Keywords are chosen makes a huge difference