How To: Fewer Visitors, More Sales.

Search engine optimization is not about getting as much traffic as possible. It's about getting the right kind of website traffic. Sometimes, less traffic can be better.

Trying to get as many visitors as possible might not be a good thing

Many webmasters try to get as many visitors as possible. They join traffic exchange programs and they optimize their web pages for keywords that have very many searches.

Unfortunately, getting as much traffic as possible is not the right strategy for a successful website. Traffic that doesn't convert is useless traffic. If your website has thousands of visitors but only a few sales then you have done something wrong.

Less traffic can be better

If you want to succeed with your website, you have to focus on the conversion rate of your web pages. A website with a good conversion rate will do much better than a website with many visitors. Here's an example:

• Barbara's website gets 10,000 unique visitors because it has a #1 ranking for the keyword "buy inexpensive brown shoes". The conversion rate is 2%.
• Maggi's website gets 1,000,000 unique visitors because it has a #1 ranking for the much more popular keyword "shoes". The conversion rate is .02%

Both websites will get 200 conversions. But why does Maggi's website get the same number of conversions as Barbara's although it has 100 times the number of visitors?

There can be several reasons for this. For example, Maggi's keyword "Wedding Dress" is very generic keyword. People looking for generic keywords usually aren't interested in purchasing. They are looking for general information about Handmade Wedding Dress topic.

Maggi's landing page also might have a poor design. Her website might not offer what the searcher is looking for. That is very likely if the visitor found the website through a generic keyword.

Barbara's keyword "Buy Handmade Wedding Dress" is very targeted. Web surfers who use that keyword know what they're looking for and they are ready to buy. That means that Barbara needs fewer visitors to get a sale.

Multiply your revenue without working more

Four word keywords such as "Buy Handmade Wedding Dress" have much less competition than two-word keywords such as "Wedding Dress". That means that it is much easier to get top rankings for these long tail keywords. Suppose it takes Barbara five hours of optimization per month to maintain the #1 ranking. Each working hour costs $50. That means that Barbara spends $250 per month.

To maintain the #1 ranking for the two-word keyword "Wedding Dress", Maggi has to invest 40 hours per month because it is much more work to get and maintain high rankings for such a competitive keyword. Maggi's working hour also costs $50, that means that the spends $2000 per month.

As explained above, both websites get 200 conversions. If each conversion is worth $15 then Barbara has a ROI (return-on-investment) of 600% for every dollar spent on search engine optimization. Maggi has a ROI of 100%.

If Maggi had not invested his 40 hours in a single keyword but in optimizing 6 good converting four-word keywords that each needs 5 hours then he would have multiplied his revenue by 6 without working more.

What can you do to increase your conversion rate?

You can do the following to improve your conversion rate:

1. Do not waste your time for getting vanity rankings. It makes no sense to get high rankings for one-word keywords.
2. Optimize your web pages for multiple-word keywords that attract visitors that are ready to buy.
3. Make sure that your landing pages contain a clear call to action and that the content of your landing pages is related to the optimized keyword.
4. Make sure that your website has a professional look so that potential buyers aren't turned off.

Search engine optimization is not about getting visitors. It is about getting conversions. Search engine optimization is about creating conversion paths for the traffic that comes from search engines. If you optimize your web pages for the right keywords then you'll save a lot of time and you'll get more conversions.

5 Reasons You Keep Missing Out On Seasonal Traffic

Christmas holidays are far gone, while St. Valentines and Easter are coming close — it's the right time to ask yourself if you're getting the most of seasonal organic traffic and how you could improve on that.

In this post, I'll discuss five common reasons for your not getting enough seasonal traffic and will take you through the necessary optimization steps. Let's get started on Seasonal SEO Campaign.

What's Seasonal Traffic?

First things first, let's define seasonal traffic. Generally speaking, seasonality is a characteristic of a time series in which the data experiences regular and predictable changes that recur every calendar year. Any predictable change or pattern in a time series that recurs or repeats over a one-year period can be said to be seasonal.. Therefore, seasonal traffic can be best described as changes in the way users interact with the search engines throughout the year. And sure thing, these changes have to do with a huge variety of causes:

Pre-holiday and holiday traffic.

I should emphasize the pre-holiday part here, as people tend to be much more active in the organic search before the actual holiday starts. If you aim for Christmas traffic, you may see the first spikes as early as mid-October.

Sales Patterns.

