SEO for online retailers [Re-release]
Hello dear listeners! We’re back from our summer break with a little surprise for you: so you won’t get bored until the release of our brand-new episode on August 14, we’ve brought along one of our podcast episodes from 2022 for you. Because the topic is still highly relevant for online sellers – so be sure to listen in!
SEO - a topic that online sellers sooner or later can’t avoid. But what does “SEO” actually mean? Is SEO worthwhile 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 Wolf of SEO agency, and David Ulbrich, SEO Specialist at eBay, answer these and other exciting questions for us.
**Important links**
- https://de.semrush.com/
- https://ahrefs.com/de/
- https://www.sistrix.de/
- https://community.ebay.de/
- https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100092342473316&refid=52&__tn__=C-R
- https://www.ebay.de/verkaeuferportal/news/podcast
**Chapter markers**
- 00:00:00 to 00:00:38: Note on republication.
- 00:00:38 to 00:03:37: Intro, guest introduction and introduction to SEO.
- 00:03:37 to 00:07:06: Basic concepts of SEO and its importance as a marketing channel.
- 00:07:06 to 00:10:17: First steps and getting started with SEO.
- 00:10:17 to 00:27:29: Benefits of SEO and its use, including relevance for eBay sellers.
- 00:27:29 to 00:34:45: Important aspects of keyword selection and their significance for different sellers.
- 00:34:45 to 00:40:37: Time required for SEO.
- 00:40:37 to 00:44:10: Useful getting-started help and resources for SEO.
Lisa: We’re back from our summer break with a little interruption for you. So you won’t get bored until the release of our brand-new episode on August 14, we’ve brought one of our most popular podcast episodes from 2023 for you: SEO for online sellers. Because the topic is still highly relevant, in this episode you’ll learn what SEO means. And we answer questions like: Is it worthwhile for you as your own marketing channel? How much time do you need to invest in it, and what matters when you want to optimize your eBay shop for SEO? So definitely listen in! Have fun!
Isabell: Hello dear listeners and a warm 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 regardless, we’re talking about a very exciting topic, because we’re talking about how to be found better in search engines. And I hope that afterward we’ll also have a few tips on how to bring our podcast a bit further forward. Nevertheless, 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 will look a bit more through the general SEO lens, while our second guest, David Ulbrich, as a technical SEO team member from eBay itself, will join us as an eBay SEO expert. We may have two Davids here, but one is SEO David and I’m Podcast David, maybe that helps. Hello to you both.
David U.: Hello David, thank you very much for the invitation.
Niels: Yes, hello David. Happy 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 one or two listeners may already know you. But tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into the topic.
Niels: Very gladly. So as already introduced, I’m Niels Stuck, founder of the SEO agency Wolf of SEO. We specialize in e-commerce SEO, so for online shops, and currently support more than 60 online shops with their SEO strategy. By now I have eight years of experience. Time flies, and I was also an eBay employee a few years ago. That’s how the contact for eBay Open and with you came about. And I’m happy to be back on the podcast and to be your guest.
David P.: Very nice, and from basically 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 Ulbrich, and I’ve been here at eBay since April as an SEO specialist in the technical SEO team. I got started in SEO almost exactly ten years ago as a working student at Ladenzeile.de. Some of you may still know Ladenzeile. Still one of the heavyweights of German e-commerce. Back then it already had a very good and progressive SEO strategy, and maybe also interesting: here at eBay I’ll be the contact person for all relevant questions for the German eBay business units.
Isabell: We’ve already used the term SEO a few 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 listing visible for relevant keywords. For example, if we think in an e-commerce context now, in an eBay context, it’s your own product that you want to sell, whether it’s a caravan, a wooden table, a leather couch, or a branded product like the Fendt caravan, the Wimmer wooden table, or the Ikea couch, whatever it is. Anyone entering something like that is generally searching for that product and generally wants to buy it. And just under 65% of clicks from these searches go to the first three search results. So the goal is to be present with top rankings, to capture these visitors with either your own listing or your webshop, and thus generate sales. Because anyone searching for a certain thing, searching for a product, is generally prequalified in that they already have an interest in this product and therefore are quite likely to buy as well.
Isabell: So SEO doesn’t just refer to the results in Google Shopping, but really to every spot on Google’s search results page.
Niels: That’s exactly where the big difference lies. Google Shopping and Google ads. There, the click basically costs money. 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, that is, where there isn’t an ad shown at the top next to them, but the results that simply come up naturally, because the click then costs nothing accordingly.
David P.: Okay, good. Why can SEO basically be considered its own marketing channel and not just an optional optimization you could do if you wanted to?
Niels: In that case, people often clearly underestimate how many people are actually searching for certain things every month. That means 20,000 people may search for a specific couch per month, or 50,000 people per month may search for a certain phone. There’s really a lot of potential behind that. Of course, it also depends on your own product. Is it very, very niche, very specific, with only a very small target group? Then it generally won’t be searched for as often. But everyone wears T-shirts, sweaters, and shoes. Those are generally searched for very often. Depending on the product and product group, SEO can become a very, very strong revenue driver. And of course you need to determine beforehand whether that’s the case. For that reason, it should be viewed as its own channel, because it’s one of the few channels where you don’t have to specifically buy visitors, where you don’t pay a click price or a price per 1,000 impressions or the like, but it can become a long-term, sustainable, organic revenue channel that often complements the paid channels that most people are relatively familiar with.
Isabell: You just said that you can determine beforehand whether SEO is basically worthwhile as your 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 each month. You can use Google’s own Keyword Planner for that. You can use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Sistrix—there are many that show you very specifically how often people search for what I offer. And based on that, you can often do calculations. Because if a product is searched for 10,000 times, for example, and you rank in the top three positions, you generally know how many visitors will come to your product or site as a result. 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 can also be less, but that way you can already determine in advance: How much revenue could I make through SEO as a marketing channel? And does that investment make sense for me, if I consider how much is actually possible in the end of the day.
