Search engine optimization (SEO) is extremely important for any e-commerce business owner; but how many auction sellers know how to use SEO to their advantage? Used effectively, eBay sellers can generate enough traffic to their auction stores to keep business going even when there are no active auctions running. How? Create a website, launch it, then point visitors to your auction store.

Domain Name Success

Purchase a domain name that accurately reflects the items you plan to sell. If you plan to sell collectible items, your domain name should be collectibletoycars.net, or collectiblecards.net, or vintageshoes.net -- something to that effect. From there, ensure that the title of your website in the meta tag description uses the word "collectibles." These two key items will help with your search engine placement once you've added your website to the thousands of search engines available.

Meta Tag Madness

If you're new to designing webpages, you're probably unfamiliar with meta tags. This is the bit of information that is located between the < head > < /head > tags in your html coding. To show you what a simple set of meta tags look like, here's what the meta tags for an e-commerce site that sells collectible records may look like:

< head >
< TITLE >Collectible Records: Elvis, The Beatles, Kiss, and More< /title >
< meta Name="Author" Content="Jane Doe" >
< META NAME="Keywords" CONTENT="collectibles, collectible records, elvis, beatles, kiss" >
< meta NAME="Description" CONTENT="Find collectible records by Elvis, the Beatles, Kiss, and much more." >
< meta name="revisit-after" content="2 Days">
< meta name="Rating" content="General">
</head >

Don't use spaces before or after the brackets. We used them here in order to get the tags to show up in the newsletter. Be very careful not to overdo it with the keywords. Using too many or too few keywords will hurt your placement in search engines. In addition, set your revisit to 2 days only if you update every 2 days.

Page Rank Mystery

Many SEO professionals will tell you that a number of factors come into play when determining your website's page rank. You can determine a website's page rank by using Google's toolbar and hovering over the small guage that sits at the halfway point of the toolbar. Websites with a page rank (PR) of 4 or more tend to get higher search engine results than those with lower page ranks -- supposedly.

Link exchanging used to be one way to increase your page rank because Google gave websites points based on its popularity. Popularity was determined by how many other sites linked to your website. It's rumored that Google is moving away from that practice due to the number of webmasters who have found a way to manipulate that system. Now, PR is determined more by content. Is your website really about collectible records? I would suggest linking to informative sites about collecting records--even if these sites do not reciprocate your link--choosing sites that have a PR of at least 5 or more. This will ensure that Google recognizes that your site has content that is indeed about collecting records. The result for you? A higher page rank.

I'm not suggesting you ignore sites with a page rank of 5 or less. Those sites may suddenly jump in rank later. Keep an eye on sites you find interesting and followup with them later. You may even choose to go ahead and link to them right away. Partnering with great business professionals is always good for business.

Search Engine Optimization Resources

SiteProNews's Webmaster Tools & Search Engine Optimization Newsletter:
http://theauctionboard.com/sitepronews.html

Google's Search Engine Optimizer:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/seo.html

Internet Marketing and Website Promotion:
http://www.1-website-promotion-internet-marketing-services.com/

Can You Froogle?

Once you have your e-commerce website setup, don't forget to check with Google's new froogle.com. Froogle is the e-commerce version of Google. Getting listed is free; however, you must be selling a tangible product that actually gets shipped to your buyer. Froogle's spider crawls your website and takes pictures of your items, then includes them in its database -- along with the item's price. It's a good idea to update your website frequently and ensure that your meta tags are set to have the froogle robot return frequently. Bidfind.com was one of the first websites to do something like this in 1995; they are still operating today and going strong. Check them out too.

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