Depending on your business type, you can spot traffic changes during certain periods of the year. For instance, B2B businesses spend less time online in November and December (striving to close the contract deals before the holiday's mayhem), but get really active just at the beginning of the year, as decision-makers return online with new budgets and goals for the year ahead.

Literal Seasons' Traffic.

This one's obvious (and easily predictable too!) — a company that sells swimsuits will naturally get more visits and conversions in the summertime. And the very same company will be aware of the seasonal traffic dips in winter, so they may plan other marketing activities for the low season.

Trends, Events, and Special Occasions.

Whether it's the time of Olympics or Super Bowl, you can always get some extra traffic creating content and pages with related information, deals, and ads.

Back in 2009, Hulu.com launched an ad precisely before the launch of the Super Bowl games, and the site's traffic increased by about 50%.

As you can see, there's much more to seasonal traffic than just Christmas and Halloween, but why do so many website owners keep missing out on those awesome opportunities?

Let's review the most common reasons and see if there are any fixes you can implement.

Reason #1: You don't analyze your site's traffic patterns.

As simple as that — marketers become obsessed with monthly reports on traffic, rankings, and conversions, and simply have no time or forget to look back at the yearly stats.

Tips to Maximize Your Seasonal SEO Campaign

Recommended Solution: Check year-over-year traffic stats.

Firstly, you'll need to look at your site's analytics for the last few years to see which holidays and events drove a great volume of traffic and sales.

Launch your Google Analytics account, go to the Acquisition Module and set up the report date to see the traffic stats for the previous years.

Looking through the year-over-year stats, you'll most probably spot patterns repeating on a regular basis.

In addition to the general traffic patterns, you should pay attention to the audience's behavior — mark out buying seasons and downtime throughout the years. To view this type of stats, choose Ecommerce segment and select Transactions (mind that you should have Google Analytics tracking code correctly installed on your website).

By the way, did you know you could use special annotations in Google Analytics to create notes on your traffic charts? By looking through the annotations, you'll be able to differentiate seasonal traffic spikes from your marketing campaigns and occasional traffic drops caused by technical issues for example.

This year-over-year analysis will help you identify and understand causes of fluctuations in your site's traffic. Simply put, that's how you'll see what kind of seasonal traffic you've been getting.

Reason #2: You ignore areas of opportunity.

So, you already know that your traffic spikes in November, but goes drastically down in April. Why's that?

Taking a closer look at your site's content, you may for instance notice that in December people are flooding your pages containing Christmas deals, but in April… wait, are there no Easter offers on your website?

And here's the problem — you relied on the existing patterns of seasonal traffic, but completely ignored the possible opportunities.

Recommended Solution: Make a list of seasonal events.

Seasonal SEO requires long-term planning, no doubts on that one. But it's so easy to get immersed in your specific marketing campaigns and lose sight of the seasonal opportunities. I'd strongly suggest you should prepare a list of seasonal events over the year you'll focus your SEO and content marketing efforts on. You can start with adding the most popular holidays:

Of course, you may have more business-specific events in your seasonal calendar, including regional holidays, sports events, conferences, and expos.

You can go further and set up related alerts in your Google Calendar to remind you about the necessary SEO activities, such as keyword research, onpage optimization, link building, email outreach, and so on. Most of these activities have to be started at least 2-3 months before the coming event. When the time comes, Google will send you an email notification, so the event won't catch you unawares.

Reason #3: You're not using seasonal keywords.

As you may guess, your seasonal SEO doesn't stop on finalizing your content calendar. As a matter of fact, it only starts here. There's an incredibly important part many webmasters skip and lose big time — that is doing seasonal keyword research.

Recommended Solution: Build out a list of seasonal keywords.

Since St. Valentine's is just around the corner, let's take it as an example event for our keyword research campaign.

Step 1. Look for seasonal keywords in Google Search Console.

First of all, let's go to the Search Query section of your Google Search Console account and look through the keyword phrases that triggered most searches and clicks. Log in to your account and go to Search Traffic > Search Analytics. Check the Impressions checkbox. Set the Dates filter to show 90 days of historical data. It may happen that you'll immediately spot some seasonal keyword opportunities.

Then click Download to export the report in CSV.

Tips to Maximize Your Seasonal SEO Campaign

Step 2. Brainstorm the terms and check them in Google Trends.

What if you have a brand new website with no search history? Let's start with picking broad category terms so that we'll be able to identify the related topics and niches.

Go to Google Trends and type in a broad category keyword, something like "Valentine's Day."

Okay, we can see that it's a 100% seasonal keyword which triggers a search spike just a week or two before the event. Please notice how the interest drops immediately after the event.

