Listing optimization for browsing on Ebay

Listing optimization for browsing does not guarantee that the listings will appear on top of the search results, however it does guarantee that the listings will appear in more results.

Listing titles are one of the most impactful aspects of search results ranking, as well as serving as the first engagement point with potential customers. As such, it is important to put efforts into creatinine high quality titles. But that is not all.

In sellers’ journey towards increasing their products’ exposure on Ebay, title optimization is only the beginning. In order to achieve better rankings and exposure, sellers have to provide Item Specifics for their products.  

Why are Item Specifics Important?

Most online shoppers begin with a search query, and then use site navigation to focus on the products that interest them, by selecting the desired product attributes. When selecting these attributes, Ebay will match those with the Item Specifics provided in the listing, and present it to the shopper.
 

Conversely, if some listings do not have the Item Specifics filled-in, then these listings will simply not appear in navigational search results, as Ebay search engine is looking for them specifically.  

The Item Specifics Ebay requires vary from category to category, according to the product’s attribute. Some common Item Specifics are color, size, material, type, length, etc. 

Lets see how Item Specifics function:

A search query for a leather jacket in the Men’s Clothing category brings up more than 840,000 results. Simply by selecting size L, shoppers are able to slice the results to 170,000. But a listing that did not say it was a size L in its Item Specifics, will disappear after this very first filtering. 

Further attribute selection can easily reduce this number to a manageable one. 

Selecting the attributes new with tags, full zip, brown and motorcycle jacket brings the results down to around 1,400, which is quite a drop from the initial +840,000. But still, even after refining the search, shoppers are still left with a rather large number of products to browse through, and it is certain that they will not go over them all. So if you want your listing to be seen, it needs to be ranked at or around the top of the search results page. 

Listing optimization for browsing does not guarantee that the listings will appear on top of the search results, however it does guarantee that the listings will appear in more results. Moreover, the more focused the browsing becomes, the less results are surfaced, the higher the chance to get the listing in front of the buyers eyes and the higher the chance to convert. Keep in mind though that this optimization should be applied consistently to all new listings on Ebay, otherwise the optimization benefits will be reaped by a competition.