Attracting Search Engine Traffic To your Auction

As an Estate Liquidator you understand the need to attract large audiences for your liquidation sales. Large audiences give a better chance that someone will know the value of what you are selling and be in a position to pay a good price for the item being auctioned. People are often willing to pay more for an item that others are also looking to buy. Estate Liquidators and Auction companies that consistently auction their client’s items at a higher price are in demand. While there are many ways to advertise your auction website to attract this large audience, one of the most basic ways is to let the search engines do the work of sending prospective buyers to your auction. 

Unfortunately many auction website designs lack this basic design consideration, the ability to attract search engine traffic, commonly called SEO or Search Engine Optimization. Unlike SEM (Search Engine Marketing), which focuses on advertising on the web to attract visitor, SEO focuses on making your site understandable for the search engines and helping them know what is important on your website.

Choosing the correct Software

Adding the additional information about an item being auctioned on your website takes a little more work and likely you will not need to spend that time for each item being offered. What is important though is that your auction site lets you quickly and easily add that information to the larger and more popular auction items. 

Search engines like Google, MSN, and others use several page attributes to determine how a page is listed in the search engine results and how high it is listed for a given search term. Many of these items are handled automatically by a well designed auction website like we provide to each of our clients. Other aspects can be added by auctioneer simply giving a little more thought and adding a little more information when the more important auction items are added to the auction.

Xpert Auction Websites takes the information you provide for an auction item and ensures that each page on your website has the onpage SEO attributes necessary to help your auction pages rank well in the search engine results. 

Basic SEO Attributes

• Meta Titles– There are several Meta titles that need to be added for each page. Not all auction software includes the meta information required by Facebook, Twitter and other social media. This information is vital when people “Like”, “Tweet” or “share” your auction items. We ensure that the title you give us is added to all of the current social and search engine meta attributes for each item auctioned. We continuously update our client’s websites to be sure they are kept up to date with the latest SEO meta tag requirements. You never have to worry about your website becoming outdated.
• Meta Descriptions and Keywords – Like the meta titles, different attributes need to be added to your website to take advantage of how the social networking sites and search engines learn about your auction site and each item being auctioned. This information is used whenever a page on your site attracts social media attention or is displayed in a search result.
• Alt Tags on Pictures – While you may not fill out the alt information on every picture of every item you add to an auction it is vital that you have this ability. Your best pictures should have a few word description of what is in the picture. This gives the search engines more information about the auction item, increasing the chance of the item being displayed in image searches and even normal text searches.
• Proper use of Text Formatting – In the same way that Bold print, larger text, and different text colors attract your attention to the more important parts of a webpage, search engines like Google look at this same formatting to understand what a web page is about. Improper use of Headings, bold and italicized print and even colors confuses not only the person trying to read the page but also the search engines. Your Xpert Auction website will be designed to not only have an attractive appearance but will use these important formatting techniques to help the search engines rank your auction items in the search results.

These are just a few of the important SEO items that are incorporated in every Xpert Auction Website. The internet is continually evolving; to stay up to date and remain competitive your auction website needs to be frequently updated. Auction sites that do not keep up with these changes fall behind and lose potential traffic. We are committed to giving you an edge over your competition and keeping that edge. Contact us today and let us show you how a Xpert Auction Website can attract more estate liquidation clients for you!

Dwayne Goerges - SEO and Marketing Manager