David U.: In general, I would definitely agree with Niels, and for many people SEO is also kind of a black hole. Everyone knows it, but no one 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—so, a clear example, 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. That means the shorter a keyword is generally, 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 specific product and I see the usual suspects, let’s stay with the fashion area, then Google tends to kick in and say, “Okay, these are all bigger players.” In general, this keyword will probably not be so easy to conquer. If, on the other hand, I see three, four, maybe five smaller brands, smaller shops in the top ten, then I can assume it will be less competitive overall.
David P.: Niels, David just said that SEO also has the advantage of being basically free traffic, which you do have to work very hard for, but then it comes in free of charge. What other advantages does SEO offer as a marketing channel?
Niels: Since it isn’t, for example, Google Shopping, Google ads. Since it isn’t paid traffic, meaning paid traffic from Facebook, Instagram, and other apps, you get the full contribution margin here. That means, in principle, once it’s in place, it’s clear that investment has to be made beforehand. From the point at which I have that visibility, I have the full contribution margin, because no click costs are added that are then deducted from the final amount I have left after selling the product. But it is often very sustainable and lasts a long time. That means if I’ve once managed it, it’s like a marathon. If I’ve made it into the top ten of search results, then I basically only have to, if I see someone catching up behind me, someone is about to overtake me, then I need to give it a little more gas, but once I’ve made it to the top, it becomes significantly harder for those further back to overtake me. In addition, this traffic is often prequalified, since people are already entering what they’re looking for and what they want. That means I don’t reach the person who is sitting on the couch in the evening watching Netflix and scrolling through social media on the side and then almost accidentally gets a product shoved in front of them in an ad, as is the case with Instagram or Facebook marketing, for example. I’m not reaching just anyone, I’m reaching someone who already has that need, who is already searching for it. But accordingly, compared with paid traffic, the refund rate, i.e. the return rate, is often lower, and the consulting effort and communication effort in, for example, customer support, in the questions asked in advance before the purchase is completed, is significantly lower than in paid channels, though still present, 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 the niche my shop operates in. So it’s already the case that even niches are now highly contested. And that’s actually exactly the advantage of eBay, because we can show top rankings in almost all categories. Plus we work extremely focused to maintain all our top rankings and to continuously improve 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 exactly do I make Google show my products when I use SEO as a seller? Niels, you just used the metaphor. If I’m basically in 60th place in the marathon, 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 actually want to rank for. And to figure that out, on the one hand the obvious helps of course: what are people searching for? What is the product called, what brand is it now? But I would always recommend really doing some keyword research, using one of the tools. Semrush, for example, also has a free seven-day trial with which you can do that. So first find out which keywords exist, how often they’re searched for, and then assign a target keyword to each listing. That means everything is built on keywords. I should figure that out and then in my listing itself, in the title, so a product title should contain the keyword relatively near the beginning as well. I should have a very informative listing, making use of as much as possible of the options that eBay now offers. That means uploading images that fit the listing. I’d recommend 5 to 8, filling out as many item specifics as possible and completing the fields I can fill in within the listing. And I’ve stressed that text is super essential for Google in order to understand what exactly 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 little more, so in the range of 800 to 1200 words. That means everything counts: from the listing title to the item specifics to what I write in the item description. In total, that should amount to about that many words and be informative about the product, its areas of use, and the different variants. Very, very, very important: no duplicate content, no plagiarism. If I just copy a listing, if I just write the same thing as a seller across all the platforms I use, Google recognizes that. That means Google then says that this information has already been provided by you or someone else, if I copy listing information. Yes, there’s no added value for the user, it’s a copy of another product, and accordingly this listing gets filed under “copied content,” or duplicate content in SEO German, and with the highest probability it won’t rank. So if I want a listing to rank, it has to be new text. At least in the item description. The product information is always the same on different pages. That means a product has a certain weight, or certain contents, certain properties. Of course those are always the same when I list it somewhere. But in the item description it should be unique content, nothing I copied from the seller or from the wholesaler who sold it to me and somehow dictated it. Nothing I’ve listed elsewhere, either. And what can also help is integrating reviews so that Google understands, “Ah, people have already been happy with this product.” That creates more trust. Exactly, David, do you have any additions?
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, that the content is particularly long. What’s important is that the content is super informative for the user, meaning they find exactly the information they need. I mean, in the past SEOs had to paste SEO texts with 1200 words at the bottom of the page, texts that had no real added value and simply integrated keyword X twelve times. And today Google understands that, Google checks that. The user can read the text and I mean the best example is a white flowerpot, for example. If I want to buy a white flowerpot, I don’t need a description that’s 1,500 words long and gives me no real added value. Google understands that. So I’d say really the most important information. Short and to the point. Everything that’s important for the user, what convinces them to buy the product—that’s completely enough. And then I’d also say it’s really important that every 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. So the first heading. And that’s also very important information for our eBay sellers, because eBay sellers can influence the headings of their product pages themselves. That means they can change the headings and thus tell Google what they want the product page to rank for, and our system already takes care of the fact that the title and the heading are identical. Just as our system automatically makes sure that canonical tags are present, that the page is well optimized for mobile, and perhaps 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 fulfilled. Just as important is the bounce rate. So that’s a signal: if a user clicks a link via 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 that the user goes back from the page to Google, then clicks the next search result and stays on that page longer. So that should definitely be avoided.
