Ebay Store owners --

Want better exposure for your store on the search engines -- for FREE???

Then activate your RSS Listing Feeds! 

What are they???  

Listing feeds are auto-generated lists of your items that are read by the search engines.   Imagine -- every single  item in your store being searched when somebody looks for your product on a major search engine.   Such a deal! 

Why haven't you heard of this feature before?  Because it's relatively new.  And unless you already know what a listing feed is, you might not have recognized the term.   Which is why I'm writing this guide.

Ebay Stores has this Listing Feed ability, but it's not automatic.  You have to activate it from within your store yourself.    The reason being, that it exports your info to third parties -- and you have to give permission for eBay to do that.   But who wouldn't?  It can mean more sales!  

A few days after I activated my listing feeds, a search for "Cruelty-Free Feathers" (one of my products) on Google and Yahoo put my store, The Happy Rooster, right at the top of the list -- probably because of the many such feathers I have for sale.  There were also individual listings from my store on the first Google page.   I can't guarantee you'll get the same results (it all depends on what you are selling) but why not give it a try? 

Here's how:

Go to "My eBay" 

Click on "Marketing Tools"

Under "Store Marketing" click on "Listing Feeds"

Choose "Activate your Store Inventory listings via RSS"

Choose "Make a file of your store Inventory listings available"

Click "Apply"

There!  You did it!  It will take up to 12 hours for eBay to generate the file, but after that, your listings will go out to many search engines -- FREE!!  If you look at the file you created, it might look like a bunch of geek-ese, but computers can  read that info lightning fast.  And once you have created the file, eBay updates it automatically. 

Note:  This is a perk that comes with owning an eBay store. I don't think you can do it for free without a store. However, you have free RSS feeds on your eBay blog, even if you don't have a store!!  Blog posts  automatically go out on RSS.  To maximize results, go to "settings" on your blog and add some Tags -- these are keywords that search engines look for first.  Use words related to what you sell for best results.  (To create a blog click here.)

Distributing RSS feeds:  Your listings will also be available by RSS -- Really Simple Syndication -- which allows customers to get instant updates on bids, etc.  You should now see a reference to RSS on your listing pages, which eBay automatically distributes if you have RSS activated (which you just did!).     

A final note:  The About Listing Feeds pop-up Help window talks about making arrangements with third parties to use the file.  After you activate the Feeds, you will have an URL for where your file is located, and you can distribute that on various free services around the Net.  There are also pay-per-click ad companies, but why bother?  My experience has been that a lot of the search engines are automatically reading the file anyway.  After all, once the file is created,  it's up there for any computer to see!