Auctions

Make Money On EBay While Others Are Scratching Their Heads! By C Van

Aaargh! Why is my competition getting way more hits than mine?

There are several reasons why, but I hope to explain at least the major reason.

Poor titles with a lack of highly targeted keywords

The majority of eBay sellers are completely unaware that they are jeopardising their success through lack of knowledge. Knowledge is POWER and the most effective way to power-pack your auctions is to use highly targeted keywords in your auction titles and descriptions...

Let’s start with your title …

eBay estimates that over 90% of users search eBay by using the basic search feature which means they only search the auction titles.

So what does this mean for me?

Above all else ... it means focus more on your auction titles first and foremost and then consider integrating those same highly targeted keywords into your auction descriptions.

So where do you find these highly targeted keywords and which ones should you use?

The best place to start is with ‘eBay Pulse’ http://pulse.ebay.com/ and browse through the top popular searches in the category where you would like to list your auction using the Category drop-down box. Jot down the list of the top 10.

Now the number of words allowed in your auction titles is limited so be sure to find several popular search terms that you can easily integrate into your auction title remembering to make it sound interesting also – not just a swag of keywords!

You can generally assume that on average, people search for the same terms on eBay as they do in search engines. In light of this, to see how valuable your chosen keywords really are I suggest using the Overture Keyword Selector Tool at http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ to see how popular those keywords/search terms are by the estimated number of times they were searched for in all the major search engines for the past month.

Please bear in mind that these results are not entirely accurate, however they will give you an overview of which keywords are the most important and will be searched for the most.

Enter each search term separately and from the results jot down the top 5 search phrase results for each of the keywords.

Another hot tip is with eBay itself. Go ahead and search for similar items to which you want to list and take note of 3 things.

1. The title at the top of the page – here eBay lists other highly targeted words for your item.

2. Underneath the search box (depending on what you have searched for) you will see ‘related searches’ which can give you more ideas.

3. Be sure to click the check box on the left hand side for ‘completed items’ and then click the search button and have a look for items that have sold similar to yours. When the results are returned, click the column title called ‘price’ to sort by final price.

Make note of the most successful sales and look at their titles. (As a side note, it pays to look at what category they listed in and also anything you can learn from their description, layout etc – remembering of course not to copy their text or photos).

Now you’re ready to strategically integrate those highly targeted keywords & phrases into your auction titles to drive highly targeted traffic to your auctions.

Remember, as I mentioned earlier, be sure to make full use of the best keywords but the title must make sense and be inviting (not just a list of keywords that will get your auction deleted for keyword spamming) – You need to be creative, after all you may get hundreds of visitors from searches but you still need them to click on your title!

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