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Forget eBay Best Match (for now)… and Befriend GOOGLE!
By Lisa Suttora | September 23, 2008
Want to get more buyers to your eBay listings?
Then it’s time to STOP chasing eBay’s Best Match and START focusing ON becoming GOOGLE friendly.
There’s no doubt about it - Best Match is important to the sell-through rate of your products on eBay.
So why forgo the pursuit of a good Best Match ranking right now?
For three IMPORTANT reasons -
1. Best Match is not returning consistent results right now.
eBay is been continually tweaking and adjusting the Best Match algorhythm to achieve optimal performance.
And that’s resulted in unpredictable search results over the past several weeks. It’s not likely to change anytime soon.
If you’re one of the many people who have been watching their Best Match search results like a hawk and then adjusting your strategies to get good position on the first page only to get inconsistent results - it’s time to stop tearing your hair out over this- because the inconsistent results you’re getting TODAY are not a good representation of what you will see over the long haul.
There’s more tweaking ahead and that means that your Best Match rankings will change DESPITE your best efforts.
(PS: This is not a post about what eBay should or shouldn’t do/have done/be doing etc. This about YOUR business, what’s happening with Best Match and how you can fix it.)
SO it’s time to focus on other methods of getting traffic to your listings.
In addition…
2. You NEVER want to depend on one traffic source to get buyers to your products.
The more pathways that you have to your eBay store, the more qualified buyers will find your products on eBay.
3. A recent Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Report revealed that Google accounted for more than 71% of all online searches within the US last month.
Your buyers are NOT only coming to eBay.com to find potential products on eBay.
They are using GOOGLE to find eBay products!
So rather than spending a lot of time trying to optimize for a Best Match that is largely out of your control right now, when you can instead, spend your time and energy getting your listings on the first page of Google?
(And then deal with Best Match again down the road.)
Now does this mean you shouldn’t optimize your listings AT ALL for eBay’s Best Match?
No — you should always do basic search engine optimization for every page you put on the web.
–> Listing titles packed with relevant keywords
–> The top 3rd of your listing description packed with keywords relevant to your product
–> A keyword rich eBay store description
Etc.
(Find out more about how to optimize your eBay listings for SEO in the Member’s area of WhatDoISell.com)
You always want to employ best practices and use optimization strategies to get your listings on eBay’s first page of search results.
But if you’re obsessing over why your Best Match ranking has suddenly fallen or risen and you can’t figure out why, it’s best to put that quest on the back burner for near future.
So how do you get the GOOGLE search engine spiders to sit up and take notice of your listings and put THEM on Google’s first page - so that 71% of Internet searchers will find your products?
There are several ways you can get your eBay listings on the first page of Google search results — and we
talk about these in the Marketing Module at WhatDoISell.com.
And one of the BEST ways (and something you can do today) is to get your eBay listings into a site called Google Base.
In fact, Google Base is one of the secret weapons used by WhatDoISell.com e-tailers.
You can submit your store listings (fixed price only, not auction format) to Google Base by using the Google Store Connector found in My eBay. You’ll find it under Manage Store > Marketing Tools > Listing Feeds.
You’ll also find other strategies for getting your products listed in Google Base in our Google Base strategy.
When you stop thinking solely about the prospect of people finding your listings through eBay’s “front door” (eBay.com) you’ll START finding all the traffic that’s coming to eBay via a MAMMOTH side door… GOOGLE!
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Click here for 7 FULL days of immediate access to WhatDoISell.com INCLUDING the Marketing Module which will show you how to get your products listed in Google — for only $1.
Stop your dependancy on Best Match and start diversifying your eBay store traffic today!
Topics: Marketing Strategies |