When shopping on eBay, sometimes you will notice that sellers set up their categories differently. Here is a strategy that I use to maximize SEO (search engine optimization) and drive more traffic to my eBay listings.

The first thing you want to do is set up your store preferences so that the navigation bar showing all of your categories is on every single listing. You can do this by following these steps: Manage my store > Listing frame > Under “Listing Frame Features” click the radio button next to “show my store listing header and left navigation bar in my listings”This will put all of your categories on every listing in your store. Ok, so what, why does that even matter? Keep reading. The next step is to add subcategories to your main categories using brand names of the items you frequently sell. You can still keep your items separated by size, gender, color, or whatever method you are using, you just want to get those brand names on the left hand navigation bar.

Let’s look at an example. I sell Talbot’s clothing. When you look in my store, you will see a Talbot’s category under Women’s Pants, Women’s Skirts, Women’s Tops, etc. That seems kind of repetitive, right? Well, that is exactly the point. So instead of having 10-15 pages in my store with the word “Talbot’s,” by adding the brand names to the categories and putting the category names on every listing, I now have the word “Talbot’s” on over 150 pages in my store – and besides that, the word Talbot’s is on each of the 150 pages more than once. I have just exponentially increased the number of times a key word is used in my store. This also increases brand recognition in my store, so my customers can easily see that I carry Talbot’s apparel.

You want to use your store categories wisely and strategically. eBay allows you to create up to 300 product categories for easy buyer navigation. This type of set up helps buyers find what they are looking for quickly and it also increases the probability that your store will be indexed with major search engines. It may take a while for you to reorganize your categories to make this strategy work for you, but it is worth the investment.