Niels: Exactly, and I want to emphasize that again. That’s why choosing the keyword is so important. Let’s take the example of a white flowerpot, and then I offer a black flowerpot. That’s the number one reason for someone 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? This greatly increases the likelihood that the user will either a) stay longer or not bounce. For example, buy, which means I also don’t have to make sure the user wanders around on the page for a long time before taking the next interaction on the page. If you convince them to buy fairly quickly and they add it to their cart, that’s not a bad signal. That means Google understands: they found what they were looking for and are moving further through the purchase process or through 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 so well, because by optimizing the heading and the listings well, the listings not only rank better on Google, but the listings themselves are also much easier to find and much better placed on the eBay site itself.
David P.: Absolutely. It’s also always important to keep in mind that we’re not only moving around in the search engine, but also want to be found well on eBay itself as sellers. But many of our eBay sellers also have their own webshop or may be considering setting one up. Are there differences here with regard to the respective search engine optimization?
Niels: Yes, so one big difference first of all—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 figures come from an SEO tool. Ahrefs in this case. That means the numbers can be significantly higher. Because each tool only aggregates these user numbers based on the keywords and the corresponding positions. In English, you’d then say “Take it with a grain of salt.” So it won’t factually be exactly that number, but it will generally be in that range. Most shops and webshops are already happy with 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 visitors. And eBay naturally brings a gigantic number of visitors with it right from the start, and that means a webshop starts at zero, so to speak, and as a webshop operator I have to do everything myself, meaning I have to do the optimization that David described myself. That strength in the form of links, for example, is still at zero. That means I really start all the way back at position 100, while eBay already brings a large amount of strength with it. 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 that work, I can generally do more, I have more room to maneuver. Still, there are two big advantages when we look at these three things that need to be done: text optimization has to be done by yourself in both cases. The strength eBay already brings with it, I’d have to build myself in a webshop. And if we look at technical optimizability, then I have a few more possibilities here. Which doesn’t mean that eBay doesn’t already bring the foundation, the setup, so that the most important things are already fulfilled there. It’s just that I don’t have any influence on the technical optimization, so I’d have to do that myself as well. That means, if I had to decide where to start, webshop or eBay, eBay already brings a lot of traffic, strength, and optimization level with it. I just have to take care of the texts. With a webshop I have to take care of much more, but would have more leeway in the long term if I want to go deeper into it.
David U.: Exactly. Just one more note on 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 now also relevant for eBay sellers?
Niels: The large share of the traffic, so these visitor numbers that eBay gets, comes from the work that eBay itself as a platform naturally puts in. 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 before, then 40 million of those 60 million end up in the categories. That means extremely many visitors flood into the categories/browse nodes every month. And in this case that’s of course a big advantage. But that still doesn’t mean that my own listing will get this flood of visitors among that many. Therefore, the best thing sellers can do is get their own listings to rank on Google as well. Because I’m going by the numbers I pulled earlier. Just under 4 million of this traffic ends up on individual listings that have done their homework. And that means they not only get the traffic that flows to the categories and is distributed across the listings, but also have their own standalone share of visitors who come directly to this listing. So not choosing in the category which product to buy, but landing directly on the listing of the respective seller. 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 searching for exactly a specific product. So eBay traffic flows through the category, lands partly on the individual product. I can get traffic directly through my own listing, and we haven’t even talked about the user numbers eBay as a platform itself has outside of SEO, because it’s not just these 60 million, there are many more. I don’t have the figures available now, but we can talk about many, many millions of visitors here who can potentially land on the listing. And that through these three channels: eBay as a platform, rankings through categories and browse nodes, and your own listing. Each seller has their own hands on their own listing, and I think that should be motivation enough.
Isabell: The keyword topic has come up a few times now. What matters when choosing keywords?
David U.: In SEO, you generally distinguish between transactional keywords, for example, meaning keywords with very strong purchase intent. That’s, for example, when someone searches Google for a 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 like?” or “What is the foundation of a garden shed made of?” And commercial keywords on eBay are covered mainly by our listings and category pages, for example the category page garden shed.
Niels: Exactly, I’d like to emphasize to the sellers again 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 generally 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 searching for a very specific product, if I’m searching for a very specific branded product, it wouldn’t make sense for a product listing to rank for something like “What foundation for a garden shed?” Even if, for example, I sell a garden shed there or a foundation for it, whatever it’s made of. Google would then say, okay, we have a product and it’s supposed to rank for an informational keyword. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Google also expects, when an informational keyword is entered, that it won’t get a product but informative content. So a blog post, for example a product comparison. If it’s about “Which garden shed should I buy?” Therefore, as sellers, focus clearly on transactional keywords for your listings.
David U.: So for sellers on eBay, only transactional keywords are really 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 run various blogs on different topics, and we integrate guide articles on our category pages, for example about buying a phone. And for us that’s 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 does a lot to generate traffic for different categories. How exactly does eBay achieve that?
David U.: Good question. We continuously analyze the structure of our navigation. We look for important keywords that we’re still missing, and we bring pages for those missing keywords online. And what we’re also doing right now, which is quite exciting, is optimizing the internal linking of our category pages. So from an SEO perspective, it’s extremely important that pages with a high search volume—for example, I could take the category “buy a motorhome” as an example—get more internal links than, say, product pages, like the product page selling the Panini image of Gerd Müller from the 1974 World Cup. Obviously, that product page doesn’t have nearly as much search volume as “buy a motorhome.” But conversely, that doesn’t mean we only generate lots of traffic for the heavily contested keywords. So, buy a motorhome. We rank just as well on the product pages with the long-tail keywords. So in this 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 for improvement when it comes to SEO and that we haven’t yet fully tapped our optimization potential.
