Craigslist is definitely not a Search Engine Marketing tool for the faint at heart. The posting process may be easy but getting your ad to actually stick can be extremely mind crunching when you don't know the right way to post an ad. This isn't going to work for every type of website although, the more creative you can be, the better the chances that your ad will work. Also, this works best for keywords with 35,000 or less in google. You just need to start out writing a decent description that doesn't sound too spammy and then you insert your link into the body of the description using this code: <a href="URL Goes Here"><font color="000000">Keyword Goes Here</font></a> If you write a decent script that is keyword optimized to match the keyword in the title of your ad, and you also match the keyword for the link to the same keyword as the other two, then you should see ranking increases. Also add a picture to make the ad look better, this helps out for traffic because the ad stands out. Here is an ad i posted to show an example..... http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/bks/899565859.html Once your ad is up and running then the next thing to do is to wait for Google to index the page, which should not take to long. At this point I would use a few of my own deadly combinations of tricks to get my ad ranking on page 1 for its keyword within minutes to start milking as much FREE traffic from the keyword ranking as possible! All the traffic from this point on is Completely FREE
Ok two questions...how do you avoid getting flagged with urls imbedded? Also, you are saying that this passes pagerank? I have read that a no follow was added to craigslist so no link juice, only traffic. I do like craigslist actually it can be a great source of traffic though.
Hello, I really can't tell you exactly how I get by without being flagged for url's embedded? I wasn't even aware that was not allowed. I think that you can do it as long as its done correctly. I think that I may have confused you, sorry about that, but I did not mean that it passes pagerank. I only meant that it helps improve the rankings of the website that you are using the ad to link too. If optimized correctly you could have your ad showing up on the first couple of pages within just a few minutes of posting your ad. This could potentially bring in alot of traffic through the ad, to your website. Another way to maximize traffic would be to insert the picture into the ad using HTML code and link the picture to your site. This would help out with traffic since a visitor is more likely to click the picture rather than the contextual link. Here is the code to insert the picture into the body of the ad: <a href="URL Goes Here"><img border="none" scr="URL Of Picture"></a> P.s. I think that another reason that I do not get flagged for the text link is due to the fact that i blend the color by placing a font tag in the code. Normally a text link shows up in another color and is highly noticeable.
***UPDATE****** I posted my ad approximately 1 hour ago and here are its current rankings!!!! My ad is now ranking on Page 1 for its target keyword: NLP Practitioner Training Guide Page 2 for: NLP Practitioner Training Page 2 for: NLP Practitioner Page 2 for: NLP Training Guide These are awesome results and I am very pleased.
I totally agree that craigslist is an amazing source of traffic. Sometimes you get flagged, other times you don't and your ad can be up there for like 45 days at the most (some cities are only 7 days). People go to craigslist to get a bargain so it's great for affiliate programs.
Why would google ban you? It's pure traffic and does not affect google in anyway. What did you mean by that? And yes, you do gain PR when you post properly on craig. A site of mine went from a PR0 to a PR4 in just 3 Months after posting like crazy on good ol' craig.