SEO for online retailers
SEO - a topic that online sellers will sooner or later have to deal with. But what does “SEO” actually mean? Is SEO worth it for me as my own marketing channel, and how much time do I need to invest? And what matters when I want to optimize my eBay shop for SEO? Niels Stuck, founder and owner of the agency Wolf of SEO, and David Ulbrich, SEO consultant at eBay, answer these and other exciting questions for us
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Isabell: Hello dear listeners, and welcome to another podcast episode for our sellers and, of course, for everyone who wants to become one. Today I’m in the studio alone with my esteemed podcast colleague David. That hasn’t happened in a very long time. But today we have our guests connected via video chat.
David P.: That’s right. That’s simply because some of our guests aren’t even in Germany. But nonetheless, we’re talking about a very exciting topic, because we’re talking about how to be found better on search engines. And I hope that after this we’ll also have a few tips on how we can move our podcast a little further to the front. Still, I’m very happy to welcome Niels Stuck here. Some of you may already know him. He was a speaker at this year’s eBay Open, and he’ll be looking at things a bit more through the general SEO lens, while our second guest, David Ullbrich, as a technical SEO team member at eBay itself, will be joining us as an eBay SEO expert. Maybe we should say it’s a bit much to have two Davids here, but one is the SEO David and I’m the podcast David. Maybe that helps. Hi both of you.
David U.: Hello David, thanks for the invitation.
Niels: Yes, hello David. Glad to be here. Likewise.
Isabell: Yes, Niels. Then let’s start with you right away.. We already met in September at eBay Open, and you had already given two talks there on the topic of SEO. So some listeners may already know you. But tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the topic.
Niels: Very gladly. As already introduced, I’m Niels Stuck, founder of the SEO agency Wolf of SEO. We specialize in e-commerce SEO, meaning online shops, and currently manage SEO strategy for more than 60 online shops. I now have eight years of experience. Time flies, and I also worked for eBay a few years ago. That’s where the connection came from for eBay Open and to you. And I’m happy to be back on the podcast and to be your guest.
David P.: Very nice, and from, so to speak, podcast David to SEO David, would you like to tell us a bit more about yourself and the eBay SEO team?
David U.: Very gladly. Hello podcast David, I’m David Ullbrich, and since April I’ve been here at eBay as an SEO specialist on the technical SEO team. I started in SEO almost exactly ten years ago as a working student at Ladenzeile.de. Some of you may still know Ladenzeile. It’s still one of the heavyweights of German e-commerce. Even back then it was running a very good and progressive SEO strategy, and maybe also interesting: here at eBay I’ll be the point of contact for all relevant questions for the German eBay business units.
Isabell: We’ve now used the term SEO several times quite naturally. Niels, what does SEO actually mean?
Niels: SEO stands for search engine optimization and primarily refers to Google. Because among the many search engines, Google has just under 93% market share. And the goal of SEO is to make your own site or your own listing visible for relevant keywords. For example, if we think in an e-commerce context, in the eBay context, it’s about the product you want to sell, whether that’s a caravan, a wooden table, a leather sofa, or a branded product like the Fendt caravan, the Wimmer wooden table, or the Ikea couch, whatever it is. Someone who enters something like that is typically searching for that product and wants to buy it. And almost 65% of clicks from these searches go to the first three search results. So the goal is to be present with top rankings and catch those visitors with either your own listing or your webshop and thereby generate sales. Because someone searching for a specific thing, a product, is typically pre-qualified, meaning they already have interest in that product and are therefore quite likely to buy.
Isabell: So SEO doesn’t just refer to the results in Google Shopping, but really to every spot on the Google search results page.
Niels: Exactly, that’s where the big difference lies. Google Shopping and Google ads. There you essentially pay per click. That means you use a certain advertising budget to become visible. And the goal of SEO is to be present in these organic search results, meaning where there isn’t an ad at the top next to it, but the results that appear naturally. There the click doesn’t cost anything.
David P.: Okay, good. Why can SEO be considered its own marketing channel and not just an optional optimization you could do if you wanted to?
