Improve Your Listings to Increase Your Sales

GunBroker.com wants to help you sell more. In order to sell more, buyers need to find your items. Items that sell the best are the ones that are the most relevant match to the buyer’s search. With the recent changes to search there are a number of specific things you need to do to increase the visibility of your listings and thus increase your sales.

How does GunBroker.com search work?

When a user searches for something on GunBroker.com the search engine will return the most relevant items to the user at the top of the list. Relevant items are determined by the search engine algorithm and the algorithm is updated regularly to adjust what is the most relevant. As the seller, you control the determining factors in your search placement by how you construct your listing.

What factors will make my listing the most relevant?

The following parts of the listing are among the components used by the search algorithm to determine the most relevant listings. All these items are not weighted equally but all play an important part in determining relevance.

• Category
• Title
• Subtitle
• Characteristics
• Description

Category

Make sure your item is listed in the proper category. Items that are not in the appropriate category will be treated as less relevant.

Title and Subtitle

To make the title and subtitle relevant include the manufacturer, model name, model number, caliber or gauge and important characteristics that match the item exactly. Words at the beginning of the title are considered more important than words at the end. State specifically and fully what the item is. Stating what the item is “Like” or “Not” will reduce the relevance of the listing. Avoid abbreviations unless they are extremely common such as a manufacturer name (S&W, FN, etc.).

Characteristics

If you have characteristic information such as UPC, manufacturer part number or SKU be sure to add it to the listing. If the category you are listing in has additional characteristics fill them out accurately. Inaccurate or conflicting characteristics will be less relevant.

Description

The description of your listing should state the most important details first. The search terms that buyers are using should be listed first. This includes terms such as manufacturer, model name, model number, caliber/gauge and characteristics that match the item exactly. These are generally considered more important than color, finish or other descriptive terms that may be included. When listing a used item, condition should come after the above information.

Do not distract from the item you are selling with terms that do not describe the actual item for sale. Things like “similar to” another brand or “also comes in red” when your item is blue will reduce its relevance score. This also confuses the buyer as well as the search engine. Extraneous words dilute the relevancy of the important terms. In the above example, mentioning blue and red together does not clearly describe what color the item is to the search engine.

Including information about your business or your selling policies also reduces the relevance of the words that describe your actual item. “A family business in Dakota, Ohio since 1925 here to serve you in any way possible” is nice but does not describe the item and will make your item harder to find and return lower in the results. Save things like payment terms and shipping policies for the Additional Terms of Sale.

Conclusion

Keeping the title and description related to the item you are selling will help buyers find your items faster and generate more sales.

This is truly a case when “LESS is More.”

For more details on “Dos and Don’ts” of listing, please review our Listing Policies.