If your listing doesn’t appear in your target market’s search results, or if it does appear but they don’t click on it to read it, then no one will see your listing. It doesn’t matter how good your product is, if no one sees your listing, you won’t sell anything. So it is ESSENTIAL that your listing title achieves two things:

1. Ensures that your listing APPEARS in the list of results that your target market is searching for

2. STANDS OUT from all the other listings that appear in the search results and GRABS your target market’s ATTENTION so they are COMPELLED to look at your listing

The title is therefore the MOST IMPORTANT part of your listing.

It is IMPERATIVE that you realise that you DON’T want your title to attract as many people’s attention as possible. There is NO POINT grabbing the attention of people who aren’t interested in your product. No matter how interesting they find your title, they WON’T buy your product if they’re not in your target market.

You want your title to attract the attention of as many people IN YOUR TARGET MARKET as possible. You only want people who will be interested in your product to look at your listing.

If you write a title designed to attract as many people as possible, it won’t be as attractive to your target market as a title specifically designed to attract them only.

For instance, if you were selling tennis shorts, and your aim is to attract as many people to your listing as possible, you might use a title such as:

“Men’s brand new white sports shorts 36” waist. Bargain”

Anyone looking for soccer, basketball, athletics shorts, etc, might look at your listing but they WON’T buy from you because they don’t want tennis shorts.

Your competitor is selling the same item but uses a more highly targeted title such as:

“Men’s brand new white tennis shorts 36” waist. Bargain”

If you were looking for tennis shorts, which are you most likely to look at first? The first title will attract more people than the second but the second title will attract more BUYERS than the first.

Most people find things to buy on eBay by typing the name of the item that they are looking for in eBay’s search engine. Most DO NOT tick the box under the search bar that says “Search title and description” so eBay will ONLY display all the listings whose TITLES match those search terms.

So you need to decide what search terms your customers are likely to enter in the search box. Your listing title MUST include as many of those search terms as possible. You can only use 55 characters in your title so you need to use each character to maximize the chance of your listing appearing in someone’s search results.

No one uses adjectives like “lovely”, “amazing”, etc in their searches. So DON’T waste your 55 characters on such words. Nor does anyone search for “WOW” or “L@@k” or *** or !!!. Using these cheesy symbols will not help people to find your listing. Using such gimmicks can make your listing look less professional and may put people off.

It’s more important that your listing appears in their search results than it’s catchy or clever. And if your title includes the search terms they’re looking for, it WILL grab their attention. But once you’ve included all likely search terms in your title, if you have not yet used up all 55 characters, add words that might GRAB their attention and make your listing stand out from all the others. Try to mention a major benefit of your item in the title if possible.

They are searching for something specific so your title must give them what they are looking for directly and in plain and simple terms. Your title must be clear, relevant and attention grabbing. See what your competitors are doing. If someone is selling a lot, “copy” them – but DON’T rip them off. By that I mean don’t copy their title word for word but think how you can use the elements of their title and change them so that your title is different but works in the same way.

SOME EBAY SELLERS WRITE THEIR LISTING TITLE IN CAPITALS TO MAKE IT STAND OUT FROM THE OTHER LISTINGS THAT APPEAR IN THE SEARCH RESULTS. BUT THIS CAN SEEM LIKE SHOUTING! AND TEXT WRITTEN ALL IN CAPITALS IS ACTUALLY HARDER TO READ THAN TEXT WRITTEN IN LOWER-CASE LETTERS.

It’s Best To Write Your Listing Title In “Title Case” Whereby Each Word Begins With A Capital Letter. Emphasising A Few KEY WORDS In Capitals Can Be EFFECTIVE.

You can choose to have your listing title high-lighted to make it stand out but this increases your listing fees. One of the great things about eBay is it’s very cheap and easy to TEST everything. If all your competitors are high-lighting their titles, NOT high-lighting will make your listing stand out. So test different titles written in different formats (capitals, high-lighted, etc) to see which works best for you in your category.

You can add a sub-title but it’s quite expensive and eBay’s search engine does NOT search the words used in sub-titles – only the title. So don’t waste your money by adding a sub-title full of words that your customers will be searching for as this WON’T help your listing appear in their search results. Only pay the extra for a sub-title if you have a good reason to do so, perhaps to mention a major benefit such as FREE bonus or FREE shipping.

It can be quite difficult to think of a great title when you are faced with a blank page. The best way to approach this is to “brainstorm” – write lots of headlines, perhaps copying other people’s, then edit them and tweak them until you have a few that you like the look of. Then TEST them on eBay to discover which is the best.

Martyn Boaden

This post is based on an extract taken from The Lazy Way To Wealth On eBay