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Very few people explore the potential of optimizing their eBay Store despite the fact that over 50% of online shoppers research their purchase through search engines. Here are some tips that could put your eBay store into the rankings that matter.

Add Metatags:
Even though the human eye won't read Metatags the search engines will and you will need to look into configuring your Store and Listings through Html and the 'Manage My Store Area'.

Pick your keywords carefully:
The best way to pick keywords is to put yourself in the shoes of your customers and decide what words they would enter if they were looking for your product.

To help you find useful keywords it would be worth using http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ to find popular search terms used on the Internet in general and then look at http://pulse.ebay.com to see what is popular on eBay.

Now use these words in your titles, item descriptions and even your store URL and eBay ID if you can. It also worth bearing in mind that search engines will attach the most importance to words in titles and also ones in bold.

Custom Pages in your Store
These are pages within your store that you can create and enter unique content to show promotions, showcase an item or give details about your business.

The About Me Page
Another underutilized page that sellers neglect but really it is essential for all sellers to have as it's another place to put keywords, a link to your store, a newsletter subscription box and even promote affiliate links. Get some great free About Me templates from here:
http://www.shipscript.com/workshop/ME_templates.htm

Reviews and Guides
Writing eBay guides and reviews are another great way of getting links from eBay and outside of the site and using your chosen keywords will potentially attract more visitors to your listings and stores. eBay recommends using 'search tags' on these pages to show what topics and content are revealed in your content and to make your content visible to the search engines.

Here are some tips on picking a good topic for your guide (whatever you do, don't forget to include a link to your listing or store!)

Browse the most popular guides at eBay by looking here: http://reviews.ebay.com, you are likely to see that the most popular topics are how to avoid being scammed, how to protect your eBay account, selling tips.

Keep up to date with eBay Happenings (this newsletter is a great start!) and write about Hot Topics and Items.

Try to pick a topic you can relate one of your listings or your store to.

If you sell a book, ebook, DVD or album, why not write a review on it and link it to your listing

Get as Many Links as you Can
Try to create as many links to your eBay store as you can, ask your friends, acquaintances, subscribers and everyone you can think of! Try to find online directories like http://www.listmystore.com to enter your store onto. Make sure you link to your store within eBay as well ' on your guides, listings and About Me page. (The more page links, the higher the Google PR rating and the higher the search engine ranking!)

Featured Items
Nearly all featured auctions from eBay show up in the top 5 ' 10 listings on Google. So pick your keywords carefully and pay about $20 to get a featured listing for your auction. As a potentially great traffic generator it's worth the risk. If you have an ebook that answers a desperate need and good keywords you could get loads of traffic for it this way.

These are some good ways to getting your eBay Store onto the Search Engines. Ebay also provides a basic section for optimizing your eBay store for search engines here: http://www.pages.ebay.com/education/SEO-introduction/index.html

I hope to be seeing you in the high search engine ranks soon.