David P.: If I think about all of this now, that’s already a lot of effort and so on—so 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 if 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 I tend to get more of the impulse buyers. That means products that aren’t so expensive, maybe up to a maximum of €100. Since, unlike in the case of SEO, I haven’t previously signaled my interest in this product. That means if someone enters that they want to buy a marble table, want to buy a leather couch, want to buy a caravan, then I already know that the person will generally know the price range this is in and still wants to do it. That means in performance marketing the conversion rate for more expensive products is often very low. That is not the case with 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, my anti-aging cream, with a 5x, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x, 10x margin, then that’s worthwhile too. For products that aren’t so high price, where the purchase net at the end of the day might not bring me a three- or four-digit amount, but the margin is excellent. Or also for low-price products when they are entry-level or consumable products. If we think of olive oil, nutritional supplements, protein powder, whatever it is, that tends to ensure that, if the customer likes it, it will be bought again once it’s used up, meaning the entry into the brand world is provided by the product 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 a long period, over their lifetime, they will buy this product or other products from this brand very often.
David U.: So I’d also mention products with high search volume, and I do believe 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 say, okay, I fit the profile, that would be the case for me, how much time would I need to put into search engine optimization as a seller?
Niels: Yes, so a realistic expectation is very important here, because it involves many small adjustments, and Google doesn’t check every single page on earth every day. 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, “Hmm, let’s see whether it’s still improved the next time I see it like this.” Then it comes by again. It finds, great, okay, you didn’t just do something short-term here, but apparently you’re really putting in the effort, and then the results slowly come. That means the listing slowly climbs the rankings. For very new shops or very new listings, this can also easily take 3 to 6 months, or even longer. But we’ll stay with the marathon metaphor. It simply 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. So if Google is then still being signaled, great, they’re buying here, they’re staying on the page a long time, they’re not bouncing back to the search results and clicking something else, then I slowly climb up toward the top positions, and this whole process often takes 3 to 6 months, can also take 7 to 8 months, and accordingly that’s the expectation I should bring. It’s not a channel into which I pour money at the top and more or less immediately get it back out at the bottom, but rather an investment. Think of it like real estate. I buy the thing, rent the thing out, and then the return keeps coming in again and again. That means I climb into this position once, and then quite a lot has to happen. I’d have to do quite 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 therefore 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 private-label brands or sellers with fairly high margins.
David U.: I might add here: For small e-commerce shops, it is extremely difficult to rank for heavily contested keywords. If we take the example “buy a caravan” again. If I have a small shop that sells ten caravans, it would be extremely hard for me to outrank eBay there or get ahead of the large e-commerce shops. So in that case it may make more sense to go for niche products instead. And as I said, eBay really has extremely many top placements for important keywords, and as a seller I then also have to be clear that, as a small e-commerce shop, I have to put a lot of money on the table to even come close to Google’s first page of 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 a caravan,” but the very specific brand and caravan buy. That’s also difficult; if I now have a very specific caravan brand and then the model is also being searched for, then I generally have better chances there. That means as a seller I shouldn’t go in with the expectation that I can rank for the competitive keywords of the whole industry, and should instead focus on, yes, picking up the crumbs from the big cake that can absolutely be worthwhile. Because “buy a caravan” may be searched 120,000 times per month. And if the long-tail keyword is then searched 1,000 times per month, that can still absolutely be worthwhile. My goal should just not be to conquer the most competitive keywords with my own webshop. If I realize, when I enter it, there are a lot of big players in the race. So the short keyword is often unfortunately burned money 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 are able to capture the big keywords themselves, meaning the 80% of market share. And that’s where the opportunity often lies for sellers in their webshop: taking care of the remaining 20% of market share.
David U.: I definitely agree with that. And again to the eBay sellers: exactly for that reason it’s so important that the listings are really perfectly optimized, that the keywords in the headlines are right, that the correct 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 sell a motorhome, then the listing will be shown higher up because it’s simply well optimized. Great, an easy quick win because it can be implemented very quickly.
Niels: If that’s done, you basically have this holy trinity we talked about: traffic from the eBay platform, traffic via the categories, traffic via your own listing. And those are three sources that bring paying visitors who are already searching for this product.
Isabell: I find it super exciting that you went into the different seller sizes and the different product categories. If, as a seller, I’ve decided for myself that I want to deal more with the topic and actually tackle it, maybe even put some money into it to get started, how do I best begin? Are there perhaps any getting-started aids you can give our sellers?
Niels: I would recommend to every seller that before you start wildly optimizing and adjusting listings, you first complete this important foundation on which everything is built. And that is keyword research. That means take a tool of your choice. There are many different ones, there’s Sistrix, there’s Semrush, spelled Sem Rush, Ahrefs, and among them 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 do this basic work.
David U.: I would definitely fully agree with that. I use Semrush myself as well. What might also be interesting for a seller: Keyword Planner. If you still have a Google AdWords account and in Keyword Planner, you can beautifully have keyword suggestions spit out for certain keywords 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’s strong competition for this keyword or whether it’s relatively easy to optimize for it. And another note here: for heavily contested keywords, it’s usually not worth optimizing with small shops at the beginning. So, as I said, better to look for the keywords that have little search volume and rather low competition, instead of going straight for the heavily contested keywords.
Niels: Yes, and to add to that, if you use this Semrush seven-day trial period: there are many different tutorials on how to use the tool best, even though it’s very user-friendly. Right from the start it’s also relatively comprehensive. That means the amount of features and functions can initially feel a bit overwhelming and daunting. I’ve also written a guide of just under 500 words on how sellers can use Semrush for their own shop to do this keyword analysis. Along with a tutorial of around seven videos on which functions in Semrush are very helpful 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 getting-started aid when working with Semrush, so that the tool is used to its full potential during these seven days.
Isabell: Yes, great, thank you both very much. We will 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 is one last question that we always ask our guests. And that is: what was the last thing you bought on eBay? And David, I’d like to ask you first.
