Your Auction Headline - The Most Important Part of Your Auction
by Robbin K. Tungett
The words you select to describe your item will have a tremendous impact on the final
price it receives or if it receives any bids at all. This is because no matter how great
the item is you have up at auction, if you use words that don't lead prospective buyers to
it, no one will ever see it. You have a total of 45 spaces to use for your auction
headline to get people to visit your auction, so it's extremely important that you use
each space wisely.
The vast majority of buyers search through eBay listings by entering the item they are
looking for into eBay's search engine. The main auction search engine only searches for
wordslisted in auction titles. If a person selects a word that isn't in your auction
title, your auction won't come up as a result of their search.
This means that by far the most important task you have when composing a title for your
auction is to use words that are relevant and specific to the item you are listing. While
this may seem obvious, a lot of sellers don't do it (in fact, searching for listings in
which people have ineffective or misspelled titles can often get you some great items
which you can resell for a profit).
If you are going to spend any extra time on your auctions, thinking through the best
key words for your title is where you should spend that time.
With a limit of 45 spaces, writing everything you want in the title just isn't going to
be possible. For example, say you have a complete set of four bobblehead giveaways,
sponsored by Mountain Dew, that the Minnesota Twins gave away at select home games during
the 2002 season. Although accurate, that description is way too long for the allowable
number of spaces. The key is to think through an accurate description that includes
everything and then taking the most important words out of that and using them.
A simple title might read "Minnesota Twins Bobbleheads". However, that title would be
ineffective because it isn't specific enough. While there are many buyers who are looking
for Minnesota Twins memorabilia and bobblehead dolls, the categories are too large and
your auction will be lost among all the listings. You will have a very limited number of
people who will ever see your auction.
A better title might be "2002 Complete Set Minnesota Twins Bobbleheads". This title
uses every available space and gives a specific description of what you are selling. It
will also now appear in results for a narrower search.
Another possible title might be 2002 Minnesota Twins Bobblehead Bobble Head". People
searching for this item type bobblehead into the search engine, while others type bobble
head. A search for one will not bring up any results for the other, so at times it's to
your advantage to list two different spellings of the same word.
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