Ep 013
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Welcome to a special replay episode of the SEO Day podcast. I'm rounding out my first season with a special top 10 countdown of the most listened to episodes. Number four on our countdown list is episode 13, the power of SEO inside auction sites like eBay. This week's replay addresses some common questions about SEO and the eBay auction platform, which is actually its own search engine.
Many entrepreneurs rely on auction sites like eBay to provide a supplemental revenue stream for their business. If you're considering using an auction site, take a few minutes to understand how to use SEO so that you can increase your listing visibility and strengthen your sales. Welcome to the SEO Day podcast. I am the official mailbag keeper around here, Kim White, and I'm in the studio today with the amazing Findability queen herself, Denise, Millet. Denise, I wanna start outta the gate by saying thank you for answering all these questions in this mailbag from across the globe.
That entrepreneurs and business owners have about the intimidating three letters, SEO. Well, as always, thank you Kim, for doing this with me and being my mailbag keeper because you know, you keep me honest and you keep me going is what it's all about here. So I really appreciate you being here with me today.
Well, first you are so welcome, but I learned so much from you. It makes me very excited. So I have jumped into the mailbag and grabbed a letter that I am kind of giggling because I believe it might be a friend of yours. Denise, it's Nancy, who is an email eBay seller. I'll get my words out. She's an eBay seller and she has a small eBay store.
And was asked. She's got several questions that we can't even answer them all in one show. That's how many questions she sent in. She took you up on your offer. That's so cool. But I'm excited because. I used to be an eBay seller. I have a long history of that and I think that it's exciting that we can talk about that today.
So I wanna jump right in if that's okay with you and go Sure. Go with the first question. Do I need keywords for eBay? Absolutely. Absolutely. And let's talk about this. Honestly, eBay is one big search engine. Of its own contained within eBay, there are, what do we talk about? You know, a hundred, 2 billion listings or more or less like around that.
Yes, because people type something in to search for a product or a listing or something they wanna buy, and those things they type in are keywords. So keywords in your title and in your description and all the other places you can put things help connect with the people that are looking for your items.
So yes, you absolutely need keywords for eBay. Well, Denise, I'd like to share a fun fact. I will tell you that. Being an eBay seller actually is what taught me over two decades ago of what. To put in an eBay listing. I learned keywords from eBay. So I find this lovely that we're having this conversation.
'cause if you didn't have the right words, you didn't sell to your stuff. That was the bottom line that I was learning. So Nancy's next question is, will eBay items show up in search results? Hmm. So this has changed a bit in. You know the current environment on the internet is everything changes. It never stays still, right?
It used to be that things would show up pretty easily if you had an eBay store. Things would be. You know, definitely getting into search engines and now because there are promoted listings and there's advertising and um, the search engines are trying to get their slice of the transaction to make some money off the fact that they're showing these items, so they have their own shopping platform that you connect to show your things.
It's a little more complicated. It's not a guaranteed thing. But I will say from my reading and what I've seen is that if it's a common. Thing that a lot of people are selling, your chances of getting it in there without paying for advertising are less. If you have a unique thing and you do an excellent listing, like photos, videos, fill out everything you can really, really well, all the options, all the settings, all the stuff you can on, on occasion get included.
But it has to be something that isn't. Normally found like that there aren't a lot of other people paying for advertising for, so that's the reality today. There's silly promos drown out the good guys sometimes. Sometimes, sometimes. So Nancy's next question is, I use eBay auctions for my items. Will they show up in search?
This is, this is interesting 'cause I didn't get this at first. I didn't think about this until I started, you know, doing more myself. 'cause I've recently reopened my floor is, auction listings are considered temporary. They're not like a a long-term thing, so they're not valuable to a search engine, which is building up a catalog of things that are gonna be there.
Auction items go away. After you create the listing for an auction and the auction ends, it no longer exists. So search engine doesn't want to include that because then it'll be an invalid link. And it, it wouldn't make sense for them to have it. So from a search engine perspective, auction items are not included.
It's only the buy it now things that are included. So many rules. Denise. So many rules. Rules, rules. Well, let's head over to a word from our sponsor today and we'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by the findability Queen Denise Millet. Visit her YouTube channel youtube.com/@findabilityqueen for her collection of short videos, answering questions about findability and SEO for entrepreneurs every day.
So we are back talking about Nancy, who came from the mailbag today and all about eBay and SEO. Her next question is, can I list my items with the stock photos that eBay provides? Sure. Absolutely. You can, But it's better for you to provide more detailed, in-depth, higher quality photos of the actual thing that you're selling.
Now, there are some things that a stock photo will suffice. I'm sure, and I know a lot of people sell a lot of things that way. Like for tech and computers and you know, a lot of things, but I know personally, when I go to buy something, I wanna see the actual thing. Mm-hmm. I don't wanna see somebody else's stock photo because how do you know what you're getting?
That's the whole thing about the trust thing online, is you really want to see what you're buying. And so my humble opinion is that you need to make your listings. Satisfy what you would wanna see if you were buying something because that's really the, the ins and outs of it. And eBay chooses who to show to people when they search to, so they are not gonna show.
As much stock photo listings without stuff. If all the categories aren't filled in the description, I mean you, you could be pushed further down in the results that somebody might get. So if you create a good listing, then you're more valuable to eBay too. Well, our last question from Nancy today, and Nancy, don't you worry.
You submitted more questions and Denise will answer them on on another podcast episode. But her last question for today is, what can I do to get my eBay items into search results? Is it even possible? And yeah, I might have kind of switched this around, but yes, it's possible if you have a very unique item and you create a spectacular listing with all the things filled in, and there aren't a lot of other ads promoting that same item already in the search engine.
So, yeah, it could show up. What you could do is you could have a website that you put the items onto a page, and then the search engines will read those pages on that website and create links to maybe your eBay store, your eBay listings, right? Mm-hmm. So you could do it that way. That's probably the only way.
That I would consider doing it to be more sure that it would get in, but organically from eBay itself, it's harder.
So I thank you, Denise, for answering these questions. You have Al always, you've always opened my mind to how SEO works. We are closing the mailbag for today, and we'll jump back in next week. You did a great job of helping us be clearer about online auctions and how they work. So. Thank you and thank you Kim, for helping me answer Nancy's questions today.
Nancy, thank you so much. I, we will answer the rest of the next episode and I want everyone to understand keywords because they're really the foundation of making SEO findability work. No matter what platform you are on, that's a search engine, right? So I created this guide called Quickly Find your Perfect Keywords. The simple and easy guide to being findable. I lost my train of thought there, and the links in the show notes, get your copy today. It's an easy download and I'm hoping that it will make things easier for you to implement SEO things on Tuesdays, the SEO day that we're calling Tuesdays. So thanks again and we'll see you next time.
Thank you for joining Denise and Kim in the SEO Day Studio for today's discussion. If you would like one of your SEO questions answered in the future episode. Head on over to denisemillet.com/questions to let us know. The link is also in the show notes. We hope you enjoyed listening to this episode of the SEO Day podcast.
Follow the show so you can hear when new episodes get released and stay in the know about SEO. Until next time.