Niels: In this case people often clearly underestimate how many people really search for certain things every month. That means 20,000 people may search for a certain couch in a month, or 50,000 people per month for a certain phone. There’s a lot of potential behind that. Of course, it also depends on your own product. Is it very niche, very specific, and only has a very small target group? Then it probably won’t be searched for as often. But everyone wears T-shirts, sweaters, and shoes. Those are searched for very often. So depending on the product and product group, SEO can become a very strong sales driver. And of course you need to determine beforehand whether that’s the case. That’s why it should be seen as its own channel, because it’s one of the few channels where you don’t have to specifically buy the visitors, where you don’t pay a click price or a price per 1,000 impressions or anything like that, but it can become a long-term, sustainable, organic revenue channel that often complements the paid channels people are relatively familiar with.
Isabell: You just said that you can determine beforehand whether SEO is worth it as its own marketing channel. Do you have a tip on how to approach that?
Niels: There are many different tools you can use for that. Tools that show you exactly roughly how often certain products are searched for per month. You can use Google’s own Keyword Planner for that. Tools like Semrush, Ahref, Sistrix—there are many—that show you very specifically how often people search for what I offer. And based on that, you can often make calculations. Because if a product is searched for 10,000 times, for example, and you’re represented in the top three positions, you typically know roughly how many visitors will come to your product or site through that. And if you’re already further along in e-commerce, you also know roughly what the conversion rate is. So how many out of 100 visitors buy? Often this number is between 2% and 5%. For very expensive products it’s usually lower, but that’s how you could estimate in advance how much revenue I could generate through SEO as a marketing channel. And whether that investment is worthwhile for me when I look at how much is really possible in the end.
David U.: In general, I would definitely agree with Niels, and for many people SEO is also a kind of black hole. Everyone knows it, but nobody really understands it. And simply put, SEO is the marketing channel that brings free traffic. The traffic is free, but it has to be worked for extremely hard.
Niels: Exactly. Absolutely right. Because the more often a product is searched for and the more generic it is, the more likely it is to be, so to speak, a striking example like a T-shirt—it will exist in extremely many shops, in extremely many variations. But if someone searches for a white T-shirt, size L with blue stripes, that’s very specific. There will be significantly fewer examples of exactly this product. So the shorter a keyword tends to be, and the more often it’s searched for, the more competitive it is and the harder it is to conquer. Because if I enter a certain search term and search for a certain product and I see the usual suspects—let’s stay in the fashion area—then on Google, when you search for T-shirts or other clothing items, common sense often kicks in right away and says, “Okay, these are all bigger players.” That keyword will probably not be so easy to conquer. If, on the other hand, I see three, four, maybe five smaller brands or smaller shops in the top ten, then I can assume that, overall, it will be less competitive.
David P.: Niels, David just said that SEO also has the big advantage that it’s basically free traffic—traffic you have to work very hard for, but then it comes in for free. What other advantages does SEO offer as a marketing channel?
Niels: Since it’s not, for example, Google Shopping, or Google ads, and since it’s not paid traffic, like traffic bought from Facebook, Instagram, and other apps, you keep the full gross margin here. That means if it’s in place, of course there had to be an investment beforehand. From the point where I have this visibility, I keep the full gross margin, since no click costs are deducted that would otherwise be subtracted from the final amount left to me after I’ve sold the product. But it’s often very sustainable and lasts a long time. That means if I’ve achieved it once, it’s like a marathon. If I’ve made it into the top ten search results, then I basically only need to keep an eye on whether someone is catching up behind me. If someone is about to overtake me, I need to step on the gas a bit again, but once I’ve reached the top, it becomes much harder for those further back to overtake me. Another thing is that this traffic is often pre-qualified, because people are already entering what they’re looking for and what they want. That means I’m not reaching, like through Instagram or Facebook marketing, someone who’s sitting on the couch in the evening, watching Netflix, scrolling through social media, and then almost randomly gets a product shoved in front of them in an ad. I’m not reaching just anyone; I’m reaching someone who already has that need and is already searching for it. But compared to paid traffic, the return rate, i.e. the return rate, is often lower, and the consulting and communication effort in, for example, customer support, in the questions asked before the purchase happens, is significantly lower than in paid channels, though it still exists, of course just to a lesser extent.
David U.: Exactly. Who I am and how successful I ultimately am with my SEO strategy also depends to some extent on which niche my shop operates in. So it’s already more the case that niches are highly competitive nowadays too. And that’s actually exactly the advantage of eBay, because we can show top rankings in almost all categories. Plus, we work extremely focused on maintaining all our top rankings and really continuously improving them. And the big advantage for our eBay sellers is actually that with our traffic we reach customers who actively search for certain products on Google themselves.