What else can we see here? Scroll down a bit and take a look at the related queries report. If you think you could use these key phrases, download them in CSV.

Step 3. Expand and analyze keyword ideas using Rank Tracker.

Now you have a list of seed keywords with some seasonal traffic potential. Before you start working on your content, it's a good idea to expand your list by including semantically related queries, long-tail keywords, conversational phrases, etc.

You can diversify your list of seasonal keywords even more, by using Google Autocomplete and Related Searches:

Google Autocomplete will show you suggestions from Google's search box based on the keywords you enter. Doing this manually for anything over a dozen keywords would probably take you hours. In Rank Tracker, you can just type in your seed keywords, and it'll automatically pull Google's search box suggestions for you.

Google related searches can be great for identifying keyword terms people search for along with the keywords you have on your list. This method can give you a broad scope of new topics to target you may not have thought about previously.

Finally, you can analyze how effective the found keywords are:

1. Check the keywords' traffic potential by looking at the Expected Visits column.
2. Check the keyword efficiency index of the terms (the KEI column).
3. Estimate buyer intent. Switch to the PPC Analysis view and sort the keyword by Cost-per-click. Google AdWords' Cost Per Click gives you a pretty solid idea of how well a term converts — basically, the higher the cost, the better it'll sell.

Reason #4: You create a brand new page for seasonal SEO.

One of the biggest mistakes you could do is creating a new page for your seasonal SEO campaign. Here's why it's not a very good idea:

• You'll need much more time to build up at least some page authority, links, citations, etc.
• You risk duplicate content issues creating too many similar pages.

Recommended Solution: Optimize evergreen landing pages.

According to Scott Laughlin, SEO manager at Walmart, you should focus optimization on existing pages to scale your seasonal SEO efforts.

"I recommend maintaining evergreen landing pages for the specific holiday terms you want to capture, and then pointing navigation from there to existing shelves rather than building new holiday-specific shelves that could risk duplicating what you've already got," Laughlin says. "[Maintaining] and building traction to those year-round evergreen URLs isn't sexy, but that's the tried and true way to win holiday-centric search queries."

Let's see how you could revamp your existing evergreen content to catch the big waves of seasonal traffic.

1. Optimize landing pages for seasonal keywords.

Time to get back to the list of keywords you've compiled previously. Many website owners start optimizing content just a couple of weeks before the event takes place. As they have little time left, the onpage optimization comes down to throwing a couple of keywords here and there and keeping their fingers crossed it'll work out. The sad thing is it usually doesn't.

2. Update the year.

Going back to the St. Valentine's keywords, did you notice which query makes a search breakout a year after year?

• Valentine's day 2014
• Valentine's day 2015
• Valentine's day 2016
• Valentine's day 2017

You get it. If you have a category page on your ecommerce store or a well-converting guide on your blog, even such a minor change can make a big difference for your organic results. Surely, you should update your content at least 3-4 months before the coming event. Pinterest, for instance, is already getting prepared and building category pages for Christmas 2017:

3. Update images, videos, and context.

If there's not so much text content on your landing pages, you can breathe new life into them by adding other types of content — photos, videos, reviews, etc.

Besides, you can take a creative approach when you get an old evergreen guide and try to spice it up with the bits of seasonal content.

For instance, you have a nice old article on "Top Tips to Soothe Crying Babies" — why not make it a bit more festive before Christmas holidays:

"Top Christmas Carols to Soothe a Crying Baby" Or if it's in February: "Learn top tricks to soothe crying babies before your St Valentine's get ruined."

I'm a bit joking with the above examples, of course, but I just want to show you that almost any type of evergreen content can be modified and tweaked into great seasonal content. And you'll reap the benefits without spending days on building new pages and links!

Reason #5: You're not watching your competition.

If you don't watch your competitors, you'll never know how and why they are outperforming your site in seasonal SEO.

Recommended Solution: Analyze competitors' seasonal SEO.

Let's go through the quick ways to stay informed of the seasonal SEO plans and successes of your competition.

1. Create alerts for your target seasonal keywords and mentions.

Staying on top of relevant mentions is your number one priority. Make sure you get notified whenever someone publishes or optimizes a page using the keywords of interest. You can play with the tools, such as IFTTT to set up dozens of hashtag notifications, but I'd recommend using a social listening tool that stores alerts and helps you easily communicate with users.

