Creating an excellent strategy to reach out to your customers is crucial to finding success on any eCommerce platform. This begins with understanding how the platform works, how buyers find products, and the steps to maintain the momentum. While marketing can be a catalyst too; but if you don’t get your basics right, it will merely be support.
eBay has around 1.7 billion listings. As it offers a great opportunity to sellers, the competition can eventually crush your plans if you lack research. The platform has a search engine algorithm similar to Google. eBay’s search engine ‘Cassini’ operates on multiple parameters when ranking listings. Sellers have to keep those in mind, along with user intentions, when creating user listings. To create top-selling listings on eBay, many sellers opt to outsource eBay listing optimization, as it helps them with the product entry complexities while saving time to focus on core business competencies.
Here are a few quick tips to fix or create an eBay listing that will generate leads and conversion for your online shop. Let’s discuss.
Understand eBay’s Cassini and its SEO
The Cassini algorithm is similar to Google. It analyzes an eBay seller’s product listing title, description’s content, categories, catalog, and images.
To answer a user’s search query, it considers the following information:
- Is the listing providing information as per the buyer’s intent?
- Is the listing’s objective of sales or to educate the buyer?
- Is the listing relevant to the buyer?
Apart from this, eBay’s Cassini also analyzes the seller’s reviews, experience and authenticity.
Therefore, to optimize eBay product listing and get ranked by it in SERP, a seller must fulfill all its criteria. The objective of the listing should not be getting into direct sales but to help the buyer with a focussed, crisp, and factual description of the product.
eBay Product Listing’s Keywords
Keywords are also important in eBay listing optimization, but stuffing the details with all possible keywords won’t help the cause. You can easily identify and divide keywords by dividing eBay listing SEO into two parts – product SEO and seller SEO.
Product SEO deals with the subject’s listing, description, and images. Here helping the customer make an informed decision is the key. Seller SEO includes factors that inform about the vendor’s reputation. It basically depends on how a seller serves its buyers. Metrics like reviews, refund policy, product returns, quality, response time, and customer support form its basis. While you can work on the keywords for your product SEO part, the seller SEO mostly depends on the customer satisfaction you offer. You can try Google keyword planner or any relevant tool to find the right keywords for your eBay product listing.
You can also analyze your category competitors to see what keywords they are using. Generally, successful listings depend on long tail high volume relevant keywords on eBay. But do not overstuff your content with keywords, use them in your title and description. For example, if you’re selling jogging shoes, the title can be – “Skechers Mesh Black Jogging shoes, size 12, US for sale”.
Here, Skechers Mesh Black Jogging shoes is the main keyword. ‘For sale’ is the LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) keyword, and it also has available size, color, and location in the title.
eBay Product Title Optimization
Most sellers stuff keywords in the title, losing their meaning and usability for a buyer. Your product title should have the exact information like brand name, model number, product description, size, and color.
Use long tail keywords or maximum of three short keywords that can help buyers understand your product.
eBay Product Image Optimization
eBay allows 12 images per listing. Sellers can buy more image spaces if required. Every top-selling eBay listing has awesome product photos that describe the item to consumers.
Take high-quality professional images, and show every aspect of your product to the buyer. Follow eBay’s image guidelines to take photos.
A product image can cover:
- Every side or angle of the product
- Images of accessories if applicable
- Constituents of the product
- Infographics explaining the product or its usage
Split test images to find the best scoring ones, this will help you use the best suitable photos.
Creating a User-Friendly Product Description on eBay
The product description will list all the features in detail. As this is also analyzed by Cassini, you cannot afford to be careless with the part. A great product description is sketched around its buyers.
Detailed, engaging, and accurate content is appreciated by eBay too. A product description includes detailed specifications, weight and size dimensions, details of any accessories or inclusions in the package, the make and material details, warranty and service details, and customer support system.
Define your target audience and write crisp and focused content keeping them in mind. Keep the language simple with an informative tone. A detailed listing that covers every point per a buyer’s perspective has greater chances of appearing in search results. eBay’s goal is to present itself as a legitimate platform for consumers, and an informative product listing helps achieve the same. Sellers can also try a split testing method to find the best listing.
How To Get Reviews on eBay Product Listings?
There is no straightforward method to get positive consumer feedback on your eBay product listings except requesting your buyers for reviews and ratings. But why will a buyer devote time to grant your store a positive review? You can inspire them by providing proactive and warm customer service.
The following tips can help you improve your buyer’s experience:
- Offering free shipping service.
- Facilitating buyers with a legitimate return policy.
- Offering justified prices.
- Maintaining a quick and trackable delivery system.
- Maintaining a customer complaint redressal and support system.
A positive review is important for seller SEO on eBay. A good customer service will instigate buyers to leave a positive review that will help improve your ranks as per Cassini.
Conclusion
While the article above tries to gather all crucial factors that can help you optimize eBay product listing and generate better sales. The basics is to target eBay’s search engine optimization and stick to consumer satisfaction, whether it is through services or product listing. Sellers can also engage eBay listing services or outsource eBay listing optimization, if they find the process complex.
All in all, empathizing with the consumer will be the key to top-ranking and better selling eBay listings.
Author Bio
Mike Wilsonn is a content strategist at SunTec India with a specialization in eCommerce and Amazon product description writing. He has 5+ years of experience as a B2B content creator and has written numerous informative pieces to help sellers make sense of the continuously evolving eCommerce landscape.