Isabell: And how do I actually do that concretely, so that Google shows my products when I use SEO as a seller? Niels, you used the metaphor earlier. If I’m in place 60 in the marathon, so to speak, how do I get into the top ten?
Niels: In SEO, the foundation for everything is always the keyword. So I should know what I even want to rank for. And to find that out, it helps, on the one hand, to look at the obvious: What are people searching for? What is the product called? Which brand is it? But I would always recommend doing a proper keyword research and using one of the tools. Semrush, for example, has a free seven-day trial that you can use to do this. That means first find out which keywords exist, how often they are searched, and then assign a target keyword to each listing. Keywords are the basis for everything. I should figure that out and then have the keyword in my listing itself, in the title—that is, a product title should include the keyword relatively near the beginning as well. I should have a very informative listing, use as many of eBay’s options as possible. That means upload images that fit the listing. I would recommend 5 to 8, fill out as many item specifics as possible, and complete any fields I can fill out in the listing. And I’ve emphasized that text is absolutely fundamental for Google to understand what the listing should rank for. What is this listing relevant for? And I would recommend aiming for around 800 words of text on the listing page overall, if not a bit more—so in the range of 800 to 1200 words. That means everything counts: the listing title, the item specifics, and what I write in the item description. Overall, it should amount to roughly that many words and be informative about the product, the possible uses, and the different variants. Very, very, very important: no duplicate content, no plagiarism. If I simply copy a listing, if I simply write the same thing on all platforms I use as a seller, Google recognizes that. That means Google then says this exact information, you or someone else, if I’m copying listing information, has already been provided. That doesn’t add any value for the user; it’s a copy of another product, and accordingly this listing gets filed under “copied content,” i.e. duplicate content in SEO terms, and with the highest probability it will not rank. So if I want a listing to rank, it has to be new text. At least in the item description. Product information is always the same across different pages. That means a product has a certain weight or certain contents, certain characteristics. Of course those are always the same if I list them somewhere. But in the item description it should be unique content, nothing I copy from the seller or from the wholesaler who sells it to me and somehow dictates it. Nothing I’ve listed elsewhere and what can also help is adding reviews so that Google understands, “Ah, people have already been happy with this product.” That creates more trust. Exactly, David, do you have anything to add?
David U.: I wouldn’t strictly limit myself to 800 to 1200 words, simply because for Google it’s not so important, and in my opinion the content doesn’t have to be especially long. What matters is that the content is super informative for the user, so that they find exactly the information they need. I mean, in the past SEO people had to slap SEO texts with 1200 words onto the end of the page—texts that didn’t offer any real added value and just integrated keyword X twelve times. And today Google gets it; Google checks it. The user can read the text, and I mean, the best example is a white flower pot. If I want to buy a white flower pot, I don’t need a 1500-word description that doesn’t give me any real added value. Google gets that. So I’d say really the most important information. Short and sweet. Everything that’s important for the user, what motivates them to buy the product—that’s completely enough. And then I’d also say it’s really important that each page is optimized for at least one main keyword. And for Google, the most important indicator of what the page is about is the title and the H1 already. So the first heading. And that’s also very important information for our eBay sellers, because eBay sellers can independently influence the headings of their product pages. That means they can change the headings and tell Google what they want the product page to rank for. And our system already automatically takes care of the fact that the title and heading are identical. Just as our system automatically takes care that canonical tags are present, that the page is well optimized for mobile, and maybe one more basic piece of information about how Google ranks pages or evaluates pages. User dwell time is extremely important, meaning Google checks how long users stay on the website. And in general, the longer a user stays on the page, the more it seems to Google that the user’s search intent has been satisfied. Just as important is the bounce rate. That’s a signal when a user clicks a link through Google and then does nothing on the page, but immediately bounces back. Then it’s a rather bad signal for Google, for example. That can happen if I’ve optimized my listing for the wrong keyword. So if the keyword doesn’t perfectly match the product on the page, and the worst case is if the user goes back from the page to Google, then clicks the next search result and stays longer on that page. That should definitely be avoided.
