eBay TITLE. Best key words to use

save123

Obviously you must describe your item correctly, but are there any good key words to use in the TITLE that will gain more traffic to your listing?

Jamz

not really, keep it to the point i find works best

apprentice_tycoon

THE key thing above all is spelling the searchable name correctly ie Wedgewood is wrong but Wedgwood is correct, all the people searching for Wedgwood would miss the incorrectly spelled titles - that is unless they are MSEers who look at www.fatfingers.co.uk to find all the duff spellings.
Other than that pick something out about your item that someone may search - you see such stupid titles like 'nice china teapot' OK - maybe it doesn't have a famous maker or brand but if it was decorated with pigs or ducks I'd at least put that in the title for pig and duck collectors to search

the_tired_one

If its applicable emphasise certain positive selling features such as : - 'NEW' / 'BOXED' / Guarantee / 'Unlocked' etc.

Hintza

Agree with the above but also in the wedgwood example if I had enough room I might put the miss-spelling in brackets to catch those who can't spell as well.


My pet hate is those that tick the NEW box and when I do a search using that option I find a fair few are "6 months old and hardly used"...grrrr

deecy

I always try to use all the allocated space.

Use capitals to emphasise a word to make it stand out or in the whole title to use up more space on the listing index - making ebay use two lines to display the whole title - so your item stands out from the one above or below.

Subtitles - if the item is dear enough to warrant it - also make a listing stand out.

Bold / Highlight, I don't use as they cost extra on top of other features which I prefer to use and are made neutral if the listing above or below has the that particular feature added.

Use abbreviations to save space for more searched for words or phrases, BNIB or BNWT etc

Don't use ALL the words that someone might search for when one will do eg if your customer wanted a photographer for a civil partnership, searching for 'photographer civil partnership' would bring up listings which had photographer & civil as well as all three words - saving 11 letters by omitting 'partnership' for the sake of brevity and an effective & efficient use of words.

If there is No Reserve say so (NR, No/Res, N/Res, N/R etc) as this is a popular way of getting someone to click through to your listing looking for a cheap bargain.

Make the title descriptive and ADVERTISE -make the title look appealing and make the item you're listing seem a great wonderous thing - you'll get more hits if you say your teapot is gorgeous, stunning or fantastic than if you describe it just as it is.

Keywords therefore are ones which spread & broaden the appeal of your item beyond that which the item will initially appeal to. Keywords also need to be used in the description & subtitle to capture those who click the little 'search title and description box'. Think laterally: a 1930's camera I recently sold had Art Deco in the title and I went on to describe it as ideal for students of photography, theatre or screen prop, camera collector, antiques collector, bakelite collector, or for someone's birthday or anniversary - using these keywords meant twice as many bidded on my auction than cameras of a similar style and age in the previous month!

save123

deecy

Thanks. Great advise

zeke

Dont use NOT, L@@K and lots of ****s. They all l@@k (sic) tacky!

Anthillmob

L@@K seems very american to me and tacky. not saying all americans are tacky though.

Contains_Mild_Peril

Good advice from a few people there. I have little to add, except that I seldom use subtitles (in fact the only time I ever used them was when they were on 1p special offer recently) because their keywords are not featured in title-only searches, and if someone is searching for a common item, they usually won't bother searching title and description (especially not since that would often return a whole load of irrelevant results, e.g. when sellers refer to many different brands in the hope of attracting customers searching for any of them). Since full-priced subtitles are usually quite pricey at 35p, I think it's only worth it if the item you're selling is fairly valuable, and the info that won't fit in your main title is too important to leave out (though as deecy mentioned, it also adds to the visual impact of your listing among the search results).
If you have room without leaving out anything important, as well as including common misspellings, there are some terms which may be one word or two, e.g. schoolbag/school bag, so sometimes it's worth including both versions.

deecy

does anyone know if the forward slash in schoolbag/school bag allows ebay to search for the two spellings separately?

I've always left a space as in schoolbag / school bag

I agree that because of the extra cost the subtitle has to be used on dearer items, I quite often use it as an extension to my title, making the title & subtitle part of the same sentence or statement

For items that are expensive I also sometimes pay the £9.95 (I think) to make my listing appear at the top of the page. But I think this is only useful if there are less than a page worth of these type of listings already. I find myself scrolling down to the non professional ebayers (photography, Motors etc) at the end of the featured ones to find the bargains, however, where I list there are about 5 featured listings in total and I know that these get about double the hits a normal listing gets.