Getting found
How buyers reach a signal — categories, tags, search fields and reach settings — and why a complete listing outperforms a promoted one here.
A signal that nobody reaches is a form you filled in. This page is about the difference.
How buyers arrive
Browsing a category. Somebody is looking for a class of thing and working through what is listed. Your category is what decides whether you are in that list at all.
Searching. By product name, by the term their industry uses, by a specification. Your title, tags and specification fields are all searchable surface.
From a search engine. Your listing has its own address and its own search title and description.
Through your business. A buyer who found one of your listings, or your business profile, and is looking at what else you do.
Category is the highest-leverage field
Get it wrong and nothing else helps. A buyer browsing industrial fasteners will not find your fastener filed under general hardware, however good the listing is.
Where nothing fits properly, use the alternate category field rather than forcing it into the nearest wrong one. A slightly-wrong category is worse than an honest "something else", because it puts you in a list where you look like an odd fit.
Tags are for the words the tree does not have
Categories are a structure somebody designed. Tags are how buyers actually talk.
Regional names, trade abbreviations, the old name for something everyone still uses, the application rather than the object — "conveyor spares" when the category says bearings.
Tag what buyers would type, not what the product is called on your invoice.
Specifications are search surface
Worth saying plainly, because it is not obvious: filling in specifications is not only about convincing a buyer once they arrive. It is part of how they arrive.
A buyer filtering on a dimension only sees listings that stated that dimension. Every blank field is a filter you fail.
Search titles and descriptions
Separate fields for how you appear in search results and link previews.
Write them for someone who has not arrived yet:
- Lead with the thing itself and its defining specification, not your company name
- Say what makes yours worth clicking in one clause
- Do not stuff terms in — it reads badly to a human, which is the only reader who matters at the point of clicking
Reach
Nation-wide or global. Set it to what you can actually serve.
Global on a product you cannot export produces enquiries you decline, which costs the sender their attention and you your response score. Narrow reach honestly stated beats wide reach you cannot honour.
What actually moves the needle
Complete the specifications
The single highest-return action available. It affects search, filtering, and whether a buyer who arrives can decide.
Fix the category
Five minutes. Sometimes it is the entire problem.
Attach the documents
Certifications and datasheets both prove claims and answer questions before they are asked.
Publish more of your range
One listing is a sample. Buyers browsing a category see who has depth, and depth reads as a real supplier rather than a test account.
Keep them current
Editing never takes a listing down. There is no reason to leave a stale specification up.
What does not exist here
No paid placement. You cannot buy your way up a category listing. Nothing on this platform is sold on the basis of being seen more than the person next to you.
No lead resale. A buyer who looks at your listing is not turned into a lead sold to your competitors. That model is what makes directory sites profitable and their enquiries worthless.
So the way to be found more is to be more findable: more complete, correctly categorised, more of your range published. It is slower than buying visibility and it compounds instead of expiring.
The other half
Being found is only useful if what happens next works. A buyer who reaches your signal and decides to act sends an enquiry, which you have to be in a position to accept and answer.
A good signal with an unattended enquiry queue is a worse outcome than no signal at all — you have spent the buyer's credits and your standing to arrive at silence.