David U.: Actually, this week it was a phone case, but a perhaps 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 funnily enough, the seller called me again before shipping the board. And yes, long story short, I wanted to buy the wrong board. He called me and asked whether I was really that good and would need the board for the halfpipe. Of course I didn’t, 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 have a rather 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 as 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 that, but I’ve always bought almost all my electronics on eBay. So the MacBook I’m using right now to record this podcast with you was my last purchase on eBay, and almost any electronics in my house originally comes 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 for being here!
Niels: Yes, thank you for the invitation. I was very happy to be a guest on this podcast and hope for a follow-up episode sometime. Thank you very much and see you soon.
David U.: Thank you very much for the invitation and the nice conversation. Also nice to have met Niels. Many thanks to you, to the hosts, and happy to come back again soon.
David P.: And with that we’re already at the end of the podcast episode again. Of course we’d love 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 for you. And maybe you’ve also checked what score your listings achieved. Feel free to leave that as a comment as well.
00:46:31 Isabell: And of course we’d be very happy if you leave us a subscription or a like where you’re currently listening to us, if possible. And from me as well: thank you for listening and see you next time.
David P.: See you next time.
Isabell: Hello dear listeners and a warm 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 regardless, we’re talking about a very exciting topic, because we’re talking about how to be found better in search engines. And I hope that afterward we’ll also have a few tips on how to bring our podcast a bit further forward. Nevertheless, 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 will look a bit more through the general SEO lens, while our second guest, David Ulbrich, as a technical SEO team member from eBay itself, will join us as an eBay SEO expert. We may have two Davids here, but one is SEO David and I’m Podcast David, maybe that helps. Hello to you both.
David U.: Hello David, thank you very much for the invitation.
Niels: Yes, hello David. Happy 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 one or two listeners may already know you. But tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into the topic.
Niels: Very gladly. So as already introduced, I’m Niels Stuck, founder of the SEO agency Wolf of SEO. We specialize in e-commerce SEO, so for online shops, and currently support more than 60 online shops with their SEO strategy. By now I have eight years of experience. Time flies, and I was also an eBay employee a few years ago. That’s how the contact for eBay Open and with you came about. And I’m happy to be back on the podcast and to be your guest.
David P.: Very nice, and from basically 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 Ulbrich, and I’ve been here at eBay since April as an SEO specialist in the technical SEO team. I got started in SEO almost exactly ten years ago as a working student at Ladenzeile.de. Some of you may still know Ladenzeile. Still one of the heavyweights of German e-commerce. Back then it already had a very good and progressive SEO strategy, and maybe also interesting: here at eBay I’ll be the contact person for all relevant questions for the German eBay business units.
Isabell: We’ve already used the term SEO a few 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 listing visible for relevant keywords. For example, if we think in an e-commerce context now, in an eBay context, it’s your own product that you want to sell, whether it’s a caravan, a wooden table, a leather couch, or a branded product like the Fendt caravan, the Wimmer wooden table, or the Ikea couch, whatever it is. Anyone entering something like that is generally searching for that product and generally wants to buy it. And just under 65% of clicks from these searches go to the first three search results. So the goal is to be present with top rankings, to capture these visitors with either your own listing or your webshop, and thus generate sales. Because anyone searching for a certain thing, searching for a product, is generally prequalified in that they already have an interest in this product and therefore are quite likely to buy as well.
Isabell: So SEO doesn’t just refer to the results in Google Shopping, but really to every spot on Google’s search results page.
Niels: That’s exactly where the big difference lies. Google Shopping and Google ads. There, the click basically costs money. 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, that is, where there isn’t an ad shown at the top next to them, but the results that simply come up naturally, because the click then costs nothing accordingly.
David P.: Okay, good. Why can SEO basically be considered its own marketing channel and not just an optional optimization you could do if you wanted to?
Niels: In that case, people often clearly underestimate how many people are actually searching for certain things every month. That means 20,000 people may search for a specific couch per month, or 50,000 people per month may search for a certain phone. There’s really a lot of potential behind that. Of course, it also depends on your own product. Is it very, very niche, very specific, with only a very small target group? Then it generally won’t be searched for as often. But everyone wears T-shirts, sweaters, and shoes. Those are generally searched for very often. Depending on the product and product group, SEO can become a very, very strong revenue driver. And of course you need to determine beforehand whether that’s the case. For that reason, it should be viewed as its own channel, because it’s one of the few channels where you don’t have to specifically buy visitors, where you don’t pay a click price or a price per 1,000 impressions or the like, but it can become a long-term, sustainable, organic revenue channel that often complements the paid channels that most people are relatively familiar with.
Isabell: You just said that you can determine beforehand whether SEO is basically worthwhile as your 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 each month. You can use Google’s own Keyword Planner for that. You can use tools like Semrush, Ahrefs, Sistrix—there are many that show you very specifically how often people search for what I offer. And based on that, you can often do calculations. Because if a product is searched for 10,000 times, for example, and you rank in the top three positions, you generally know how many visitors will come to your product or site as a result. 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 can also be less, but that way you can already determine in advance: How much revenue could I make through SEO as a marketing channel? And does that investment make sense for me, if I consider how much is actually possible in the end of the day.
David U.: In general, I would definitely agree with Niels, and for many people SEO is also kind of a black hole. Everyone knows it, but no one 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—so, a clear example, 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. That means the shorter a keyword is generally, 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 specific product and I see the usual suspects, let’s stay with the fashion area, then Google tends to kick in and say, “Okay, these are all bigger players.” In general, this keyword will probably not be so easy to conquer. If, on the other hand, I see three, four, maybe five smaller brands, smaller shops in the top ten, then I can assume it will be less competitive overall.
David P.: Niels, David just said that SEO also has the advantage of being basically free traffic, which you do have to work very hard for, but then it comes in free of charge. What other advantages does SEO offer as a marketing channel?
