A Guide to eBay Natural Search Success

About Natural Search

There are two main search classifications: natural search and paid search. While paid search refers to all pay-per-click advertising (such as Google AdWords and Overture), natural search refers to all unpaid search results based on relevance.  Improving your natural search rankings can deliver increased traffic to your site (About Me page, Stores page, etc), helping you drive more eyes to your listings and pages! Following the below guidance is an excellent starting point - acting upon any number of these best practices will improve your natural search rankings.

eBay Pages You Can Impact & Should Pay Attention to!

As an eBay member and and eBay seller, you are able to control several eBay pages and, if done correctly, drive incremental traffic via natural search. These pages can be leveraged to promote your items or store and should be optimized for natural search - with particular attention to content!

* About ME Page - all eBay members can create an About ME Page, you should too!

* Reviews & Guides - Both are GREAT ways to write great content, demonstrate knowledge and trust, and drive serach engine traffic! Pay attention to formatting and guide tags

* View Item Pages / Listings Page - If you are selling an item, it is to your benefit to add great content on it! Buyers appreciate it - and its search-engine friendly.

* eBay Stores & Custom Stores Pages - Use your eBay store to its max by writing as great content and inserting relevent links

Do's - Improve your Search Rankings...

    * Page Content: Simply put - CONTENT IS KING! The content on your pages and listings is what readers find useful - likewise, its what the search engines find useful. Make sure to place strong, relevant keywords throughout the page body and in text. Place pertinent keywords within your headers by using header tags (H1, H2, etc). Keywords can also be stressed by bold and italics formatting. If, for instance, your About Me page is dedicated to your poker chip collection, you want to make sure that the content and keywords placed on the page are all relevant and surrounded with great poker-related content.

    * Links: Strong linkage to a website / webpage raises its relevance and eventually its search engine ranking.

    * Internal Linking: it is important to link internally to your own pages via text links as this assists the search engines by pointing them towards related pages. Your About Me page, for instance, should highlight your Stores Page and perhaps your most relevant search results pages.

    * External Linking: If you own an eBay Store, for instance, you could improve linkage by contacting related Web sites and Webmasters and kindly ask them to create a text link to your site. Additionally, construct and submit related articles to online publications in exchange for linkage.

    * Submit Your Webpage to the Engines: Most of the search engines (Google, Yahoo!, AltaVista, etc) allow you to submit your site for free; upon entering your URL, email contact, and other pertinent information, the search engine directs its crawlers to enter your site.

Don'ts - Avoid these natural search killers:

   * Avoid Splash Pages: Flash and heavily graphic introductions prohibit engines from crawling your site. Because crawlers work best with text links, splash pages are very troublesome. A good rule of thumb: always keep your most valuable and compelling information up-front and in text.

    * Avoid Frames: Never use pages with frames. Frames are too complex for the crawlers and too cumbersome to index.

    * Avoid JavaScript when Possible: Though JavaScript menus are very popular, they disable crawlers from accessing those links. Most, well-indexed Web sites incorporate text-based links primarily because they are search engine friendly. If necessary, JavaScript should be referenced externally.

I am an eBay employee and this guide reflects my personal views and is not written on behalf of the eBay company