eBay Selling Tips – Item Titles

Overview

The eBay title is sometimes given little thought by sellers who want to list their items as quickly as they can. As we will show, however, it is essential that you give plenty of thought to your titles if you want to maximise your listings visibility on eBay.

Title

Your items title on eBay is important for two fundamental reasons;

1. It tells eBay what type of product you are selling, so they can list it in search results for searches relating to your item.

1. It gives basic information to your buyers about your product, so they can decide whether they want to find out more information by clicking on it.

This sounds very simply, but I still see a large amount of listings with very badly written titles, making them very hard to find for potential buyers to find. And when these listings are shown, they get very few click-throughs as they do not look appear to the browser.

So let’s consider what you need to do to get your listing seen, and get a high click-through rate on search results;

Getting your listing shown

You need to make sure your title includes the keywords that your customers will be searching for on eBay. For example if you were selling ‘jiffy bags’, then you might think a title such as ’100 x C2 Jiffy Bags’ would be an appropriate choice.

However, what you might not be aware of this many people will also search for ‘Padded Envelopes’, ‘Bubble Envelopes’ or ‘Mailers’ in addition to ‘Jiffy Bags’. In these cases, your listing may rank poorly in search results, which means you could be missing out on a lot of potential traffic and custom.

In order to avoid this problem, you should do two things. Firstly, try and think what other keywords and phrases people might use to find your listing. Don’t forget to include human error in your calculations as many people misspell keywords in their haste. For example, would people search for Aladdin or Alladin when trying to find the classic Disney film?

Secondly, research what keywords and phrases your competitors are using to drive traffic to their listings. I am not suggesting you copy them word for word (more on this shortly) but you should certainly take some inspiration from them, especially those that are doing particularly well!

So in our Jiffy Bag example, we may opt for a title such as ’100 x C2 Jiffy Bags – Padded Envelopes Mailers’ to make sure that our listing shows up for searches like ‘padded envelope’

Keep it relevant

While you should definitely include multiple, descriptive keywords to make full use of the 55 character limit on eBay titles, do NOT over do it!

You need to keep it relevant, as getting hits to your listing for unrelated words is a waste of the buyer’s time – they will simply get irritated and leave your listing. It is also against eBay’s terms and conditions which state that you should not; ‘Include brand names other than the specific brand name used by the company that manufactured or produced the item you are listing’

A classic example of this would be if you are selling a Sony MP3 Player – Many people would choose to spam their title with Ipod related keywords giving a title such; ‘Sony XYZ MP3 Player (Ipod,, Nano, Mini, Touch, 20gb)

This is counterproductive, as the buyer has clearly stated ‘Sony’ and not ‘Ipod’ in their search query so your listing is not a relevant result. You should consider replacing these words with some engaging copy in order to make your listings stand out on search results.

Give Buyers a reason to click

Once you have maximised your chances of appearing in eBay’s search results, it is essential that you give your buyers a reason to click on your listings and not your competitors.

For example, if someone is looking for Jiffy Bags on eBay and everyone else’s listings are the same price, which one are they more likely to click on? The one which simply gives a list of generic keywords, or the one that gives an incentive to buy from them?

Let’s think back to what we said about using your competitor’s titles for inspiration rather than simply copying them. The aim here is to differentiate from other listings so they catch the browsers eye, not emulate another companies listing. So, if your competitor is advertising ‘Next Day Delivery’ you could use ‘Free Shipping’ or ‘Buy 2 Get 1 Free’ to make your listing stand out that bit more.

If you sell 2nd hand goods, then it is also a good idea to mention the condition in the title, as this will make be of great service to potential buyers. For example you could say that your item is in ‘Near Mint Condition’.This will act as a signal to any buyers wanting an item in that condition, so they are far more likely to click on your listing than one that doesn’t mention condition at all.

One word of warning though don’t use the phrase ‘Like New’ or ‘As New’ as eBay consider this to be ‘keyword spamming’ and will probably remove your listing!

Conclusions

The importance of your item title should not be understated on eBay. It is the first thing that eBay’s search engine sees as well as your potential customer. A poorly written title will result in your listing not showing in search results and when it does, buyers will not respond to it.

A well written title, on the other hand, will not only feature regularly in search results, but more importantly, it will give your buyers a tangible reason to choose your listing over your competitors.

Trevor Davis makes over £15,000 a year buying and selling at car boot fairs and on eBay. Visit his website, Everything Car Boot, to learn more.

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