Niels: Since it isn’t, for example, Google Shopping, Google ads. Since it isn’t paid traffic, meaning paid traffic from Facebook, Instagram, and other apps, you get the full contribution margin here. That means, in principle, once it’s in place, it’s clear that investment has to be made beforehand. From the point at which I have that visibility, I have the full contribution margin, because no click costs are added that are then deducted from the final amount I have left after selling the product. But it is often very sustainable and lasts a long time. That means if I’ve once managed it, it’s like a marathon. If I’ve made it into the top ten of search results, then I basically only have to, if I see someone catching up behind me, someone is about to overtake me, then I need to give it a little more gas, but once I’ve made it to the top, it becomes significantly harder for those further back to overtake me. In addition, this traffic is often prequalified, since people are already entering what they’re looking for and what they want. That means I don’t reach the person who is sitting on the couch in the evening watching Netflix and scrolling through social media on the side and then almost accidentally gets a product shoved in front of them in an ad, as is the case with Instagram or Facebook marketing, for example. I’m not reaching just anyone, I’m reaching someone who already has that need, who is already searching for it. But accordingly, compared with paid traffic, the refund rate, i.e. the return rate, is often lower, and the consulting effort and communication effort in, for example, customer support, in the questions asked in advance before the purchase is completed, is significantly lower than in paid channels, though still present, 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 the niche my shop operates in. So it’s already the case that even niches are now highly contested. And that’s actually exactly the advantage of eBay, because we can show top rankings in almost all categories. Plus we work extremely focused to maintain all our top rankings and to continuously improve 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 exactly do I make Google show my products when I use SEO as a seller? Niels, you just used the metaphor. If I’m basically in 60th place in the marathon, 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 actually want to rank for. And to figure that out, on the one hand the obvious helps of course: what are people searching for? What is the product called, what brand is it now? But I would always recommend really doing some keyword research, using one of the tools. Semrush, for example, also has a free seven-day trial with which you can do that. So first find out which keywords exist, how often they’re searched for, and then assign a target keyword to each listing. That means everything is built on keywords. I should figure that out and then in my listing itself, in the title, so a product title should contain the keyword relatively near the beginning as well. I should have a very informative listing, making use of as much as possible of the options that eBay now offers. That means uploading images that fit the listing. I’d recommend 5 to 8, filling out as many item specifics as possible and completing the fields I can fill in within the listing. And I’ve stressed that text is super essential for Google in order to understand what exactly 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 little more, so in the range of 800 to 1200 words. That means everything counts: from the listing title to the item specifics to what I write in the item description. In total, that should amount to about that many words and be informative about the product, its areas of use, and the different variants. Very, very, very important: no duplicate content, no plagiarism. If I just copy a listing, if I just write the same thing as a seller across all the platforms I use, Google recognizes that. That means Google then says that this information has already been provided by you or someone else, if I copy listing information. Yes, there’s no added value for the user, it’s a copy of another product, and accordingly this listing gets filed under “copied content,” or duplicate content in SEO German, and with the highest probability it won’t rank. So if I want a listing to rank, it has to be new text. At least in the item description. The product information is always the same on different pages. That means a product has a certain weight, or certain contents, certain properties. Of course those are always the same when I list it somewhere. But in the item description it should be unique content, nothing I copied from the seller or from the wholesaler who sold it to me and somehow dictated it. Nothing I’ve listed elsewhere, either. And what can also help is integrating reviews so that Google understands, “Ah, people have already been happy with this product.” That creates more trust. Exactly, David, do you have any additions?
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, that the content is particularly long. What’s important is that the content is super informative for the user, meaning they find exactly the information they need. I mean, in the past SEOs had to paste SEO texts with 1200 words at the bottom of the page, texts that had no real added value and simply integrated keyword X twelve times. And today Google understands that, Google checks that. The user can read the text and I mean the best example is a white flowerpot, for example. If I want to buy a white flowerpot, I don’t need a description that’s 1,500 words long and gives me no real added value. Google understands that. So I’d say really the most important information. Short and to the point. Everything that’s important for the user, what convinces them to buy the product—that’s completely enough. And then I’d also say it’s really important that every 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. So the first heading. And that’s also very important information for our eBay sellers, because eBay sellers can influence the headings of their product pages themselves. That means they can change the headings and thus tell Google what they want the product page to rank for, and our system already takes care of the fact that the title and the heading are identical. Just as our system automatically makes sure that canonical tags are present, that the page is well optimized for mobile, and perhaps 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 fulfilled. Just as important is the bounce rate. So that’s a signal: if a user clicks a link via 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 that the user goes back from the page to Google, then clicks the next search result and stays on that page longer. So that should definitely be avoided.
Niels: Exactly, and I want to emphasize that again. That’s why choosing the keyword is so important. Let’s take the example of a white flowerpot, and then I offer a black flowerpot. That’s the number one reason for someone 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? This greatly increases the likelihood that the user will either a) stay longer or not bounce. For example, buy, which means I also don’t have to make sure the user wanders around on the page for a long time before taking the next interaction on the page. If you convince them to buy fairly quickly and they add it to their cart, that’s not a bad signal. That means Google understands: they found what they were looking for and are moving further through the purchase process or through 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 so well, because by optimizing the heading and the listings well, the listings not only rank better on Google, but the listings themselves are also much easier to find and much better placed on the eBay site itself.
David P.: Absolutely. It’s also always important to keep in mind that we’re not only moving around in the search engine, but also want to be found well on eBay itself as sellers. But many of our eBay sellers also have their own webshop or may be considering setting one up. Are there differences here with regard to the respective search engine optimization?
