Here’s a quick two minute strategy for you…
Well it’s a bank holiday weekend and I intend to make the most of it before I get back to the routine of school runs and chores in a week or
so – so I have a quick, but very effective, tip for you today.
This is a bit of an advanced strategy for you to consider if you have already got your ebay shop up and running or are thinking about opening one. Remember that ebay shops can be a great advantage to your business if you use them in the right way. And, by making just a few small amendments to your shop categories, you can dramatically increase traffic to your listings.
If you have ever had a look at some of the powersellers ebay shops you might have noticed that the top sellers who have large inventories seem to set up their actual shop categories a little different to the average seller. Never noticed? Take a look at a few different ebay shops and in particular the names of the categories and sub-categories and you might begin to see what I’m talking about!
If you want to maximise your SEO (search engine optimisation) which I am sure you do, because ultimately more traffic means more sales, then take note of this. It will only take you a few minutes to set up and will make all the difference – but you will need an ebay shop to do this.
Here’s what to do
Set up your shop preferences so that the optional navigation bar which shows all of your shop categories appears on all of your listings. You can do this by doing the following 3 things:
- Click on ‘Seller, Manage’ which is right at the bottom of your shop page.
- Then click on ‘Listing Frame’ which is located on the left hand side of the page in the Shop Marketing Section.
- Then select the button that says ‘Shop header and left-navigation category list (first 30 categories that contain items)’.
Hey Presto! This will ensure that all of your shop categories show up on every listing you have. It’s that simple!
But how will this increase traffic to your listings?
Well, firstly you will need to add some sub-categories to each of your main shop categories. And this is where (hopefully) it all becomes clear. Make sure you use the keywords that buyers are likely to use when they are searching for your products, especially the products brand names if you are selling branded items.
The key to maximising traffic to your shop is to make sure that your important keywords and/or brand names show up on your left hand category bar so that the search engines such as Google, can find them then show them to potential buyers who click through to your ebay listings.
Here’s an example, just to make it crystal clear for you:
Let’s say that you are selling sporting goods. You stock T-Shirts, Running Shoes and Baseball Caps amongst other things in your ebay shop. So, you set up your categories as such.
Then, as sub-categories under T-Shirts you list the brand names, for example Nike T-Shirt, Adidas T-Shirt etc. You then create keyword rich sub-categories for all of your main categories so that the names of all your products are easily available to the search engines.
So, now rather than having just a few pages with each of your important keywords on them, every single page in your ebay shop has all of these keywords on them! What you have done is potentially increased your ebay traffic because the search engines will find your relevant keywords plus you have created brand recognition so that all your customers can easily see exactly what you are selling and find it extremely quickly. This in turn means that they are less likely to navigate away from your shop and go looking elsewhere.
Make sure you use your shop categories carefully and strategically to get the best results, but don’t worry, you have plenty of scope because ebay will let you create around 300 product categories in total.
If you use this tactic, and I recommend that you do, you will increase the probability that your ebay shop will be indexed by all the major search engines and this means more traffic. Just what you want for increased sales.
Right, just before I finish up I also want to let you know about some very exciting news I have! I can now confirm that due to huge demand, I will shortly be re-opening my E-Seller Mastery Mentoring Programme.
The last time I opened this programme, I had to close it early as all spaces were snapped up quickly, so, if you want to be one of the first to receive the details on this – as early as next month – then please get your name down here
Have a great bank holiday weekend