Use Your eBay Title Space Wisely
EBay gives you 80 characters to use in your title to grab your buyers’ attention. Use them wisely. Great title optimisation will also push your items up the searches. Failure to observe some simple rules will result in your items actually being pushed down the rankings.
The idea is to be found first when someone is looking for an item like yours or, more specifically, your item. How you present your item right at the top could make the different between a very low, or no, bid and a great return. For fixed-price items it could be the difference between your item selling faster than other similar ones or it gathering dust in your store.
Five Things Your Should Do To Optimise Your eBay Titles
- Use all 80 characters (if you can do so without breaking any of the “rules”)
- Use keywords (words that buyers are likely to use for their searches)
- Use capital letters for the first letter of each word (except “and” “the” “of” etc, many of which will not be necessary anyway) – this makes your title look sharper.
- Use the first three or four words to say what your item actually is, eg: “Nearside wing mirror for Ford Focus”
- Try to make it read comfortably even if it isn’t exactly a “proper” sentence (which would have subject, verb, object).
Seven Things You Should Never do With Your eBay Titles
- Don’t use capitals for every letter of every or any word (it just looks like shouting)
- Don’t include more than two synonyms (words that mean the same thing or have similar meanings, for example: “Old Vintage Antique”. Using more than two is regarded (by the search engine) as spamming and this will push you down the rankings.
- Never include words like “LOOK” “AMAZING” or other attention-getters. Not only do they not work but they look amateurish and the search engine hates them.
- Avoid “new” or “very good” or other such words. EBay likes us to put things where they provide space specifically for them and the place for those is in the “Condition” box. Similarly, anything that describes your item beyond the immediate should be in the “description” box.
- Avoid “rare” or similar – if someone is looking at your item with intent they may ill almost certainly know whether it is rare or not and you will not need to tell them. You are not going to convince anyone to buy jt because you say it is “rare” (what does that mean anyway?)
- Don’t use any punctuation (unless it’s an important part of a title – book, for example) – it’s just a waste of characters.
- Don’t repeat words – it’s a waste of space and irritates the search engine.
Some Examples of Good and Bad eBay Item Titles
Hopefully these genuine eBay listing titles will speak for themselves.
In the first example, well, you know exactly, albeit briefly, what is on sale. But it’s not going to catch many buyers (in fact it only had one bid with a few minutes left. You might be forgiven for thinking that the owner doesn’t really want to sell it. And the description didn’t tell you a great deal more.
In the second example the buyer has used all 80 characters and has included some great keywords as well as telling you exactly what is on offer here.
Imagine you are looking to buy a new mountain bike. Which one do you think you would find first in the search?
Tools to Help You Optimise Your eBay Titles:
- “Title Builder” is a great little tool to help you if you are struggling to find words to fill your 80 characters.
Don’t be tempted to go for the paid-for eBay title optimizer at 10p per title. Once you get the hang of writing titles you will find you need “title builder” less and less.
Also, don’t forget to click on “United Kingdom” in the drop-down menu so you get the right words for your site (or United States if appropriate). - “Google Keyword Planner” is the tool used by bloggers and website builders to discover which keywords are used most in the Google searches. It’s pretty intuitive once you get there and definitely worth a visit.