One of such tools is Awario — it lets you track mentions and keywords across a variety of social media platforms and websites. It's super easy too. All you have to do is create alerts with keywords, twitter handles, hashtags, and URLs, and the app will diligently collect all mentions and posts that appear online:

2. Track competitor's rankings for seasonal keywords.

Keeping account of competitors' organic rankings can help you identify if they've already started any optimization activities.

3. Subscribe to competitors' email updates.

Lots of seasonal marketing campaigns get started with email outreach. By signing up to competitors' news and updates, you'll be able to see what kind of content and deals they're sharing with their user base.

Final Thoughts

I won't be lying to you and stating that Seasonal SEO Campaign is an easy way of getting more seasonal traffic and sales. In some cases — when you start too late or when the competition's too tough — the results won't delight you. To safeguard your efforts, invest enough time in research and optimization, and, as always continually monitor your progress.

How do you handle Seasonal SEO Campaign? Have you been particularly successful with some niches and events? Let me know in the comments below!

Microsoft Closes Acquisition of LinkedIn

Microsoft Closes Acquisition of LinkedIn Deal, valued at roughly $26 billion, is biggest in tech company’s history.

 Microsoft Corp. closed its roughly $26 billion deal to buy professional-networking site LinkedIn, cementing the largest acquisition in the tech giant’s history.

The marriage of the two firms, announced in June, is a bet that the social network can reinvigorate Microsoft’s software offerings despite recent struggles by both companies. The closure of the deal was announced by Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella in a LinkedIn post.

TechCrunch Wrote About Nadella "Nadella took over Microsoft in the midst of a transition, and Microsoft is still somewhat in that transition. Its mobile bet didn’t play out and it’s started to refocus its resources to other parts of the business, and while all these bets still seem to be in their early stages, the arrow seems to point upwards. But like any company (even Google), these bets are going to take a while to play out. In reality, Microsoft’s revenue growth hasn’t really been all that impressive."

Mr. Nadella hopes the deal will open new horizons for Microsoft’s Office suite as well as LinkedIn, both of which have saturated their markets, and bolster Microsoft’s revenue and competitive position. Microsoft said it would work on integrating LinkedIn into some of its key offerings, such as adding aspects of the LinkedIn network to Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite, which includes Word and PowerPoint.

 LinkedIn Chief Executive Jeff Weiner will retain his role. The companies had expected the deal to close by the end of 2016. Microsoft’s stock edged down 0.1% to $61.32 in morning trading.

The fact that these concessions had to be made speaks a little to what Microsoft’s intentions might be with LinkedIn. It seems like one key area for Microsoft will be to upsell those using LinkedIn to recruit, to then buy into Microsoft’s software in areas like HR and sales to extend that functionality.

Joseph Hincks wrote at Fortune about this deal "This Is What LinkedIn Employees Consider Their ‘Most Prized Benefit’"

Microsoft has up to now not really been a significant player in open-ended social networking, although with products like Yammer and Skype it’s clearly put a lot of investment into the kinds of collaboration products that are in demand from enterprises and business users today. It will be interesting to see how and if it tries to marry these two sides of enterprise-focused social networking down the line.

Ways to Adjust Adjust Your SEO Strategy After Google Local 3 Pack Shake Up

Adjust Your Local SEO Strategy - Google Local 3 Pack Shake Up

In early August, Google made some major changes to its "Local Pack" search results by opting to show three results instead of seven. Here are some ways to adjust strategy in order to stay on top of local search.

Google's decision to show fewer listings seems to be motivated by mobile. "Three-pack" search results make desktop searches mirror those on mobile with more space for map results and reviews, but less contenders for top rankings. However, search results are hyper-localized, meaning that the three-pack changes pretty often.

Plus, there's an opinion that the top 20 sites listed in the map view seems to be unaffected by the upgrade. This leaves some opportunity for businesses that don't make the top three, though some opposite cases have also been reported.


Have a Strong Presence on Local Platforms

Local searches are optimized based on the user’s location, so that users see the highest ranked businesses in their areas. The first step to gaining this local search ranking is having a strong presence in local search platforms or relevant review websites. A few of the top ones to consider include;

Google My Business: Google My Business, previously known as Google Places, used to be the first stop for anyone looking to make a dent in local search. One thing that is hugely popular on Google My Business is Google Click to Call, which generates about 30 million calls a month.

Yelp: Yelp is a popular review site that allows your customers to leave reviews of your business for everyone else to see. Not only will Yelp give you an opportunity to get great feedback from your customers, it will also allow you to set keywords for your local area.

Trip Advisor: Trip Advisor is relevant to those in the travel or hospitality industry. It allows users to review your business, upload photos and give you a rating out of five. It also gives you the ability to address any negative reviews.

