Better results in best match?

I am constantly battling with eBay to improve my best match placement for a particular keyword. No single person in my keyword has an item with any sales history on it, me nor my competitors actually sell directly through eBay under this particular keyword.

So I am trying to figure out what are some practices to force my listings up the page. I have tried A LOT of different things. I know watchers are somewhat important, early on of course but that fades with time. Click through from search queries are important, I buy those through a site like microworkers. The one thing I'm wondering does ebay care if your items are listed as part of store or not, does it rank one higher than the other? And also stuff like free shipping, free returns, all of those extras do those help rankings at all?

watchers helps a lot .

It's almost entirely based on sell through, but it also involves machine learning (I know someone inside). There are literally tens of thousands of variables that even the programers don't know what they mean. There are core guiding metrics, but the system assesses what makes people happy and what makes them feel like they're seeing relevant results and it mostly comes down to real relevancy and sell through rates.

That means good listings and titles, good pricing and good items. It all actually encourages good listing practices, you can't game it too much.

might try using bold titles maybe???

Buyer engagment as defined by eBay. Listed by importance: Sales, Watchers, Add to cart, Clicik through.

Early engagment for new listings, especially auction style listings boost bestmatch position.

As soon as you list an item, grab a few accounts and press that "add to watch button"

Short targeted titles are better as well: "iphone case 5s" would be ranked higher than "iphone case 5s shiny red gloss finish open smooth" if the buyer search's "iphone case"

Not a lot of people do this anymore, but choosing to highlight the listing or using a bold listing really does have an impact on the algorithm ebay uses for sorting best match listings. It does cost money but worth a shot!

adding fake "watchers" and "clicks" is a double end sword.....it helps at first (system thinks people like your listing, so they bump up) but when no one buys, than it hurts (2k clicks and only 1 buyer, system thinks its bad and bumps down)...i quit wasting my time with these.

the biggest thing i noticed is if your items sell fast (actually buy and paid for)...than it bumps your listing. for example if i sell headphones in one listing and sell 3 out of 10 in one day, than even my other listings for other items gets big bumps.
other aspects (good feedback, accepts returns) helps little.

i wouldn't think about best match, because "best match" is some times just random. (they need to let the little guy have a chance once in a while). if you are selling something common and it's not selling than...list lower price. most people change best match to lowest price first anyways