Niels: That’s exactly where I’d like to emphasize again. That’s why choosing the keyword is so important right now. Let’s take the example of a white flower pot and then I offer a black flower pot. That’s the ultimate reason to bounce, because the user didn’t find what they were looking for. That’s why at the beginning it’s very important to choose exactly what you want to rank for. Which keyword fits your product exactly? That significantly increases the chance that the user will either a) stay longer or not bounce. That means, for example, they buy, which means I don’t also need to make sure the user first wanders around the page for a long time before taking the next action on the page. Rather, if you convince them to buy fairly quickly and they put it in their cart, that’s not a bad signal. Then Google understands: they found what they were looking for and they’re moving further through the buying process or the information process, whatever it may be.
David U.: Exactly for that reason it’s also so important that eBay sellers optimize their listings and headings as well as possible, because by optimizing the heading and the listings well, the listings not only rank better on Google, but they’re also much easier to find and much better placed on eBay itself.
David P.: Absolutely. It’s also always important to remember that we’re not just moving around in the search engine, but that we also want to be found well on eBay itself as sellers. But many of our eBay sellers also have their own webshop or are perhaps considering setting one up. Are there any differences here in terms of the respective search engine optimization?
Niels: Yes, there is one big difference at first—I’ll take this question as advantages and disadvantages. And the big advantage of eBay as a platform, for example, is that eBay alone brings more than 60 million visitors per month to its own site through Google alone, through SEO alone. These numbers come from an SEO tool—Ares in this case. That means the numbers can be significantly higher. Because every tool only aggregates these user numbers based on keywords and the corresponding positions. In English, you’d say “take it with a grain of salt.” So it won’t be exactly this number in a factual sense, but it will tend to move in these dimensions. Most shops and webshops are already happy with 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 visitors. And eBay naturally brings a gigantic number of visitors by default, and yes, a webshop starts out at zero and as a webshop operator I have to do everything myself, meaning I have to do the optimization David described myself. This strength in the form of links, for example, is still at zero. So there I really start at the very back, at position 100, whereas eBay already brings a large amount of strength. So the advantage I have is that it’s more customizable. That means if I want to do it, if I want to take on this work, I can generally do more and have more freedom. Still, when we look at these three things that need doing, there are two big advantages: the text optimization has to be done by yourself in both cases. The strength eBay already brings; I’d have to build that myself in a webshop. And if we look at the technical optimization possibilities, then I have a few more options here. That doesn’t mean eBay doesn’t already provide the foundation, the setup, so that the most important things are already fulfilled there. It’s just that I then have no influence over the technical optimization and would therefore have to do that myself as well. So if I now had to decide where to start—webshop or eBay—eBay already brings a lot of traffic, strength, and optimization potential. I just have to take care of the texts. With a webshop I have to take care of much more, but in the long term I’d have more room to maneuver if I wanted to dive deeper into it.
David U.: Exactly. To come back once more to the numbers Niels mentioned: according to Sistrix, eBay is the third-largest website in Germany in terms of organic traffic.
David P.: And why is SEO relevant for eBay sellers too?
Niels: A large part of the traffic, meaning these visitor numbers that eBay gets, comes from the work eBay itself puts in as a platform, of course. That means categories are created and optimized; in eBay language these are called browse nodes. eBay takes care of the texts, eBay takes care of the optimization and the listings. And if I go by the numbers I checked earlier, then 40 million of those 60 million land on the categories. That means extremely many visitors flood into the categories slash browse nodes every month. And that is, of course, a big advantage in this case. But that doesn’t yet mean that my own listing will then receive that flood of visitors among a large number of them. Therefore, the best thing sellers can do is get their own listings ranking on Google as well. Because I’m going by the numbers I pulled earlier: just under 4 million of this traffic lands on individual listings that have done their homework. And that means they not only get the traffic flowing to the categories and distributed across the listings, but also have, on their own, a certain amount of visitors who land directly on that listing. So not choosing in the category which product to buy now, but landing directly on the respective seller’s listing. That means if I use eBay’s strength, use this starting position, I have the opportunity to get thousands of visitors per month with my listing who are looking for exactly a specific product. So eBay traffic flows through the category, partly lands on the own product. I can get traffic directly via my own listing, and we haven’t even talked here yet about the number of users eBay has as a platform outside of SEO, because it’s not just those 60 million, it’s many, many more. I don’t have the figures available now, but we can talk about many, many millions of visitors who could potentially land on the listing. And that through these three channels. eBay as a platform, rankings through categories and browse nodes, and the own listing. Every seller has control over their own listing, and I think that should be motivation enough.
