So you think you need to be #1 on Google to drive visitors to your website huh? Posting ads on Craigslist regulary (the key to it all) can be agreat help in getting your web site indexed, which will help you drive traffic to your site plus get direct traffic from Craigslist. A great example of this is to post new products on your web site in the Craigslist classified section.
With over 450 cities in 50 countries and growing, Craigslist is a great network of online communities that offers free (most of them) classified advertisements in a number of categories including job listings, interships, housing, dating, retail products, and online sales. Can’t argue with pver 5 billion page views a month can you?
All of this sounds great right? It is but you must adhear to the terms of service that Craigslist has or you risk getting banned and your listings. A good example of this is posting to many listings at once and multiple posts in a category. Also, make sure you are posting your ads to the most appropriate category as well. A good tip is to make sure that you do not allow your email address to be shown on your posts to other members or you risk being spammed with email junk.
Your actual post should be set up simular to your on page optimization for your website by using heading tags (H1 &H2) fo your most important keywords. Also make sure you use bolding as well for those keywords within the body copy. Your post will last from 30-45 days so make sure you post your ad again so that the search engines continue to index your ad and list this page in their search results.
As you know, local search is booming as local services like the Yellow Book bemore more relevant to searchers. Mobile search is also targeting these local markets and with the web browsering on smartphones just as good as a true computer, you need to be thinking local SEO. Local SEO still tends to be easier than regular SEO because the keyword terms have less competition and are highly relevant to your local visitors. Make sure you have registered your business with the local sections within the major search engines to increase the content pointing to your site. Don’t forget SEO based around zip codes as well. Also, think neighborhood names (Water’s Edge), local slang names (C-Land – Cleveland), and landmarks that people use to describe the area around it (Big Mountian plumbers).
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Craigslist here we gooooooo! Thanks for the tip Frank. I’ve actually used Craigslist before to advertise services and have gotten a whole lot of spam, however out of that spam, I also received a few real leads. I was able to convert 2 of those into sales and 1 of them became a regular client… Moral of the story: Even though you’ll get a whole lot of spam, there is also a chance of generating sales out of services like Craigslist or Backpage.