Advanced Ebay Promotion Using Squidoo

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about using Squidoo to increase Ebay store sales on Professional Squids. This post went into detail about the benefits of creating a lens for your store, and how you can make the best use of them to drive traffic and sales. In addition, there's the part one of this post on promoting your Ebay store with Squidoo, which you should read first. Now that we've covered some of the basics, let get into some more advanced strategies for using Squidoo and Ebay together.

When you organize your Ebay store, you're going to want to make it as easy for buyers as possible. That means you'll want to separate all of your items by brand and type of item. If you don't have enough items to do this, then use a more general term to separate your items. The more items you have, the more specific you can get with your categories. This can also help with search engine optimization, since your store will have a link with anchor link text to that category page. For example, if you have a section called "collectible coke bottles," then you'll have a link headed into that category for that term. You may even want to expand upon that by using the custom pages on your store.

When you create custom pages, think of them as landing pages. Your home page is your main page, but each custom page could be focused on a different aspect of your business. If you sell types of computers, you could separate them by brand or type, and dedicate an informational page, also showcasing your items, on that page. Ebay allows you to use HTML on these extra pages, so spice it up by adding photos, simple graphics, header tags, bold tags, italicize, underlining, and as much content as you can fit in. One thing you won't want to do is link outside of your store from this area. Keep buyers in, not headed out, unless it's to harvest email newsletter subscriptions or to have them follow you on Facebook or Twitter.

Once you've created your masterpiece custom page, then it's time to promote your page using Squidoo. When you create your lenses, you'll want to work around the custom page and your store categories. You can try making one lens for every category, or a couple of lenses (or more) for every custom page. Creating related content is going to work best. To cite the previous example, let's stick with computers as a theme. If you created a custom page about Dell computers, then creating Squidoo lenses about "saving money on Dell computers," "how to add memory to your Dell computer" and "The Best Dell Laptop Computers for Travel" might be good topics for your niche. On these lenses, you'll want to work the title of the custom Ebay store page into the text of the lens somewhere, and also hyperlink that keyword term to the page. Using bold might be appropriate as well. For best search engine results, you may want to include this link somewhere in a paragraph instead of pasting it at the bottom of the page.

• Note only one link to a specific page will be counted by search engines.
• Link to your other custom pages and store categories when appropriate.
• Link to your other Ebay lenses using the featured lens module, or by using keyword anchor text.

In the weeks and months to come, you should start to see your individual custom pages start to pick up in traffic. If you have traffic stats enabled, try seeing what search terms people are using to get to your page and tweak the page as necessary to include more information and keywords. Most SEO analysts say the sweet spot for keyword density for any given term is about 2-2.2%.

If you're not seeing an increase in traffic, then it could be:

• There are too many keywords and it's stuffed.
• There aren't enough links yet, so Google hasn't found the page.
• There isn't enough content on the page for search engines to index it. Try adding more content. 1500 words is a good start.
• The topic of the page is confusing. Try simplifying it to something people are searching for.

As traffic starts to pick up to these pages, you're going to want to capitalize on that by adding new items, creating new lenses, and finding new avenues to promote all of your pages. Blogging and article writing are the next step in this process, as well as Twitter and Facebook.

This same strategy can be used not only for Ebay, but for Amazon items, CafePress items, and Etsy items.

Promoting Your Ebay Store with Squidoo

If only online promotion were free for your Ebay store… oh wait, it is! Squidoo is a completely free website that allows you to make your very own articles, called lenses. These one page “lenses” are the perfect way to talk about your website and direct search traffic to your store. Squidoo also has a relationship with the Ebay Partner Network, so you’ll be getting commissions for every sale that you drive to your own items (or other people’s items).

The first step in using Squidoo is to sign up. Second, you should evaluate your niche, and write about what you know. Write first about what you know best. Be sure to link to your Ebay store throughout the lens (only one backlink counts per page, but you can sprinkle links throughout the content to direct buyers to your store).

To get started, pick a topic that you know the most about. Let’s say that you sell fuzzy animal slippers. The first lens you create should probably be on fuzzy animal slippers. Talk about the different types of slippers, give buyers tips on sizes, and give them recommendations on what type of kids like certain types of slippers. Also talk about your store somewhere throughout the page (buyers usually click at the top and bottom of pages, so those are wise choices on where to link to your store). Think like a buyer, and know what your buyers want.

Throughout your lens, you can also use the Ebay module to pull a feed of your current auctions. You can also sort by category and keywords to pull only certain relevant items into the feed. This is very handy when you’re trying to break your page down by certain types of items, brands, or styles.


Five Things to Make Sure You Include in Your Squidoo Lens
1. Link to your Ebay store and your About ME page. You can also link to your specific store categories and custom pages that you’ve created. This will help those pages get indexed by Google, and help drive search traffic.
2. Use keywords throughout your lens and in the titles, but don’t overdo it. Some SEO analysts state that 2% is a good ratio to shoot for when using certain keywords, while others say it’s higher. When writing your lens, it’s a good idea to aim to use keywords, with the intention of ranking for that specific phrase (the title of the lens).
3. Include many different types of modules, and include plenty of photos. The more photos the better. Ebay has the Text Module, Flickr Module, Polaroid Module, Table of Contents, Featured Lenses Module, Link List, and of course the Ebay module. Try them all out and see what works for you.
4. Make your lens at least 1500 words. Not all successful lenses are over this amount, but most of them are. Google loves content, so talk it up.
5. A guestbook. Guestbooks provide valuable feedback from readers, and allow you to network within the Squidoo community. To take it a step further, reply to visitor’s comments with your own two cents.

You can also try to combine your Squidoo marketing efforts with blog marketing for your Ebay store. Link your lenses to your blog, and vice versa, and you're sure to eventually pull in some heavy traffic to your store.

One more thing. Squidoo has a poll module which you can add to your lens and get potential buyers to answer questions like "what else should you include in your store?" and "was the store easy to navigate?" It's an easy way to get some free feedback.