How to Drive Traffic to Your eBay Store
Search Engines Love eBay
If there was a battle for Google’s love, Wikipedia and eBay would be tough competitors. Spend five min
utes searching on the Internet’s leading search engine and what will you find? Wikipedia and eBay listings in the search results. This might be slightly exaggerated, but not by much. Good news for eBayers. . .better news if you know SEO.
Anyone familiar with selling online knows how much direct traffic (without search engines) eBay receives. Using search engines to drive traffic to your eBay store will only multiply visitors and sales. Even greater news: you don’t have to be a search engine pro to utilize these techniques. If you haven’t noticed, your store comes with customizable SEO features.
Remember, some products automatically show up inside the top search engines. However, starting an SEO campaign for your eBay store will assist in multiple areas:
- Help your eBay store rank for specific keywords and keyword phrases and
- Create a solid long tail SEO plan for your products.
Let’s look at the features your eBay store is equipped with, and a few creative ways to attract more search engine attention.
Custom Pages are Key
As mentioned above, eBay has a number of built in SEO features. Sometimes users think websites, such as eBay, try to make things look daunting . . . especially when dealing with various marketing features. Don’t forget, they want you to succeed. Money you = money for them. Most of eBay functions like a standard content management system.
Basically, you have the option of creating pages to show off your favorite products, tells users who you are and answer any frequently asked questions. Even though your options are limitless, these three changes are also search engine friendly.
Many top eBay stores have custom pages for each category, with more pages for individual sections. Yes, this makes life easier on the customer. Yet, it also translates into more pages for search engines to rank.
You can find the custom page option under “Manage Store” and click the “Custom Pages” link.
The Quest for Keywords
This is where the proverbial SEO rubber meets the road. Once your pages are created, you get to do a little more optimizing. eBay allows pages to have individual keywords. Instead of having a standard page Title Tag, add in a primary and secondary keyword for search engines to see.
For example, if you’re a baseball card vendor your root keyword might be “baseball cards”. . . with the secondary keyword as something like “buy baseball cards.” You get the point. Be sure and do this for every custom page you create. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t utilize every option for driving traffic.
Again, some of your products will be included in specific search engine queries. However, adding in keywords to create a centralized landing page will only increase views to other products.
This option can also be found under the “Manage Store” section and click on “Search Engine Keywords.”
A Little Creativity Helps Greatly.
The key to driving traffic to your eBay store can be summed up w
ith one word: blog. Yes, the kind where you have to step outside your comfort zone and actually write something meaningful. Creating a blog on eBay, or going the private route, will only increase sales and customer loyalty.
Choose either Blogger or WordPress and get to work. Start writing about your products, why you sell them and any other information that relates to your widgets. If you are in a niche enough industry, your blog should start getting ranked for related keywords. This is the goal, of course.
Next, start linking to your eBay store from your blog. Go through your posts and link anytime you’ve mentioned specific products or categories. This isn’t supposed to be an SEO farm where you have auto-generated content about Product X. Not a chance. The blog should be quality and inviting. Why would someone want to buy products recommended by a lousy blog? Don’t forsake engagement for ranking. You need both.
This is more of an indirect way of getting direct traffic to your eBay store. Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it? Regardless, search engines are being utilized . . .and you reap the benefits.
One important aspect to remember when doing SEO for eBay stores is this: search engines rank pages not websites. All of your product pages and custom pages need to have maximum SEO friendly content and exposure. All relevant information you include with product listings and custom pages, all play into search rank. All of your products might not get ranked for the primary and secondary keywords, but other unique phrases and specifics are included.
Summary
Use eBay’ SEO features, or go it alone. Its your choice. How about both? The above tutorial should point you in the right direction for achieving SEO bliss. . .well, something like that.
Remember, the goal is to trick out eBay (using their features) as much as possible. Their success is based on how many sales and customers you bring. Use all features available.
And, of course, use non-eBay features, such as blogging, to drive traffic and sales to your products. All of these tips, including ones you come up with, should result in a more satisfying online auction experience. We can only hope.
References
eBay.com, https://pages.ebay.com/education/SEO-eBay-Store/index.html
Author’s own experience
Image Credit: EA/FreeDigtalPhotos
Image Credit: Photostock,FreeDigitalPhotos