The list of local search platforms is ever-expanding, and is specific your industry and what is popular with your target market. To get the best out of your local SEO campaign, you should use local search outlets as much as you use global sites like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest. When it comes to local search, 45% of all searches are specifically goal oriented; meaning these users are ready and willing to buy.

Localize Your Information

On your website itself, and on your social media platforms, your content should be localized. The first step in doing this is ensuring your business address appears in a searchable part of the page (for example: not as an image). Your content should be locally specific as well, with the location of your business occasionally referenced in the text.

Make Sure You Go Mobile

Another thing to consider isn’t just how heavy your local presence is, but how your site looks when you get those users there. About 61% of mobile searches result in a purchase. If these highly motivated leads can’t easily navigate your site, those purchases are going to your competitors instead. As up to 25% of all internet traffic originates from a mobile device, it is imperative that your website accommodates these users.

Fully integrating local search into your campaign requires three important steps. Your site and your social media sites should include some local information. You should have a strong presence on local search platforms. Finally, you need to have a site that is easily accessible on a mobile device. Those businesses that embrace local and mobile search as part of their campaign are the ones who will manage to stay competitive in the constantly evolving digital marketplace.

Reviews Matter

Google has removed phone numbers and exact addresses from search results, but starred reviews remain. Therefore, businesses hoping to both crack the top three and see traffic from that ranking need to make sure they've got a high volume of good reviews, according to Shotland.

"Based on the current display, particularly the local finder, it does appear that ratings and reviews are much more prominent in the UI," Shotland says. "So focusing on making sure your business has a high rating with a decent amount of reviews should be a priority."

Double Down on Link-Earning

Once you break into that hyper-specialized top three, Rozek says, you're going to want to stay there. And increasing link-earning efforts is one of the best ways to stay on top of local search results.

"Even if you inhabit a smaller pond, you'll still want to become a bigger fish. So to that end, I'd suggest doubling down on your link-earning efforts," Rozek says. "Start with easy links, like joining at least one local Chamber of Commerce, joining an industry or professional organization, and maybe getting accredited by the Better Business Bureau (BBB). Of course, there's an infinite number of other good links you can get, but those are a solid start and often overlooked."

Make Sure Local Efforts Fit Into Overall Strategy

Changes like the three-pack updates are a given, and the best defense is a good offense, according to Mike Blumenthal, owner and local expert at Blumenthals. Local search efforts have to be integrated with a strong overall strategy to make an impact.

"I have long been a proponent of a mixed approach to local search that involves a strong website, a strong local presence, and strong locally-focused marketing campaign that keeps the brand prominence of your business high," Blumenthal says. "If you follow this tactic consistently, you will have the best on-going position to deal with the constant change."

For more about how to prepare your local business for the three pack upgrade, read our full Local 3-Pack SEO Guide.

Guide to eCommerce Product Listing SEO

The Complete Guide to eCommerce Product Listing SEO

Getting your product listings to the top in ecommerce marketplace search results (on Amazon, eBay or Other eCommerce Marketplace) is one of the major differences between success and failure – between making money or not.

Whether you’re a seller, online marketer or just web merchandiser, understanding how to optimize product listing, is crucial to your long term online business success.

Imagine, You have a store on eBay or  Amazon filled with great product but not getting enough sell from it. 

Do you know why?

When a buyer is searching for your products on Google or in the the marketplace, the site unable to locate your products. Because your product listing is not optimized for it as it should be.

So, How to optimize then listing then?

Well, The simple answer is, You have to integrate SEO technique when you create new product listing or update existing listing.

Search Engine Optimization aka SEO is the art and science of optimize website for higher organic ranking, same method can be applied to rank your product listing in the eCommerce marketplace like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc.

Before we dig more about how to optimize eCommerce listing, lets talk about how these marketplace search works?

When someone search enything in an ecommerce marketplace, the marketplace search engine want to show best possible result to the user as search engine like Google & Bing Do.

These marketplace search engine gather data regarding user search, product listing, engagement, reviews and user personal purchasing behavior; the came with best products user can buy.

Product Title

One of the most important components of eBay SEO is the use of keywords. “Key” words are those words that shoppers use when searching for products.

One of the very best ways to find those specific keywords and keyword phrases is by using the eBay keyword research tool – Terapeak. You can also research SEO keywords using the eBay search field. Based on the keywords or phrases you type in the field, eBay will suggest more words culled from actual searches.

