Terapeak eBay Title Builder: How to Find Keywords for eBay Listing Titles

We are excited to share a blog post that we wrote for ​Terapeak, an online research tool for eBay and Amazon sellers to grow their businesses.

Use Title Builder to Make Better eBay Listing Titles and Grow Your Sales, discusses best practices for writing eBay listing titles and how to use Terapeak’s free eBay title builder.

Here’s what you’ll find in this article:

1. Why titles are important

2. How to choose keywords for listing titles

3. How to write optimized titles

4. How to find keywords using Terapeak’s free title builder

We encourage you to check out the new post and let us know what you think!

​Outside of your eBay pictures, your listing title will be one of the first things that buyers see. As sellers, we used to draw buyer attention to our eBay listings buy using words like “L@@K!” and “CUTE”…but those days are gone!

Now, a seller’s main focus should be on SEO (search engine optimization) for listings, which includes keywords and keyword placement. Why?

Because Cassini, eBay’s search engine, ranks listings in the search results based on different factors than were used by the previous version of eBay’s search system. (Find out more about how Cassini works in ​Terapeak’s ​Cassini search tutorial.)

Listing titles remain one of the main factors in eBay search ranking, but now they should be filled with keywords that are relevant to the listing. What does “relevant” mean in this case?

Relevant keywords are words that are specific to the item being sold—rather than broadly applicable to lots of different items.

For example, if you are listing a simple bean bag toss game, keywords like “football” and “tailgating” would be too broad (unless, of course, if the theme of the game is football). Instead, you would use words like “cornhole”, “set”, and “boards” that apply more directly to bean bag toss games.

Here are some best practices for building listing titles that will help you to generate more eBay search traffic and, ultimately, more sales.

Table of ContentsToggle

1. How the Terapeak eBay Title Builder Works

2. Listing Title Best Practices: Keyword Choices

3. Listing eBay Title Best Practices: Keyword Placement and Style

4. Special Features of Terapeak’s eBay Title Builder

How the Terapeak eBay Title Builder Works

After you sign up for your Terapeak account, you’ll have an SEO tab at the top of your screen. This is where the eBay Title Builder is located.

To get started, type in a few keywords to describe the item you are building an eBay title for. Below the box, you’ll see a set of blue related keywords pop up.

Start clicking on keywords that accurately describe the item you’re listing. As you click them, Terapeak will automatically place them in your title in the appropriate order to optimize for the eBay search engine. Once your title is built, you can click the paper icon to copy the title — then you can paste it into your eBay listing.

Below the eBay title builder, you’ll see some items pop up that are related to the title you built. Additionally, Terapeak will provide you will an average price as well as give you an indication on the competition for the item based on sampled titles and number of sellers.

Listing Title Best Practices: Keyword Choices

Every time a buyer comes to eBay, they will most likely type a keyword or phrase into the search bar. This is why keywords are so important!

1. Don’t fill up your 80 characters with words like “L@@K” or “CUTE” that shoppers aren’t likely to be searching for.

2. Stay away from filler words like “with”, “and”, or “the”, unless those words are necessary because of the brand name.

Listing eBay Title Best Practices: Keyword Placement and Style

1. Place the most important keywords at the beginning of the title, because it is these keywords that eBay uses to rank your item in search results, and because keywords near the start of your title will be the first words that catch your buyer’s attention.

2. Provide your first keywords in the same order and form that buyers are likely to use when searching for the product using eBay’s search bar. For example, shoppers searching for women’s size medium Eddie Bauer sweaters won’t likely type “red cable knit sweater long sleeve Eddie Bauer size M” but rather “Eddie Bauer Womens Sweater Size Medium”—so that’s how you should start your title. Start out like a shopper, then put other details afterward.

3. Capitalizing the first letter of each word in your title. Don’t write in all caps, because studies show that it is more difficult to read titles and headlines that are written in all caps.

Special Features of Terapeak’s eBay Title Builder

Terapeak’s Title Builder provides statistical information about the keywords and listings you’ve found. Based the title you build, you’ll see the number of active eBay listing titles that were analyzed, the number of sellers that are using a similar title, and the average selling price for those items. You can then adjust the keywords in the title builder to maximize your likely selling price, pushing it as high as possible.

To be sure you’re using the right keywords and haven’t accidentally chosen keywords that might mislead buyers, Terapeak will also show a sample of the listings that use the keywords you’ve selected. If all the samples look like the product you’re selling, you’re in good shape. If you’re seeing mostly other kinds of products, you probably have one or several keywords that apply more to other products than to your product.

This is just a taste of the many different research tools that Terapeak has to offer. Sign up for a free 7 day trial of Terapeak and test everything else that Terapeak has to offer as well!