Explain this to me please

[BlackCatStudio98]

Explain to me how an item can stay on the first page of a search for over 8 months. In the main keyword search for my shop there is an item that never leaves the first page. It has been there for over 8 months while I have had several items cycle through the first page in this time.

I have to compare it to one of my items that disappeared into oblivion from that search a long time ago. My item was on page one for a couple of months and then I watched it move farther and farther back in the search until it disappeared to who knows where. This item of mine has the most views in my shop (532), it has 4 sales, and 61 favorites. The item that never leaves page one has 190 views, 1 sale, and 18 favorites. So why is it a permanent fixture on page one?

I thought maybe she renews her item very frequently, so I renewed mine ahead of schedule as an experiment, but it only brought it up to page 9, and not for very long.

I'm not trying to sound petty, and I don't begrudge that seller her spot on the first page, I just want to know how one keeps an item on the first page of a search for months on end.

[heartsabustin]

I think admin admitted to some problems with the search algorithms not changing over properly.

[maydaylabels]

sales are irrelevant; are you tagged and titled the same as she is for that search?

Maybe she gets more views and hearts specifically from that search? I dunno, it is a mystery. The pages that are quota-d are generally pretty static, though.

I wouldn't worry too much about those searches; it is much better to rely on a broad range of different keyword phrases, especially more specific ones, than to focus on the big searches.

[BlackCatStudio98]

I'm tagged better for that search because I have it first in my title with a matching tag, and she has it second.

The reason I concern myself with that search is because I have 4 times as many views from it than any other keywords I use. So obviously I'm getting views, but I have many items that are tagged with that keyword phrase and at any given time I will only have 7-10 items in the first 10 pages of that search.

I'm more curious than anything though.

[HamiltonArtandDesign]

Some people pay an extra fee per item to keep it up front. I can,t afford to do that. I think it is under promote your item.

[SpangGangDesigns]

@ Cheryl, where can people pay an extra fee to keep an item "up front". I've never heard of this. Curious

[maydaylabels]

Order in title is not that important, if it matters at all.

Erica, Cheryl probably means Promoted Listings; it is a way that you can get added exposure for broad terms.

Broad keywords may bring a lot of views, but since you can never guarantee you placement for those searches, and because most internet retailers get most of their sales from more specific (also called long-tail) phrases, it makes sense to focus on having the best variety of long-tail phrases possible; they will generally naturally include the broader phrases anyway.

Our best keyword phrase brings in something like 10% of traffic, which is a lot! But if I lost standing on it tomorrow (unlikely as it is not actually all that large a search, but possible) I would only see a 5-10% drop in traffic (if that, because we run promoted listings), and when I track my sales I generally see that they come from more specific searches, so I suspect that revenue would be down less than 5%.

There are also broader searches than our best one ("labels," for instance), for which we sometimes have good standing and sometimes not, right now not; our views from them are in the first page of search terms we get views for in our stats but they're not searches I ever worry about, because there's no point.