Title tags are often used on search engine results pages (SERPs) to display preview snippets for a given page, and are important for eCommerce SEO. The title element of a web page is meant to be an accurate and concise description of a product's.

This is not as thorough a method as using Terapeak but it does help. There are several other tools I use as well – Google Keyword Planner and when performing keyword research for larger sellers I use a few paid SEO tools.

Be sure to write your titles for buyers. Just shoving a whole bunch of keywords into a listing title in the hopes of showing up higher in the eBay search engine can result in a lower click-through rate. Buyers need to see a flow of words that make sense to them – very much like a complete sentence. When humans see a bunch of disjointed words, our brains literally stop. Then it has to start again to recognize the next word. Then stop, then start, again and again. They are less likely to click on your title if the title immediately above or below has a “smooth” set of words that is easily understood. That said, it’s helpful if you get proficient at finding the SEO keywords and using them effectively in your titles.

Product Description

When I perform an eBay Store Audit, this is almost always one of the biggest areas the merchant is deficient in. Please, please, please fill in your item descriptions! You don’t have to write the great American novel but by having a well-thought-out description you achieve the following:

The description is a character snippet, a tag in HTML, that summarizes a product's. Search engines show the description in search results mostly when the searched for phrase is contained in the description. Optimizing the description is a very important aspect of SEO.

Higher SEO scores – use keywords in the description and HTags Increased sell-through score by providing complete and valuable info for buyers Customer loyalty and trust – buyers know a seller who gives good info is one who has their best interest at heart.

Category Selection

I make a really big deal out of categories when I teach.

Why? Because eBay has graciously done a great deal of SEO work for us all! When we choose categories and sub-categories for our listings, the names of the categories are very well researched and uber targeted keyword phrases!

Be sure to use all relevant categories for your listings. Do not “category stuff”. Meaning, don’t put your items in categories where it don’t make sense for them to be. This lowers your customer engagement, click-through, sell-through, and quality listing scores. Bottom line? You disappear from the search results.

Offer Free Shipping

Free shipping is hassle free shipping for the buyer. eBay loves this. Cassini loves this. Buyers love this. I’ve never understood why shoppers perceive “free shipping” as a “deal”. It just makes no sense.

Surely they must know shipping costs have been blended into the price of the item. And yet, they flock to “free shipping deals”. So, just do it. Adjust your prices as you can and offer the dreaded “free shipping”.

Add High Quality Photos

Since the sell-through rate is part of the algorithm that determines where your listings show up in the eBay search engine rankings and photos are a BIG part of making a sale – it’s time to get good at eBay photography. Large, crisp, well-lit images instill buyer confidence and increase the odds of making a sale. High-resolution is the name of the game! And eBay gives sellers the opportunity to put in 12 images – for FREE! Take advantage of that gift!

Believe me, Cassini knows the quality of your images based on pixels, compression, etc. And, since Google has gotten creepy good at “reading” images, I presume eBay has similar abilities. Adding multiple, good quality photos to your listings is a show of good faith. It shows customers and Cassini alike that you are invested in making sure all details are disclosed. Plus, you’ll have far less returns and this helps keep your seller trust score high!

Offer Hassle-Free Returns

This is kind of like the “grin and bear it” idea from the Feedback & Seller Trust section. Nobody likes to accept returns but, in all fairness to buyers, not all sellers are honest. My theory has always been that if you are an eBay seller who knows what they are doing and if you are thorough and honest in your listings, then your return rate will be almost zero.

If this sounds like you, then I highly suggest taking returns and offering to take returns on a “no questions asked” basis. You might have to smile through gritted teeth every now and again, but those transactions should be few and far between. 

Customer Inquiry Response Time

Some initials statistic gathered by industry leader suggest that "Shop Managed To Respond Same Business Day Tend to Rank Higher".

Besides “same business day” responses to customer questions being great for increasing sales, I believe response time is part of the Cassini algorithm.

My opinion is that the search engine see’s it as part of customer engagement so do your best to respond on the same business day. If you simply can’t respond on the same day, make sure your turn around time for answers in definitely within 24 hours.

Choose a Responsive Templates

Responsive eBay templates size up and down according to the size of the browser and are, by default, mobile themes. Since over 50% of Internet shoppers use their phones to browse and buy, a well crafted mobile/responsive template can help build your brand, increase customer engagement, and give you a higher conversion rate.

It is all about list your product with appropriate information and how much value you can offer to the buyer as a seller. Previously, it was very easy to manipulate search engine by flooding listings, but this is no longer the case.