eBay SEO: How to Optimize your Listing for more Views and Sales

Before getting straight into the SEO (search engine optimization) aspect of selling, let's discuss product analysis; you want to find a low competition niche with a high search volume. In layman terms, you want something easy to sell that many people are looking for. eBay is a great place to start making money on the side or as a full-time job, so you want to make sure you have the right product before putting a ton of time optimizing it.

Finding the Perfect Product

To find the perfect product, search for something that you'd like to sell; since you'll be doing a lot of work around this product, try to find something you find interesting. If you are already selling items on eBay, make sure it's the right product(s) for you by following the advice below.

If you find a lot of results on Amazon and eBay for this item, it might not be the best market to get into; you want to find a niche you know that you can succeed in. These niches would include listings you can quickly overtake with better content (text & images).

Check Google Trends or use an SEO tool like Ahrefs to calculate search volume and the number of people searching for that item every month.

Starting your online store, expect to have a 1% click-through rate, which means if you had 10,000 people view your listing, 100 people would click on the listing to learn more. Of that 100 people, you might get 1% to 7% of people that make a purchase. Which could mean you will earn 1 to 7 sales per month in the first few months.

Add up your marketing expenses, product costs, and eBay fees to ensure you still have a healthy profit margin when you grow your online presence.

eBay's fees are:

11.7% on total amount of the sale up to $2,500 calculated per item & 2.35% on the portion of the sale over $2,500

Finally, ensure you can sell these items on eBay and do not go against the company guidelines.

Example: How to Find Products to Sell

I searched on Ahrefs Content Explorer for websites with low DR (domain rating), English content, eCommerce stores, getting a lot of traffic in the last six months.

From that search, I noticed sketching pencils are popular.

The article on Creative Courses has a lot of page traffic, and the domain rating is relatively low, so it would be easy to compete against.

The keyword "sketching pencils" is medium and has potential traffic.

Next, the search results on eBay do not look that aggressive.

Then go to a website like AliExpress or Alibaba to find products you can purchase and resell on eBay for a profit.

The ideal scenario is to create a bulk order at a highly discounted price and sell these items at a considerable profit margin.

Optimizing your Product Listing

Now that you have your perfect product, it's time to build the ideal eBay listing. When adding a product to eBay, the first information eBay asks for is the categories the product matches.

Categories

Fill out and include as many categories as you possibly can. Do not skip this step without adding as many categories as possible! These categories will help your product show up in more search results.

Title

You will want to craft the perfect title.

A perfect title is concise, descriptive, and includes related keywords. The title must use as many characters within the 80 characters limit.

Creating the perfect title can take a considerable amount of time to prepare, so don't rush the process.

Using a keyword tool can help this strategy.

As you can see in the example above, "easy to use" shading pencils appears to be a consideration for buyers and would be essential to include in the title. It's something I would have never thought of but can easily set you apart from the competition.  

Recommended Settings

Double-check your recommendation settings; this is an easy way to get more traffic. As you can see, with the one setting I have that gives me 48.7k in potential search traffic, you want to add as many settings as possible to increase your possible traffic.

Photos

Add photos that captivate your audience; investing in professional photography or purchasing a lightbox will pay off in the end. Before you upload any images, you should have a quick look at the eBay image guidelines page. This step will save you time if you accidentally upload a picture against the guidelines.

Description

Even though it's optional, the product description is one of the most critical aspects of your listing. You will want to front-load keywords. Front-loading means putting the crucial details, unique information, and keywords at the front of sentences, headings, paragraphs, links, list items and calls-to-action.

If writing isn't your thing, you can use an Artificial Intelligence Writing Tool like Jasper.ai to help you in the process.

Backlinks

Finally, don't depend on eBay being your only source of traffic. Look for ways to have people add backlinks to your product listing. Backlinks and referring domains will increase your organic and referral traffic, which ultimately brings your more sales.

Besides the content you create, backlinks help your listing acquire organic keywords; keyword intern attracts more visitors from Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs). The more traffic you receive, the more likely you will make more sales.

My best advice is to add products and see what works best for you; sometimes, it is trial and error at the beginning. If you have any questions or suggestions about this step-by-step guide, please don't hesitate to contact me.