The most valuable piece of real estate on eBay just got bigger and best of all, it is still free! On July 12, 2011, eBay announced their 2011 Fall Seller Updates and one change is that Sellers will have an additional 25 characters in the listing title to describe the item for sale. This means more exposure for your listings in the search results.

For years, there were only 55 characters to describe the item for sale within the searchable listing title. Often, that was not enough to list all the relevant keywords to describe an item. eBay then came up with the optional “Subtitle” which charges $1.50 for an additional 55 characters but on a different line that is not searchable with the regular title keywords search. The keywords within this Subtitle section is only searchable if the Buyer uses the Advanced Search and select to include Title and Description keywords. This was not effective and too costly for most Sellers.

On September 6, 2011, the number of characters for the listing title increased from 55 to 80 making it more effective for Sellers to use more relevant keywords to describe their items. More keywords bring more search results. Now Sellers can better describe their items by including often left out keywords like model numbers, styles, colors, sizes, etc. or use different variations such as singular or plural keywords and even abbreviations or acronyms.

Just by revising the listing title to include more relevant keywords, some of my students are noticing three times more bids on their auction listings and even more purchases on their Fixed Priced, Buy It Now listings. Keep in mind, listings with bids or Buy It Now activities, the system will not allow any revisions on the listing title. The solution would be to wait until the listing ends and then add more relevant keywords to the listing title during the relist process. With “Good ‘Til Cancelled” listings, the solution would be to manually end the listing one day before the relist date, so that it will not relist automatically for another 30 days. Then, relist the item with additional keywords in the listing title.

Here are a few important things to remember when writing an effective title for your listing:

1. Think like a Buyer. Ask yourself what keywords would I type into the Search box if I was looking for this item.

2. Use only relevant keywords to describe your item. Using other popular keywords or brand name that’s irrelevant to the item you are selling for the purpose of gaining more search results, is considered as a listing violation. It will also confuse the Buyer as well. Take a look at eBay’s Keyword Spamming Policy for clarification.

3. The formula for writing the listing title is:

keyword (space) keyword (space), etc.

There’s no need to add punctuations as that would be a waste of characters. Sometimes, you may not use up the entire 80 characters in the title and that’s ok. As long as all the relevant keywords are included, the listing will have the best exposure.

4. Avoid using characters that has no meaning such as L@@K! or any other gimmicks to attract attention. Buyers will not use these types of characters when searching for the items of interest. It will only use up the title characters.

This change is definitely great for eBay Sellers as more keywords will convert to more search results. Best of all it is still 100% free. Great move, eBay!

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