Isabell: Keywords have come up several times now. What matters when choosing keywords?
David U.: In SEO, for example, you generally distinguish between transactional keywords, meaning keywords with very strong purchase intent. That’s, for example, when someone searches Google for garden shed and wants to buy a garden shed. Then there are informational keywords. These are keywords that provide certain information, such as “What is the foundation of a garden shed?” or “What is the foundation of a garden shed made of?” And commercial keywords on eBay are mainly covered by our listings and category pages, for example the garden shed category page.
Niels: Exactly. I’d like to briefly emphasize to sellers that what they can and should primarily do on eBay now is optimize the listings. And if a listing ranks on Google, then it is typically always transactional. That means Google knows eBay is basically a gigantic online shop, basically a huge platform. And listings themselves are best suited for transactional keywords. That means if I’m now searching for a very specific product, if I’m searching for a very specific branded product, it would make no sense to have a product listing for something like “Which foundation for the garden shed?” Even if I’m selling a garden shed there, for example, or a foundation for it, whatever it’s made of. Then Google would say okay, we have a product and it’s supposed to rank for an informational keyword. That doesn’t really make much sense. Google also expects that when an informational keyword is entered, a product won’t appear, but rather informative content. That means, for example, a blog post or a product comparison, if it’s about “Which garden shed should I buy?” Therefore, as sellers, focus clearly on transactional keywords in your listings.
David U.: So for sellers on eBay, only transactional keywords are basically relevant. And for your own e-commerce shop, it also makes sense to cover informational keywords, for example in the form of blog articles or product comparisons. And what we also do at eBay is operate various blogs on different topics, and we integrate guide articles on our category pages, for example on buying phones. And for us that is informative content that also ranks well on Google and brings us a lot of additional traffic.
Isabell: David, you just said that eBay of course also does a lot to generate traffic for different categories. How exactly does eBay do that?
David U.: Good question. We continuously analyze the structure of our navigation. We look for important keywords that we’re still missing and put pages live for those missing keywords. And what we’re also doing right now, which is quite exciting: we’re optimizing the internal linking of our category pages. From an SEO perspective, it’s extremely important that pages with high search volume—for example, I could take the category “buy motorhome” as an example—get more internal links than product pages, such as the product page selling the Panini image of Gerd Müller from the 1974 World Cup. That product page obviously doesn’t have as much search volume as “buy motorhome.” But by contrast, that doesn’t mean we only generate a lot of traffic for the heavily competitive keywords. So, “buy motorhome.” We also rank just as well on product pages with long-tail keywords. So in the example now, Panini, the Panini image of Gerd Müller from the 1974 World Cup. But overall I would say that at eBay we still have room to grow in terms of SEO and that we haven’t yet fully exhausted all our optimization potential.
David P.: If I think about all of this now, it’s already a lot of effort and so on. For which sellers is using search engine optimization especially worthwhile? So which sellers should think, okay, I still have a lot of potential there, I should take care of that.
Niels: SEO is often especially interesting for high-price products. Because when I think about my own search behavior or my time on social media, if I’m shown ads there, on social media in this case, in the evening on the couch, then it tends to catch impulse buyers more often. That means products that aren’t so expensive, maybe up to €100 at most. Since I haven’t previously signaled my interest in this product, as is the case with SEO. That means if someone enters that they want to buy a marble table, a leather sofa, or a caravan, then I already know that person will tend to know what price range this is in and still wants to do it. In performance marketing, the conversion rate for more expensive products is often very low. That’s not the case in SEO. SEO is also especially worthwhile for products with good margins. So it doesn’t always have to be high price. If I sell my skin cream or anti-aging cream with a 5x, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x, 10x margin, then it’s worthwhile there too. For products that aren’t so high price, where the net purchase may not bring me a three- or four-digit amount in the end, but the margin is just great. Or also for low-price products if they’re entry-level or consumable products. If we think, I don’t know, of olive oil, dietary supplements, protein powder, whatever it may be, which tends to mean that if the customer likes it, it gets bought again when it’s used up. That means the product gives entry into the brand world and you can assume that the customer I generate will very likely become a repeat buyer, and thus has a very high customer lifetime value, meaning over the long term of their life they will keep buying this product or other products from this brand very often.
