What is SEO & How Can I Use It for My Business?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a powerful tool for your resale business. If you have your own e-commerce website or use reselling platforms like eBay, Amazon, and Poshmark to list inventory, you should pay close attention to this blog. With a few simple steps, you could be on your way to understanding SEO and make the most use of it. You may be surprised by how relevant it can be to your business!

We go over just what is SEO, best practices to follow, and how SEO can help your resale business. You will even see examples of what good SEO looks like in action!

What is SEO?

SEO is the easiest way to attract new customers to your page, which is the very first step in selling your products. Optimization begins with keywords, which are usually the search term that buyers will use to find the product that they are looking for. And when you use the right keywords, you increase the likelihood of making a sale.

There are a few things to note about SEO and how it works. There’s on-page SEO and off-page SEO. According to Moz, “On-page SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines…as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals.”

So essentially, your ranking or ability to be found can increase with the use of good keywords and optimized web pages. And as we all know, the higher you are in search results, the more likely you are to be seen.

Can I still use SEO if I don’t have my own website?

If you don’t have your own website, don’t worry! You can still use basic SEO concepts as a jumping-off point for your reselling platforms. For instance, simply using buzzwords such as “Like New” along with the brand name, color, etc. in the product title can go a long way because if it matches what users are typing into the search bar, your listings are more likely to appear higher up in the results.

If you have a brick-and-mortar retail location, there’s also a ton of benefits to local SEO. Which is designed to increase the search visibility of your business. For businesses with face-to-face customers in their community, this is huge. And a whole other topic to cover. Read more about what local SEO is here.

How SEO Can Help Your Business

The positive impact of good SEO can’t be emphasized enough. However, the top 3 ways SEO can help your business are:

• Increase in website traffic
• Get more people looking at your listings
• Help customers find what they’re looking for (AKA sales!)

Think about it: optimized product pages bring in more site visitors (or eyeballs), and in turn, lead to more sales. So, you know the pipeline from good SEO practices to an increase in sales exists, but how do you best implement it? Of course, it won’t happen overnight. But it’s definitely a practice worth getting into the habit of. Your overall awareness and sales could be impacted in more ways than one!

SEO Best Practices

There are several factors that go into determining rankings on Google. “Rankings” means the order the search results appear on a SERP (search engines results page). But assuming you just want to follow best practices when it comes to using keywords and other on-page optimization strategies, we’ve got you covered.

Best practice is to have the main keyword within your product title as it carries the most weight with search engines. Other places to have the keyword include:

• Page titles
• URLs
• Header tags (H1s/ H2s/H3s)
• Meta descriptions
• Image tags (called alt text)
• Product descriptions

Pick relevant keywords

If you’re asking yourself what keyword to even use – pick whichever words are most relevant to your product. This can take a bit of trial and error, but do some market research to see how others are listing their inventory. If you have a new pallet of makeup, listing your product as a “Pink makeup pallet” isn’t ideal. You want to specify things like brand name, type, and condition. You probably want to go with something like “Revlon So Fierce! Prismatic Shadow Palette – New”. See the example below of search results for “Revlon makeup palette Amazon”.

Understand search intent

This is essentially the difference between a person searching for “Reviews for latest AirPods” and “Where can I buy used AirPods?” There are three kinds of search intent: informational, transactional, and navigational. If you can provide the best answer to a user’s question – or search intent – with the right keywords, you will begin to rank higher.

Avoid keyword stuffing

This is essentially over-using your keywords in an attempt to trick Google. Since Google’s site crawlers or Googlebot, index your site and determine how relevant it is to a user’s search, you could, in theory, create a whole page on your website with “Like New Instant Pot” written 500 times. Right? Wrong. To Google, that is keyword stuffing and will actually hurt your visibility since you’re using a keyword an abnormal amount of times. Only use keywords where and when it makes sense.

Be helpful & remain consistent

Google’s algorithm updates constantly favor informative, quality content. The goal is to answer your customers’ questions with complete product information, so don’t leave them guessing! Check out these product listing techniques. Another thing to consider could be a blog. Starting a blog is a huge tool when it comes to driving organic traffic to your website. But remember, only if it makes sense. Your SEO will only be as good as the amount of time you spend upkeeping a blog with the right keyword strategies.

Say you’re a home & garden inventory reseller, your customers might also be looking for product reviews or tips for home DIY projects. Depending on what kind of bandwidth you have, reviewing products or creating simple, step-by-step instructions for common renovation products would make sense. This type of content helps your site appear in even more searches!

Be descriptive & use alt text

Always make sure your product photos have alt text. If you’re uploading pictures to a WordPress site, or another platform hosting your e-commerce business, this should be specified in the alt-text field. Make sure to actually describe what is featured in the image so as not to misinform potential customers.

Use photos optimized for the web

This can impact the page loading speed, as well as help make your site more mobile-friendly. It’s as easy as using a photo editor to compress your images to the right dimensions or pixels. Or, finding a high-quality stock image ready for use.

Invest in tools to help

There is a plethora of free resources to help with SEO, as well as paid tools. SEO plug-ins on WordPress and Shopify can be real game-changers. They will point out potential problems, suggest improvements, and give you helpful pointers. For example, they can recommend you use your keyword X amount of times depending on the length of text, or when your header tags could be further optimized. If you go this route, make sure you make the most of it. Either have someone on your team who knows a bit about the process already (or is willing to learn) as some of these tools don’t come cheap. You can also check out educational resources from industry leaders like Moz and HubSpot.

If you’re looking for something free – use Google suggest. In the example above, you can see how by typing in “best places to buy liquidation…” Google populates the words “pallets” along with a handful of other suggestions to choose from. These are search predictions that populate as soon as you start typing into the search bar and can help you phrase your product listing with the right keywords. Additionally, it can also help you come up with potential blog topics!

SEO In Action

Good SEO in action looks like this! In the example below, you can see the keyword “buy Walmart returns” has been identified in WordPress, along with included in the URL and meta description.

There’s a lot that goes into SEO. Hopefully, you feel like you have a good enough understanding to take the next step in your optimization plans! Be sure to read 5 Marketing Tips for Reselling Online if you want to enhance your marketing strategy even further.

By following SEO best practices and using the right keywords, your resale business will be thriving in no time! And if you’re in need of more great inventory to start listing, check out live auctions happening right now! B-Stock has you covered in just about every category and product condition your resale business needs.