Listing items for sale on eBay? You absolutely must have a clear understanding about how eBay users find items to buy.
No matter what type of buyer they are, no matter where they come from, they all use the same tool to find auction ads: they use the search bar and they type in general descriptions. This just confirms the importance of your title keywords.
Very rarely do buyers check the "Search Title and Description" check box and then start browsing the more specific results. Heck; the check box isn't even an option on the front page of eBay, you actually have to do an "Advanced Search" to even find that option.
Some buyers do browse categories rather than search, but we're mainly concerned with the majority of buyers here, not the exceptions to the rule.
In case you're unaware, this means that most searchers are ONLY CHECKING YOUR TITLE, not the words in the description area of your ad!
Experience tells me that, since you now know this, you are actually way ahead of 70% of the other eBay sellers out there; and that's a very conservative estimate..!
Now that you have a clear understanding of the importance of your title keywords, here's a priority list for precisely picking the right ones for each of your ads:
You have a maximum of 55 characters allowed for your title and you should try your best to use as many of these as possible to describe your item for sale.
1. Use obvious keywords that are specific to the product you're selling and make sure that they are spelled correctly.
2. Use one or two misspellings of the obvious keywords from the last rule. (Google says that 33% of all searches are misspelled) ...CATCH THAT? One Third! Don't forget this fact.
3. Use one or two general eBay keywords such as "nr", "n/r", "no reserve", "free shipping", or "lot". These are keywords that a lot of pro buyers use in searches.
4. Use other general keywords like "new", "free", "excellent", "pc", "usb", "dvd", "wholesale", or "supplies". You can only use ones that are relevant to the product you're selling, but these are very powerful.
Now, take these rules and create a list on a piece of paper each time you're about to submit an ad. Usually the list is way too big to fit into the title. Once your list is done, start narrowing down the list using the priority structure that I just gave you until the words do fit into the 55 character limit.
If you have more than one of the item to sell and intend to list multiple copies of your ad, be certain to take the time to create different titles for each one. If you don't, and you just use the same title for each copy; you're wasting time and money. Multiple versions of the same ad with different titles for each can really increase your traffic and improve your listings.
It's a form of split-testing, which is a marketing technique designed to perfect ad copy. The concept is to keep "tweaking" your ad copy or title until you achieve the maximum return.
So, in this case we would change the title of the multiple items for each separate auction. If one auction title constantly out-performs the others, keep it and get rid of the least productive title. Keep discarding unproductive titles and retain the most productive titles and eventually you will have some great, hot ad copy!
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