It’s a pretty common phenomenon that the longer we sell on eBay, the more lax we get in keeping up with the little things. The little things I’m referring to are those tweaks and changes that keep our stores fresh and exciting for the search engines. Here are some simple and not too time consuming ways to freshen things up and drive more traffic to your store!
- Check your header and make sure the keywords you are using are still relevant to the type of merchandise you are currently offering
- Re-order your store categories to keep your most sought after types of items at the top
- Write a custom page or two that shares some tips or ideas with your customers
How to Change the Keywords in Your eBay Store
To change the keywords in your store header go into Manage My Store > Store Design > click Change and the first thing you see should be Display Settings. Again click Change and you can put all your new words in here. Here is what mine looks like:
Note that you do not need to make this read like a sentence with welcomes and thank yous and such, this is purely a place for keywords that the search engine spiders will find and eat up! Your customers are barely reading your descriptions so it’s not very likely they are reading this area anyways. You also do not need to use commas. In fact, commas take up a lot of space when you are dividing words and since you want to fill this as full as possible with great keywords, use no commas and no duplicate words. If you have trouble coming up with words there is a great free app called Terapeak Keywords which can give you an idea of what customers are searching for.
How to Reorder Your eBay Store Categories
Reordering your store categories is a great way to bring certain types of products into the attention of your customers. Most sellers use the default alphabetical order, but that often means that the top categories only have one or two items in them. Why not prioritize based on your niche? For instance, if you specialize in men’s ties then that should be your top category. Now it’s perfectly fine to sells other type items, for instance, hats. Just make sure they are not stealing the limelight from your main attraction!
Another tip is during a particular holiday have a category to highlight the items that people would be shopping for that time of year. We just finished up the Christmas shopping season. While it was in full swing I had my Christmas and Seasonal category up at the top with Gifts for Men, Gifts for Women, Gifts for Children all right up there with it. Now that the holidays have passed these categories have been moved down towards the bottom. But remember, Valentine’s Day is coming up!
How to Create Custom Pages in Your eBay Store
Last but not least, if you have an eBay Store by all means take advantage of the ability to create custom pages. What these are, are unique one page websites within your store. Google loves these! As a store owner you get up to 15 of these pages to add to your store, this in and of itself is a reason to have an eBay Store! Your pages can highlight your niche areas. Show that you know your stuff by writing things such as the history of a type of item, the care and cleaning of a type of item or even some decorating tips using the types of items you sell. Within the article you can link to categories within your store. Here is an example of one that I created about glass since that is one of my specialties.
All of these changes can be made through the Manage My Store link in your My eBay. Don’t be like thousands of store owners who don’t take advantage of all these great tools that we are given to make our stores stand out and be the one the search engines choose to point customers to. This is the perfect time of year to freshen things up and get ready for a fantastic year of selling!
Danni Ackerman is the founder of The Danni App where she’s putting the fun into eBay. She is also the author of The Ultimate Guide to Savings by Store, Storage Lockers for Fun and Profit and organizer of the Las Vegas Online Sellers Meetup Group . Known as Udderly Good Stuff online, she’s been on eBay since 1998 and has grown up in the world of antiques and collectibles and reselling “stuff.” She hosts her own weekly podcast called Ask the Danni App , regularly appears on eBay Radio and is a speaker at eBay events and more. She is the mother of 4 including two youngsters she calls her shipping supervisors, and makes a lifestyle out of juggling business and family. Find her on Facebook and Twitter @theDanniApp.
