Title is the headline of your listings. You should give it some thoughts with important keywords because keywords in title help buyers find your product as they search through the million of items available on eBay.

If written properly, your eBay listing title encourages buyers to click on your title when they are browsing that long list of the same item presented on the screen.

Here are some major guidelines I have been using all these years:

A great eBay auction title for a great eBay income! Yay!

1. Your listing titles are essentially the first thing a potential buyer or bidder sees as they search eBay. Put yourself in the buyer’s shoe. Ask yourself if you were to look for the items you are selling, what you would type in the eBay Search Box. Other than the object itself, other important keywords include:

• Brand name
• Model
• Year
• Manufacturer
• Size
• Color
• Condition

2. Use the Advance Search and dig through all completed listings. Observe which words the eBay seller used in their item titles that sold. Do a certain keywords and arrangement in the title seems to have more bids or sales?

3. What about other spellings that people will use to find the products? If you are selling Spiderman Comics, consider also having these additional words in your title – Spider-man, Spider man or Comix.

4. With just 55 characters in the title including spaces, you need to be very clever on what you choose to use in your eBay listings title. I see a lot of seller having words like WOW!, CUTE! L@@K!, CHEAP! MUST SEE! in their title, but do buyers really search for such word? I doubt so. Use it and take risk looking childish while your competitors sound professional.

No bids or sales? Take a peek on eBay completed listings and see what’s missing in your headlines.

5. Use some hot-buttons or words-that-pop if you are still left with extra spaces in the auction title. Fully utilize all 55 characters. Some great hot-button words are:
RARE, LIKE NEW, SEXY, SECRET, VINTAGE, SUPER DEAL and FREE.

6. If you are running out of spaces, you can also use the eBay abbreviations for certain words like: NR for No Reserve, HTF for Hard to find and MIB for Mint In Box. Click here to see more short-forms you can use on your eBay listing titles.

7. You are not allowed to use titles which do not mention the specific product you are selling, for example “My cat thinks I am crazy!” or “My mom almost kill me when she saw this.”

8. Either use all caps or all lower case for your title. They look more professional than combination of upper and lowercase in the title.

Alternatively, shine a light on your headlines by adding the bold feature to attract more attention.

9. Some people recommended using the underscore “_” as it expands your title. For example instead of using

JUNIORS LEVIS LEVI JEANS SHORTS SIZE 1 RED TAG, you can use
JUNIORS_LEVIS_LEVI_JEANS_SHORTS_SIZE_1_RED_TAG

The title looks longer and stands out better, still with the same number of characters in the title. But honestly, I don’t really like using that, I feel that it is messy and I do not really see a lot of Powersellers using it. And there is NO proof that it converts your listings to sales better.

10. You can choose to bold your eBay auction title. eBay’s survey shows that a bold listing increases bids by an average of 25 percent. You can bold your eBay title for an additional $1 in eBay.com and 75p in ebay.co.uk.

11. Do not keyword spam by inserting unrelated words in your auction title. For example, you are listing a Prada handbag, but in your title, it says “NEW AUTHENTIC PRADA GUCCI GUESS HANDBAG NR. Keyword spamming is prohibited on eBay and makes you look unprofessional.

12. For an extra 50cents or 35p you can also add in a 55 characters subtitle for your headline. Items with subtitle are more likely to catch attention of buyers browsing. Subtitles provide extra value-added information to your listings. Some examples are:

“100% satisfaction, money back guarantee”
“Free shipping, many colors and styles available!”

Survey, research, test and experiment with all kinds of keyword combination. Have fun selling on eBay!

Without doubt, the single most important criteria in your eBay sales will be your headlines. More than 95% of buyer on eBay type in the names of the product they are searching for and hence, you will want to be able to cater for this. Good luck!

Tags: ebay tips, ebay blog, ebay auction, ebay, ebay keywords