David U.: I’d also mention products with high search volume, and I do think it’s the case that sellers who sell popular items with high search volume on eBay get more traffic than, for example, sellers of niche items. But that doesn’t mean niche products can’t also generate high prices on eBay.
David P.: And if I now say okay, I fit that, that would be the case for me, how much time would I need to invest as a seller in search engine optimization?
Niels: Yes, a realistic mindset is very important here, because it involves many small adjustments and Google doesn’t check every single page on earth every day either. But you can imagine it like this: if I make a change, make an adjustment, then the Googlebot might come by in 7 to 14 days, see that change, and think, “Well, let’s see if next time it’s still as improved as I found it here.” Then it comes by again. It notices, great, okay, you didn’t just do something briefly here, but apparently you’re really putting in the effort and making an effort, and then the results start coming slowly. That means the listing gradually climbs up the rankings. With brand-new shops or brand-new listings, SEO work can also easily take 3 to 6 months or longer. But let’s stay with the marathon metaphor. It just takes a while to get from position 100 into the top ten, and from there exactly what David mentioned kicks in, namely: how does the user behave once they get the visitors? Or rather, how do users behave on the page they land on? That’s what I mean. That means if Google is then signaled: great, they’re buying here, they’re staying on the page a long time, they’re not bouncing back into the search results and clicking something else, then I slowly climb up the top positions, and this whole process often takes 3 to 6 months, sometimes 7 to 8 months, and that’s the expectation I should have. It’s not a channel where I pour money in at the top and it immediately more or less comes back out at the bottom; it’s more of an investment. Think of it like real estate. I buy the thing, rent out the thing, and then the return keeps coming in again and again. That means I reach this position once, and then quite a lot has to happen. I’d have to do a lot wrong, or the people below or behind me in the rankings would have to really step on the gas or sprint hard to get past me. And that’s why the channel works more like this: you invest a lot of time and then over months to years you get the return for it. And I’d say that’s especially suitable for own brands or sellers with fairly high margins.
David U.: I’d maybe add this: for small e-commerce shops it’s extremely hard to rank for highly competitive keywords. If we take the example “buy caravan” again. If I now have a small shop that sells ten caravans, it would be extremely hard for me to outrank eBay there or beat the big e-commerce shops. So it may make more sense there to go after niche products. And as I said, eBay has an extremely large number of top placements for important keywords, and as a seller, as a small e-commerce shop, I also have to be clear that I’ll need to invest a lot of money just to get anywhere close to page one of Google for individual search results.
Niels: Exactly, especially for these competitive keywords. As a smaller shop, as a smaller seller in your own webshop, you often have to accept that long-tail keywords are what’s left for you. Then it’s not “buy caravan,” but a very specific brand and “buy caravan.” That’s difficult too. If I have a very specific caravan brand and people are also searching for the model, then I’m more likely to have a chance. That means as a seller I shouldn’t go in expecting to rank for the most competitive keywords in the entire industry, but rather focus on picking up the crumbs from the big cake, so to speak, which can absolutely be worthwhile. Because “buy caravan” may be searched 120,000 times a month. And if the long-tail keyword is still searched 1,000 times a month, then that can still be absolutely worthwhile. I just shouldn’t aim to conquer the biggest, most competitive keywords with my own webshop. If I find that, when I enter it, there are a lot of big players in the race. That’s why the short keyword is often unfortunately money down the drain for many sellers. And the opportunity lies in long-tail keywords, because the big players don’t even focus on conquering these small keywords, since they’re able to capture the big keywords themselves, meaning the 80% of market share. And that often leaves the opportunity for sellers in their own webshop to go after the remaining 20% of market share.
David U.: I definitely agree with you there. And again to the eBay sellers: precisely for that reason it’s so important that the listings are truly perfectly optimized, that the keywords in the headlines are correct, that the right keywords are selected. Because, as I said, if the listings are perfectly optimized, then the listings will also be shown higher up, for example on the motorhome page. If I’m selling a motorhome, then the listing will be shown further up because it’s simply well optimized. Super, easy quick win because it can be implemented super quickly.
Niels: If that’s done, you basically have this holy trinity we talked about: traffic from the eBay platform, traffic through the categories, traffic through your own listing. And those are three sources that bring paying visitors who are already looking for this product.
