To SEO or Not To SEO, that is the Question
Search Engine Optimization in the Auction Industry
Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO) has been around long enough that you have probably heard something about it. Simply put, SEO is the process of increasing your website ranking and visibility in search engines. When your website ranks higher, more people will find it when they search for the service you offer, and will be more likely to pick your company than they would be if your website was on page six of Google search results. Having good SEO for auction websites is just as important as having good lot descriptions!
In this day and age, it is incredibly important that you have an online presence so that both potential sellers and bidders can find you. You want to make sure that when a seller is Googling “Auction Houses” your business pops up first in the results. If you’re looking to bring in quality bidders who are likely to participate in your auctions, you will want to make sure that they see your auctions in their search results. Otherwise both buyers and sellers will look elsewhere to meet their auction needs. It’s important to make sure that you have a good plan for your auction website SEO.
How to Implement Basic SEO
Keywords
There are specific keywords and phrases that people use when searching for auctions such as “auctions” “online auctions” “auction houses” “land auctions” and more. Your goal is to come up for those keywords! Make a list of keywords that are important for your industry, research trending keywords on Google or use a keyword and position tracking service. You will be able to see what keywords get the most traffic and can see how your website ranks for those words. Next, you will want to incorporate the words you want to rank for into your website. When Google crawls your page and sees a relevant keyword it will be more likely to offer your website up to searchers. However, make sure that you are appropriately adding keywords to your page. You can’t just add the phrase ‘equipment auction’ every other word and hope to show up #1 in the results. Your content needs to make sense and provide value to users – and the Google bots can tell if you are just stuffing your page with keywords. Implement keywords into your headings as well as in the text itself – it will show Google the main focus of your specific page and is a great way to catch the eye of someone who is skimming your site. This is one of the easiest ways to dive into your auction website SEO.
Content
This goes hand and hand with keywords! Like we said, it is important to make sure that your keywords are on your pages so that you can show up in the rankings for them. It is also important to make sure that the content on those pages provide a user with pertinent information that will answer their questions and give them solid information about your auction company. As we mentioned, Google takes quality content into account when deciding rankings. It is also important that there is enough content on your site! If a page has too little text, a search engine might not have enough to crawl and could decide that it is a non-existent page. You don’t want that to happen! Make sure that you have enough relevant information on each page to justify its place on your site.
Additionally, it is important for you to have fresh content on your site to show search engines that it is an active and healthy website. We would recommend starting a blog that discusses questions and topics relevant for your industry. Not only will a blog keep a steady flow of content, they will also be a great place to work in more keywords!
Mobile Responsive
It is important to make sure that your website is mobile responsive – not just mobile friendly. Not only will this be easier for your customers to navigate, but Google can tell when your website is mobile responsive and will reward you with a higher ranking in the search results. Plus, when your site is easier to navigate on a phone there is a greater chance that a user will stay on it longer. That helps your bounce rate and makes it more likely that the user will place a bid or contact you to host an auction! You can check if your site is mobile responsive here.
SEO and the Auction Industry
It is particularly important for auction companies to implement SEO on their websites because of the ever-changing nature of auctions. It can be hard to keep steady traffic when the items in your auctions are constantly changing. While a traditional company can focus on ranking for keywords over a longer period of time, and auction company might be selling different types of items every other week! It is important to make sure that you have keywords that you want to track for your auction company as a business and keywords that are specific to your lots.
Make sure when you are putting in information for each of your lots that you highlight specific keywords in the title and description. Make sure to give any images proper alt tags that include you keywords as well (if the phrases fit the images). Not only will it help potential bidders see what you are auctioning off, it will also increase the likelihood that the lot will show up in the results of the search engine. It’s a win-win situation!
When you are focusing on increasing the ranking of your auction site overall the main thing that we would recommend would be to start a blog or resource page. While you should of course make sure to keep your site pages updated with relevant keywords and text, blogs will allow your auction company to truly shine. You will have fresh and relevant content that will provide helpful information long after it has been posted. This will keep the search engines coming back to your site time and again as long as people are searching for the topics you write about. Plus, this gives you a great opportunity to answer questions from buyers and sellers and engage with your clients!
As for being mobile responsive – not only will it help your ranking, but it will help you reach a wider pool of bidders. If you offer online bidding, you can almost guarantee that people will bid from their phones. If your site is easy to navigate there is a better chance that people will place bids and watch their lots regardless of where they are. Now bidders who can’t get to a computer but have access to their phones can participate in your auction! And a wider bidding pool leads to more bids which results in higher final prices!
So to answer the question, you should perform auction website SEO! While it can be a daunting task to start, we hope that these tips have helped you understand how SEO can help your site rankings and your company overall! We know that your site will have great rankings in no time!