Marketplace search engine optimization

There are considerable differences between traditional search engines, like Google, and marketplace search engines, like the ones used by Rakuten, Yahoo! Shopping and eBay, hence marketplace search engine optimization requires some very specific action on the part of the sellers.

---

Search engine optimization (SEO), as the name suggests, means adjusting a website to better cater to the users’ needs, so it will appear at the top of the search results. More than that, SEO does not just help increase overall traffic, but it helps websites reach their target market. 

There are differences, however, in the SEO process between traditional search engines, like Google, and marketplace search engines, like the ones used by Rakuten, Yahoo! Shopping and eBay. 

 Let’s discuss how marketplace search engine optimization works and how you can improve your rankings in marketplaces.

Why is it important to rank high?

Ranking at or near the top of the search results naturally increases the number of shoppers who see your online store, thereby improving the chances of hitting your target market. Hitting your target market, of course, means higher conversion rates. That is why it is crucial to invest efforts in marketplace search engine optimization.

Here are a few way in which high rankings impacts your online store:

Building a Name for Yourself

Marketplaces are places of savage competition, where many competitors sell pretty much the same products. One way to rise above the competition is to gain recognition and establish your store’s reputation. When an online store or its products rank at the top of the search results page, it shows the customers that this is a professional and reliable place to shop.  

Non-stop Marketing

Contrary to marketing campaigns, which require constant managing, once performed, SEO keeps on going, as long as the marketplace operates. That means that sellers can sit back and watch the marketplace suggest shoppers their online store in every relevant search, without having to do any further work. Ebay, for example, sees more than 760 million visitors per month. Just imagine how many more people will see your online store if it is ranked at the top. 

Organic Traffic

The vast majority of users are usually suspicious about ads, and do not click through. Marketplace SEO, however, helps users find your store by a simple search, leading to more organic traffic. Shoppers that get to the store that way are much more likely to eventually purchase there. 

Highlight Your Strengths 

When shoppers are searching for items online, they usually want to know more about the item, or to compare it with others. When your product or store is ranked at the top of the search results, you are in a unique position to showcase your store to the shoppers. Sellers can use this opportunity to educate shoppers as to the qualities of the products, and why they should buy it. 

Economic Marketing

Most common online marketing campaigns also include SEO. It might take some time to see the results, but in the long run SEO can be highly beneficial to traffic, conversion rates and overall sales. With these benefits in mind, SEO is one of the most cost effective marketing schemes you can find. 

These are just some of the reasons why marketplace SEO is so important and can really help your online business. By ranking high in the search results, you gain a reputation and beat the competition in the marketplace.

Marketplace SEO: How To

SEO is a process that takes time and effort, but it is well worth it for the benefits. Here are some steps you can take to begin optimization:

Product Categorization

Organizing products in relevant categories helps marketplace search engines to more accurately index them. In addition, categorization also enables shoppers to easily find the products they are looking for using site navigation, where shoppers can browse through whole categories and subcategories. This improves the shopping experience which helps generate loyalty to the store or brand. 

Keywords and Keyphrases

One of the most important aspects of marketplace SEO is the use of keywords and keyphrases. Sellers are recommended to conduct a little market research to learn which keywords are most valuable to the products they sell, before selecting them. 

Obviously, the most sought-after keywords are the ones that are most often used by shoppers to look for a certain item. Sellers can use a variety of keyword search tools to help them find which keywords are most popular within their target market.
 

After deciding on the best keywords for you, add them to the product title and description. This should be done strategically, and sellers should avoid just over-stuffing their product feed with keywords.
  

Clarity and Transparency

Use the product title and product description to provide shoppers with accurate and complete information about the product. 

The product title is the very first thing shoppers encounter, so it is best to provide them with enough information about the product that will entice them to click through to the product page. Title should contain the product’s brand and other important attributes that shoppers might find relevant. 

Product titles should be engaging, and therefore should make sense to readers, even when inserting a few keywords in there. For instance:
Dyson V8 Motorhead Original Cordless Vacuum Cleaner - Red

Marketplace search engines also crawl the product description for indexing purposes, so remember to add some keywords and keyphrases there as well. But remember, the description should be legible and inviting, so don’t just add keywords senselessly. 

Create Engaging Content

As mentioned above, both product titles and product description must be engaging. Sellers should use the description to highlight the benefits of using the product, in an accurate and engaging manner. Remember that the purpose of the description is to convince the shopper to buy the product. 

In order to achieve better results with the content, a market research is recommended. Try to think like a potential customer, and make out which phrases they might use, and what sort of phrasing will appeal to them? Try to create content that will entice and inspire confidence at the same time.  
  

Inspire Confidence

It does not take much to make shoppers suspicious. Shady looking stores promising only the best results, while staying vague on the actual details are good ways to drive traffic away, for example. 

Sellers need to take the pains of making their customers trust the store and foster their loyalty to it. There are several ways it can be done, for instance, by providing accurate and full, easy to reach information, presenting a relevant trust seal the store obtained, and incorporating customer feedback. 

Link Building

The best way to increase inbound links to your product pages is through social media. Sellers can use these massive tools to reach an even wider audience. For example, sellers can join a social media group that is devoted to the products they sell, and post relevant links to their online store. 

A more sophisticated way to link build is to engage with an expert to write a review. Once again, a little market research is required to identify the experts, popular bloggers and influencers relevant to the market. It may take some effort, but the compensation of having a person with reputation and a following recommending your products is truly worth it.   

Conclusion

Marketplace search engine optimization is essential for sellers who really want to compete, and have their product ranked at the top of the search results page. This process, however, takes up time and effort.

This is where Lisuto can help you. Lisuto combines technology with deep ecommerce consumer product knowledge helping sellers optimize their product data and extract much more out of the online store. Using proprietary AI technology, Lisuto goes through the existing product information, tagging the data with any marketplace required navigational tags, making necessary corrections and completions, bringing the quality of the sellers' product feed up to highest standard in terms of uniformity and completeness, making it perfectly optimized for marketplace search engines and for the user's eye.