Niels: Yes, so one big difference first of all—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 figures come from an SEO tool. Ahrefs in this case. That means the numbers can be significantly higher. Because each tool only aggregates these user numbers based on the keywords and the corresponding positions. In English, you’d then say “Take it with a grain of salt.” So it won’t factually be exactly that number, but it will generally be in that range. Most shops and webshops are already happy with 1,000, 2,000, 5,000 visitors. And eBay naturally brings a gigantic number of visitors with it right from the start, and that means a webshop starts at zero, so to speak, and as a webshop operator I have to do everything myself, meaning I have to do the optimization that David described myself. That strength in the form of links, for example, is still at zero. That means I really start all the way back at position 100, while eBay already brings a large amount of strength with it. 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 that work, I can generally do more, I have more room to maneuver. Still, there are two big advantages when we look at these three things that need to be done: text optimization has to be done by yourself in both cases. The strength eBay already brings with it, I’d have to build myself in a webshop. And if we look at technical optimizability, then I have a few more possibilities here. Which doesn’t mean that eBay doesn’t already bring the foundation, the setup, so that the most important things are already fulfilled there. It’s just that I don’t have any influence on the technical optimization, so I’d have to do that myself as well. That means, if I had to decide where to start, webshop or eBay, eBay already brings a lot of traffic, strength, and optimization level with it. I just have to take care of the texts. With a webshop I have to take care of much more, but would have more leeway in the long term if I want to go deeper into it.
David U.: Exactly. Just one more note on 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 now also relevant for eBay sellers?
Niels: The large share of the traffic, so these visitor numbers that eBay gets, comes from the work that eBay itself as a platform naturally puts in. 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 before, then 40 million of those 60 million end up in the categories. That means extremely many visitors flood into the categories/browse nodes every month. And in this case that’s of course a big advantage. But that still doesn’t mean that my own listing will get this flood of visitors among that many. Therefore, the best thing sellers can do is get their own listings to rank on Google as well. Because I’m going by the numbers I pulled earlier. Just under 4 million of this traffic ends up on individual listings that have done their homework. And that means they not only get the traffic that flows to the categories and is distributed across the listings, but also have their own standalone share of visitors who come directly to this listing. So not choosing in the category which product to buy, but landing directly on the listing of the respective seller. 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 searching for exactly a specific product. So eBay traffic flows through the category, lands partly on the individual product. I can get traffic directly through my own listing, and we haven’t even talked about the user numbers eBay as a platform itself has outside of SEO, because it’s not just these 60 million, there are many more. I don’t have the figures available now, but we can talk about many, many millions of visitors here who can potentially land on the listing. And that through these three channels: eBay as a platform, rankings through categories and browse nodes, and your own listing. Each seller has their own hands on their own listing, and I think that should be motivation enough.
Isabell: The keyword topic has come up a few times now. What matters when choosing keywords?
David U.: In SEO, you generally distinguish between transactional keywords, for example, meaning keywords with very strong purchase intent. That’s, for example, when someone searches Google for a 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 like?” or “What is the foundation of a garden shed made of?” And commercial keywords on eBay are covered mainly by our listings and category pages, for example the category page garden shed.
Niels: Exactly, I’d like to emphasize to the sellers again 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 generally 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 searching for a very specific product, if I’m searching for a very specific branded product, it wouldn’t make sense for a product listing to rank for something like “What foundation for a garden shed?” Even if, for example, I sell a garden shed there or a foundation for it, whatever it’s made of. Google would then say, okay, we have a product and it’s supposed to rank for an informational keyword. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Google also expects, when an informational keyword is entered, that it won’t get a product but informative content. So a blog post, for example a product comparison. If it’s about “Which garden shed should I buy?” Therefore, as sellers, focus clearly on transactional keywords for your listings.
David U.: So for sellers on eBay, only transactional keywords are really 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 run various blogs on different topics, and we integrate guide articles on our category pages, for example about buying a phone. And for us that’s 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 does a lot to generate traffic for different categories. How exactly does eBay achieve that?
David U.: Good question. We continuously analyze the structure of our navigation. We look for important keywords that we’re still missing, and we bring pages for those missing keywords online. And what we’re also doing right now, which is quite exciting, is optimizing the internal linking of our category pages. So from an SEO perspective, it’s extremely important that pages with a high search volume—for example, I could take the category “buy a motorhome” as an example—get more internal links than, say, product pages, like the product page selling the Panini image of Gerd Müller from the 1974 World Cup. Obviously, that product page doesn’t have nearly as much search volume as “buy a motorhome.” But conversely, that doesn’t mean we only generate lots of traffic for the heavily contested keywords. So, buy a motorhome. We rank just as well on the product pages with the long-tail keywords. So in this 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 for improvement when it comes to SEO and that we haven’t yet fully tapped our optimization potential.
David P.: If I think about all of this now, that’s already a lot of effort and so on—so 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 if 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 I tend to get more of the impulse buyers. That means products that aren’t so expensive, maybe up to a maximum of €100. Since, unlike in the case of SEO, I haven’t previously signaled my interest in this product. That means if someone enters that they want to buy a marble table, want to buy a leather couch, want to buy a caravan, then I already know that the person will generally know the price range this is in and still wants to do it. That means in performance marketing the conversion rate for more expensive products is often very low. That is not the case with 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, my anti-aging cream, with a 5x, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x, 10x margin, then that’s worthwhile too. For products that aren’t so high price, where the purchase net at the end of the day might not bring me a three- or four-digit amount, but the margin is excellent. Or also for low-price products when they are entry-level or consumable products. If we think of olive oil, nutritional supplements, protein powder, whatever it is, that tends to ensure that, if the customer likes it, it will be bought again once it’s used up, meaning the entry into the brand world is provided by the product 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 a long period, over their lifetime, they will buy this product or other products from this brand very often.
David U.: So I’d also mention products with high search volume, and I do believe 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 say, okay, I fit the profile, that would be the case for me, how much time would I need to put into search engine optimization as a seller?
