New Enhancements in Stores: Customize Keywords for Search Engines!

Now you can select your own keywords to improve your Store page rankings in search engines and increase exposure for your business on the web!

How does it work?
Select the "Customize Keywords for Search Engines" link on the "Manage Your Store" page to see the keywords eBay currently uses to generate meta tags for your store. Within the tool (pictured below), you can then edit the keywords to ensure that you are using the most descriptive keywords for your storefront, custom categories, and custom pages. These keywords will then be used to generate the meta tags for your pages.

When you click on "Edit Keywords", you are then taken to the screen below where you're then able to select any keywords you may prefer. eBay then generates a new meta tag for your Store based on these updated keywords.

Frequently Asked Questions for Customize Keywords for Search Engines:

1. What are the Title and Meta Tags?
Title and Meta Tags (Meta Description and Meta Keywords) of your eBay Store pages are very important elements that search engines use to understand what your Store is about (for example: products, categories, themes, keywords, etc.). You can find your eBay Store page's Title and Meta Tags in the page's HTML source code as follows:

You can see your Store page's Title on the top blue bar of your browser window. However, since Meta Description and Meta Keywords are invisible to users, you need to use your browser's View Source feature to see them in your Store page's HTML source code.

2. Which eBay Store pages can I customize keywords for?
You can customize the keywords for your Store Front, Store Custom Category, and Store Custom pages.

3. How do I choose the most appropriate keywords for customization?
Do:

• Use keywords your potential buyers are likely to search for (for example, "used car" instead of "used passenger vehicle") in search engines.
• Choose keywords that are consistent with the content on your page. For example, consider using words in your Custom Category Names and Item Titles as keywords.
• Use keywords that are related to one another. For example, "notebook" and "laptop" are synonymous keywords you could use for "mobile PC". The following resources can help you identify keywords that are related to one another:
  Google AdWords Keyword Tool
  Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool
  Keyword Map Tool from KwMap.com
• Preview your page Title and Meta Tags to make sure you have used appropriate keywords.

Don't:

• Don't use keywords that are unrelated to one another.
• Don't use the same keyword twice.
• Don't repeat any word in the keyword phrases more than three times. For example, you should avoid using "dvd", "dvd player", "dvd burner" and "dvd recorder" as your keywords because the word "dvd" repeats more than three times.
• Don't try to fill out all the keyword fields using unrelated keywords or repeating the same keyword more than three times. It is in fact better to use less, but more targeted and related keywords.
• Don't spam keywords. Spamming keywords could affect your page ranking or even cause your Store pages to be removed from search engines' indexes.

4. Can I write my own Titles and Meta Tags for my eBay Store pages?
No, you can customize only the keywords. You are not allowed to write your own Title and Meta Tags. eBay will show you what the default keywords eBay chose for your Store pages. You can replace them by entering your own keywords. eBay will generate the Title and Meta Tags based on the keywords you entered (or use the default if you choose not to customize them).

5. How are my Title and Meta Description constructed using my primary and secondary keywords?
eBay uses search engine friendly templates to automatically generate Titles and Meta Tags for your eBay Store pages. We periodically modify these templates to ensure they remain relevant and communicate useful results for search engine users. Each Store page type (such as Store Front, Custom Category, etc.) has its own unique template.

6. Why don't you allow me to write my own Titles and Meta Tags?
We don't allow you to write your own Titles and Meta Tags for the following two reasons:

(1) We want to maintain consistent branding for eBay Stores.
(2) We believe it's in the best interest of our sellers for us to maintain the Title and Meta Tag templates that are optimized for search engines.

7. Once I customize my keywords, how long does it take for them to show up in my Store page?
It may take up to 30 minutes for your customized keywords to be populated to your eBay Store page.

8. Once I have changed my Store pages' Titles and Meta Tags, how soon can I expect to see them picked up and refreshed in search engines?
This depends on each search engine's crawling/indexing cycle. This can happen overnight if you are lucky, or take 30 days or longer in some cases.

9. Why don't you allow me to repeat the same keywords to increase my ranking in search engines?
eBay does not allow the same keyword to be used twice. We also disallow the repetition of any word in the keyword phrases more than three times. We set these constraints to prevent keyword spamming. Spamming keywords could affect your page ranking or even cause your Store pages to be removed from search engines' indexes.

10. What is keyword spamming?
Keyword spamming is the practice of repeating the same keyword too many times or using inappropriate keywords that are unrelated to the content of your Web page for the purpose of gaining higher ranking in search engines. Keyword spamming degrades the search engine relevancy and results in poor user experience, causing potential buyers to receive search results that are unrelated or irrelevant to their search queries.
Since most search engines have the ability to determine whether the use of keywords and the repetition frequency on a page are appropriate, spamming keywords could negatively affect your page ranking or even cause your Store pages to be removed from search engines' indexes.
For example, "Britney Spears" is a very popular search term, but you should not fill your page with it if the theme of your page is about "boats". Also, you should avoid using the word "boats" more than three times in the keywords you customize for any of your Store pages.

11. I customized my keywords for my Store page, but its ranking in search engines dropped for certain search terms. What should I do?
If you follow the guidelines provided by eBay, this is very unlikely to happen. If you match the keywords in your Title and Meta Tags with the content on your Store page without spamming, we expect your Store page's ranking to increase or maintain at its current level. However, if this does happen, we suggest that you wait for a couple of weeks to see if the trend reverses. If not, we suggest you reset your keywords to eBay default.

To learn more about this new feature, please visit:
Link
Link

For more information about all of the latest news in Stores, check out the latest news Page:
Link.

We hope this enhancement enables you to drive more targeted web traffic to your Stores pages!

Regards,
~eBay Stores Team