The Secret Power of an eBay Auction Title
I get frequent emails from my newsletter readers wondering whytheir eBay auctions arent working.
You might have the most brilliant auction description page witha fantastic set of pictures offering a superb item at anincredible price. But the page counter shows after seven days ofyour auction that its only been seen by 3 people. Has thathappened to any of your auctions?
If it has, I always start at the same point. The auction title.
In 99% of cases, the reason for low viewing figures is that yourauction title isnt smart enough.
Here are a few facts. At the end of this small list youllunderstand the secret power of eBay auction titles:
a) 79 million times each day buyers use eBays search box tolocate items in which they are interested.
b) eBays standard search system takes the search words keyedin, and compares them with the titles in its database of 10million auctions. (Note it doesnt compare them with sub-titles,or auction descriptions)
c) If an auction title doesnt contain the words keyed into thesearch box, the auction wont get returned in the search resultslist. And thats another of the 79 million searches youvemissed out on!
d) If an auction isnt returned in a search list, it cant beclicked on to have the auction description viewed.
So, the whole of eBays default search system relies on matchingkeywords with auction titles. And thats the secret power ofauction titles. If your title contains words which buyers aresearching upon, your auction will be returned time and again insearch return lists. Lets say you want to create a new auction.Remember, your auction title has three functions:
1) To contain keywords. (Number one on this list for the reasonyou now know!)
2) To persuade buyers to click through to your auctiondescription page
3) To convey what the item is
To decide on the keywords to use, you have to think like abuyer. What words
would be used by a person interested insearching for an item like yours?
At this stage, just list them. Dont put the words into asentence yet. Spend as long as you like on this exercise. Themore effective you are with this, the less likely you are tohave one of those sleepy auctions that rarely gets a visitor.
Having listed as many keywords as you can think of, you have todecide which are the strongest. Remember, you only have 55precious characters for your auction title.
Taking your best keywords, you now create your auction title.Its not an English exam, so it doesnt matter if it doesntscan like a sentence.
You can add a power word or two if youve space. By this I meanwords like stunning, limited edition, unique, rare, new,one-off, exclusive, distinctive, dramatic etc. These are wordswhich can influence buyers to click through to your auctiondescription. They wont be searched on by buyers, so use themsparingly. For the same reason, I dont advocate the use of”clever” words like l@@k or w0w!
Finally, do the words in your title convey what the item is? Ifso, thats it. Youve created a powerful and compelling auctiontitle. And your title will appear more often in search returnlists. And, as you know, thats the key!
If you can get your auction to appear more often in searchreturn lists, more buyers will view your auction descriptionpage. The more people that visit your auction description page,the more likely you are to make a sale at an acceptable price.
Now you know the secret power, why not create a new title todayfor one of your auctions? If you do, believe me youll get yourfair share of the 79 million eBay daily searchers.
About the author:
Brian McGregor is an eBay and internet entrepreneur. He recentlycreated the eBay Master Class for eBay sellers. For your freecopy, please go to http://www.workwinners.com/ebm-request.htm
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