Isabell: I think it’s super interesting that you addressed the different seller sizes and the different product categories. If I’ve now decided as a seller that I want to deal with the topic more and really tackle it, maybe even put some money in to get started, how should I best begin? Are there any startup aids you can give our sellers?
Niels: I would recommend to every seller that before they start wildly optimizing and adjusting listings, they first complete this important foundation everything is built on. And that is keyword research. That means take a tool of your choice. There are many different ones, there’s Sistrix, there’s Semrush, Sem Rush written like that, Ahrefs, and among those I would recommend Semrush. They offer a seven-day free trial, and during those seven days you can already wonderfully research your own keywords for the listings, research for your own shop, and thus do this groundwork.
David U.: I would definitely fully agree with that. I use Semrush myself too. What might also be interesting for a seller: Keyword Planner. If you still have a Google AdWords account and use Keyword Planner, you can wonderfully have keyword suggestions for certain keywords spit out, or check the search volume for entire keywords. And what’s also very nice in Keyword Planner, Semrush has this too, is that the competition for the keyword is displayed. That means I immediately see whether there is strong competition for this keyword or whether it’s relatively easy to optimize for it. And again, for highly competitive keywords, it often isn’t worthwhile for small shops at the beginning to optimize for them. So as I said, better search for keywords that have little search volume and also rather low competition, instead of going straight for the heavily contested keywords.
Niels: Yes, and to add to that, if you use the Semrush seven-day trial period: there are many different tutorials on how to use the tool best, even though it’s very user-friendly. From the start it’s also relatively comprehensive. That means the number of features and functions can initially feel a bit overwhelming and a bit much. I also wrote a guide of just under 500 words on how sellers can use Semrush for their own shop to do keyword analysis. Accompanied by a tutorial of about seven videos on which functions in Semrush are especially useful in this seven-day trial. And that can certainly be linked in the show notes. And I definitely invite you to use that as a starter aid when working with Semrush, so that the tool is used to its full potential during those seven days.
Isabell: Yes, great, thank you both very much. We’ll definitely link some useful links in the show notes, and with that we’ve already reached the end of our podcast. And as you may already know, there’s one final question we always ask our guests. Namely: what was the last thing you bought on eBay? And David, I’d like to ask you first.
David U.: Actually, a phone case this week, but what might be the more interesting story is: at the end of September I bought my first snowboard, a beautiful Nitro snowboard, and I bought it from a small eBay seller from Garmisch in Bavaria. And amusingly, the seller called me again before sending the board. And, long story short, I wanted to buy the wrong board. He called me and asked if I was really good enough to need the board for the halfpipe. Of course I didn’t need that, because my skill level is completely lower, and the seller was so nice, changed the order right away, sent me the right board at no extra charge, and I think that’s actually a very nice story, also to show once again that the small sellers on eBay still offer a more direct contact. Yes, that’s my story about my last purchase on eBay.
David P.: I definitely think it’s very cool when sellers are that flexible and also pay attention to whether it makes sense. That’s just service the way it should be. Niels, how about you? What was the last thing you bought on eBay?
Niels: Yes, unfortunately I don’t really have such a cool story about it, but I’ve basically bought almost all my electronics on eBay for as long as I can remember. So the MacBook I’m using to record this podcast with you right now was my last purchase on eBay, and almost all the electronics in my house originally come from eBay. So I can’t compete with that cool story, but I’m very happy with my MacBook. It serves me well every day.
David P.: Very nice. Then thank you both very much for being here
Niels: Yes, thank you for the invitation. I was very happy to be a guest on this podcast and hope for an episode. Episode someday. Thank you very much and see you soon.
David U.: Thank you very much for the invitation and the nice conversation. Also for getting to know Niels. Thank you to you, to the hosts, and see you again soon.
David P.: And with that, we’ve already reached the end of the podcast episode again. We’re of course very happy about your feedback. So feel free to write to us in the eBay Community. Maybe which SEO tips from Niels and David have helped you the most. Maybe what experience you already have in the area of SEO, or whether this was completely new to you. And maybe you’ve taken a look at what score your listings achieved. Feel free to leave that as a comment too.
Isabell: And of course we’d be very happy if you leave us a subscription or a like where you’re listening to us right now, if possible. And once again from me: thank you for listening and see you next time.
David P.: See you next time.
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