Give Your Online Auction or Classified Ad The Best Chance of Success Through Using Basic SEO Techniques

That’s Right!  You may have never thought of it this way, but using basic SEO techniques for your online auctions and classified ads such as Ebay and Craigslist can drastically improve your exposure and assist in selling that precious heirloom you found in the attic.  Think about it this way, if you at least have a basic understanding of SEO, you will have one leg up on the competition.  In fact, SEO techniques are useful for more then simply search engine optimization.  SEO techniques and many of the essential foundational rules apply to any form of marketing, more specifically online marketing.  These techniques can be used for Social Media Marketing (SMM), Image Search, YouTube and Video Marketing, Directories, Classifieds, Online Auctions, and much more.

Many of the online auctions sites such as Ebay and classified sites such as Craigslist still use basic search engine algorithms.  Many even still use Boolean Search Logic.  But more specifically it usually comes down to keywords and keyword research.  Understanding keywords and keyword research is a very logical and simply understand concept.  In many ways it is simply basic “common sense”.  Unfortunately, many times you actually have to go through the learning process to bring you back to that basic “common sense” factor.

But for starters lets take a look at an ebay search result for the same product and what most people searching for this product would expect to see returned as results.  The product I am looking for is a Spider-Man Action Figure.  Now, technically this is the exact correct way to actually type in this search, “Spider-Man Action Figure”.  For example Notice how all Spider-Man Comic’s name reads, “Spider-Man”.  Not commonly used “Spiderman”.

     

Now that we have established the correct spelling of Spider-Man, let’s take a look the the term “Action Figure”.  Well this one is a little easier, you have simply four options because nowadays because capitalization is rarely taken into consideration.  The four options you have are “Action Figure”, “Action Figures”, “actionfigures”, and “actionfigure”.  Now let’s take a look into the search results from Ebay for a “Spider-Man Action Figure”.  Which by the way should be considered three keywords.

Ebay Online Auction Search Results

Search #1:  “spider-man actionfigures”

Search #2:  “spiderman actionfigures”

Search #3:  “spider-man action figure”

Search #4:  “spiderman actionfigure”

Search #5:  “spider-man action figures”

Search #6:  “spiderman action figures”

 

All searches were performed at the same time.  This rules out the factor of time bringing results to the top.  Please take note in this example that #1 and #2 have the same top three results.  #5 and #6 have the same top two results, while #3 and #4 have different results from the others.

What does this all mean and why does this happen?

What this means and why this happens is based on keyword relevancy and the keywords input into the search box.  If you notice closely, Spider-Man and Spiderman actually have little effect on the search results.  In fact, the way the Ebay search algorithm is designed, it has built in a level of artificial intelligence (AI) that automatically figures out that even if you type in Spider-Man the correct way or Spiderman the wrong way they will still provide you with Spider-Man figures either way,

Now the term action figures is a whole different story.  You can clearly see the different results for Action Figures.

So what this means is that different forms of the keyword/phrase “action figures” is going to produce different listings.  Depending on how it is written and searched by the user you may not come up at all. Therefore you want to include multiple permutations of the keyword in your listing title.  Here is an example that would help you get more exposure:

Search #6 Example:  “spiderman action figures”.  The first listing reads,
“2003 Marvel – Spider-Man Movie – 6″ Action Figure – Loose”.

Alternatively, you might want to try something like,”Spider-Man ActionFigure – Marvel Action Figures – 6″ Movie Figure”

What have we done here?

We we have done is switch the potential opportunity of exposure to your listing in the results.  The Example #6 only used the phrase “Action Figure”.  With our new example, we have creatively captured  three versions of the term that produce different results, hence creating better exposure to our ad and increasing the odds of selling the item.  Here we see in our undated listing title we have managed to use, “ActionFigure – Action Figures – Figure”.  By tying them together we have managed to capture three of the four possible forms of the same word in one listing.

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