Question:
This is what I can fit in the November hanky title:
Vintage November Calendar Hanky Scorpio Sagittarius
I would like to include silk but it won't fit unless I leave something else out and I'm not sure it's that important as a serch word. I would also like to have gotten zodiac in but, of course, it won't fit either.
Any suggestions?
Joan
Answer:
If I had to leave out a word, I'd leave out vintage and be sure to keep "silk". In my opinion words like vintage are overused and from the looks of sellathon (when I was using it) they're rarely used in search strings. Maybe someone else has had different experience, but when I'm pressed for space I leave out old, vintage, early etc.
Answer:
I used to sell a lot of hankies and never put vintage in the title and usually did well with Calendar hankies. I also remember selling a football hankie once and getting a good price for it so I'd put football in the title. Here's a suggestion: November Calendar Zodiac Hankie Hanky Football. Also I would capitalize a few words of your choice when listing like zodiac and football to make the title stand out.
Answer:
Thanks to you both for your great ideas. I'll play around with it and see what happens.
Joan
Answer:
Currently, on ebay, there are 1135 listings for "hanky" and 835 for "hankie" so I would probably skip both spellings in the title and just use "hanky".
I also want to offer a different opinion about the word "vintage". Even though it is about as vague a term as you can get...and most certainly overused & abused ...I would still use it. I know from personal experience that I have got a few very good deals on fabric that was definitely vintage but just listed as "fabric". And I do know there are browsers who just go to the category they are interested in and search just on the word "vintage". So even though the proper category is Clothing, Shoes, Accessories > Vintage > Accessories > Handkerchiefs which already assumes that the items listed are vintage there will be shoppers who will go to that category and just plug in the word "vintage" to see what comes up. While a true collector may not do that you always have to remember to cater to the newbie on ebay.
Maybe "Vintage Silk CALENDAR Hanky NOVEMBER ZODIAC FOOTBALL" ?
I always use kept2much's technique of capitalizing some of the words...I don't know if it really helps but I like the way titles look when they're done that way.
Answer:
About 9pm tonight (Central Time) there were 297 auctions that had both hankie and hanky in them.
Now we need one of those research programs to figure out which way garners the best bids!
hanky
hankie
hankie AND hanky
edited to add:
If I were to guess, I'd guess that true collectors search with both of the above words AND handkerchief when they're trolling for the best one.
The question is whether or not you'll get buyers who only search with one of those words. If so, then only using one in the title will reduce the available pool (to that buyer) by 500 to 800 handkerchiefs...is that a good thing or a bad thing?
Elaine
(who is confusing herself and thinks it's time to get some sleep! lol)
Answer:
I'll add that I'm not sure I'd use both hany and hankie. Out the other spelling in the first 20 words of the description though. That will SURELY hit on the search engine. Of course who really knows what hits search anymore! But I think it
would serve you better to replace the dupicate word in the title with another descriptor such as silk etc.
~~arkay
Answer:
So...
it comes down to making a decision based on...
which words (or types of hankies) get the highest closing bids....
The zodiac related ones? (Are the buyers likely big astrology fans and just happen to buy a handkerchief because it fits with their interest?)
The month related ones? (ie, November) (Is it for a birthday gift and the hanky part may or may not be important?)
The silk fiber (vs the other options of cotton or rayon or ?)
Vintage? (vs leaving it out)
Are the likely buyers new to ebay? (If so, you probably need both hankie and hanky, because they may not know to put both or to search on descriptions)

Like I said...I'm getting a headache
Elaine
Answer:
I've spent way too much time thinking about this one little hankie/hanky. My current thinking is:
I'm not sure that ZODIAC is an important title search word and I think that I could omit CALENDAR and just use NOVEMBER and be OK. I hadn't thought about FOOTBALL before but since it has beem mentioned, I think it might be more important than SILK.
I really like the idea of making some of the title words all CAPS and that's something I would never have thought of.
I think any of the following three titles would probably work just fine.
Vintage Silk CALENDAR Hanky NOVEMBER ZODIAC FOOTBALL
Silk NOVEMBER Hanky SAGITTARIUS SCORPIO FOOTBALL
NOVEMBER Calendar Hanky SAGITTARIUS Scoprio FOOTBALL
Thank you so much for all of your input. Each of you have given me food for thought and not to mix metaphors but this old dog has learned a new trick or two.
Joan