Niels: Yes, so a realistic expectation is very important here, because it involves many small adjustments, and Google doesn’t check every single page on earth every day. 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, “Hmm, let’s see whether it’s still improved the next time I see it like this.” Then it comes by again. It finds, great, okay, you didn’t just do something short-term here, but apparently you’re really putting in the effort, and then the results slowly come. That means the listing slowly climbs the rankings. For very new shops or very new listings, this can also easily take 3 to 6 months, or even longer. But we’ll stay with the marathon metaphor. It simply 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. So if Google is then still being signaled, great, they’re buying here, they’re staying on the page a long time, they’re not bouncing back to the search results and clicking something else, then I slowly climb up toward the top positions, and this whole process often takes 3 to 6 months, can also take 7 to 8 months, and accordingly that’s the expectation I should bring. It’s not a channel into which I pour money at the top and more or less immediately get it back out at the bottom, but rather an investment. Think of it like real estate. I buy the thing, rent the thing out, and then the return keeps coming in again and again. That means I climb into this position once, and then quite a lot has to happen. I’d have to do quite 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 therefore 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 private-label brands or sellers with fairly high margins.
David U.: I might add here: For small e-commerce shops, it is extremely difficult to rank for heavily contested keywords. If we take the example “buy a caravan” again. If I have a small shop that sells ten caravans, it would be extremely hard for me to outrank eBay there or get ahead of the large e-commerce shops. So in that case it may make more sense to go for niche products instead. And as I said, eBay really has extremely many top placements for important keywords, and as a seller I then also have to be clear that, as a small e-commerce shop, I have to put a lot of money on the table to even come close to Google’s first page of 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 a caravan,” but the very specific brand and caravan buy. That’s also difficult; if I now have a very specific caravan brand and then the model is also being searched for, then I generally have better chances there. That means as a seller I shouldn’t go in with the expectation that I can rank for the competitive keywords of the whole industry, and should instead focus on, yes, picking up the crumbs from the big cake that can absolutely be worthwhile. Because “buy a caravan” may be searched 120,000 times per month. And if the long-tail keyword is then searched 1,000 times per month, that can still absolutely be worthwhile. My goal should just not be to conquer the most competitive keywords with my own webshop. If I realize, when I enter it, there are a lot of big players in the race. So the short keyword is often unfortunately burned money 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 are able to capture the big keywords themselves, meaning the 80% of market share. And that’s where the opportunity often lies for sellers in their webshop: taking care of the remaining 20% of market share.
David U.: I definitely agree with that. And again to the eBay sellers: exactly for that reason it’s so important that the listings are really perfectly optimized, that the keywords in the headlines are right, that the correct 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 sell a motorhome, then the listing will be shown higher up because it’s simply well optimized. Great, an easy quick win because it can be implemented very quickly.
Niels: If that’s done, you basically have this holy trinity we talked about: traffic from the eBay platform, traffic via the categories, traffic via your own listing. And those are three sources that bring paying visitors who are already searching for this product.
Isabell: I find it super exciting that you went into the different seller sizes and the different product categories. If, as a seller, I’ve decided for myself that I want to deal more with the topic and actually tackle it, maybe even put some money into it to get started, how do I best begin? Are there perhaps any getting-started aids you can give our sellers?
Niels: I would recommend to every seller that before you start wildly optimizing and adjusting listings, you first complete this important foundation on which everything is built. And that is keyword research. That means take a tool of your choice. There are many different ones, there’s Sistrix, there’s Semrush, spelled Sem Rush, Ahrefs, and among them 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 do this basic work.
David U.: I would definitely fully agree with that. I use Semrush myself as well. What might also be interesting for a seller: Keyword Planner. If you still have a Google AdWords account and in Keyword Planner, you can beautifully have keyword suggestions spit out for certain keywords 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’s strong competition for this keyword or whether it’s relatively easy to optimize for it. And another note here: for heavily contested keywords, it’s usually not worth optimizing with small shops at the beginning. So, as I said, better to look for the keywords that have little search volume and rather low competition, instead of going straight for the heavily contested keywords.
Niels: Yes, and to add to that, if you use this Semrush seven-day trial period: there are many different tutorials on how to use the tool best, even though it’s very user-friendly. Right from the start it’s also relatively comprehensive. That means the amount of features and functions can initially feel a bit overwhelming and daunting. I’ve also written a guide of just under 500 words on how sellers can use Semrush for their own shop to do this keyword analysis. Along with a tutorial of around seven videos on which functions in Semrush are very helpful 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 getting-started aid when working with Semrush, so that the tool is used to its full potential during these seven days.
Isabell: Yes, great, thank you both very much. We will 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 is one last question that we always ask our guests. And that is: what was the last thing you bought on eBay? And David, I’d like to ask you first.
David U.: Actually, this week it was a phone case, but a perhaps 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 funnily enough, the seller called me again before shipping the board. And yes, long story short, I wanted to buy the wrong board. He called me and asked whether I was really that good and would need the board for the halfpipe. Of course I didn’t, 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 have a rather 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 as 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 that, but I’ve always bought almost all my electronics on eBay. So the MacBook I’m using right now to record this podcast with you was my last purchase on eBay, and almost any electronics in my house originally comes 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 for being here!
Niels: Yes, thank you for the invitation. I was very happy to be a guest on this podcast and hope for a follow-up episode sometime. Thank you very much and see you soon.
David U.: Thank you very much for the invitation and the nice conversation. Also nice to have met Niels. Many thanks to you, to the hosts, and happy to come back again soon.
David P.: And with that we’re already at the end of the podcast episode again. Of course we’d love 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 for you. And maybe you’ve also checked what score your listings achieved. Feel free to leave that as a comment as well.
00:46:31 Isabell: And of course we’d be very happy if you leave us a subscription or a like where you’re currently listening to us, if possible. And from me as well: thank you for listening and see you next time.
David P.: See you next time.
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