Making a Great Craigslist Ad (Part 2)

Now that we have discussed some of the keys to making your ads more visible on Craigslist (frequency of posting and relevancy of information) we should talk a little bit more about what kind of keywords you should be using in your postsd. These are the kind of rules that we at EZ Posting follow when creating and posting ads.

First of all, what is the purpose of keywords? Generally we like to add keywords into Craigslist posts because of the way Craigslist's search engine works. If you want more info on how it performs searches, please refer back to Part 1 of this series. What are good types of keywords to use in an ad? Things that identify your property, like location features. Make sure you have any nearby freeways, highways, major streets or landmarks listed somewhere in your ad. Also, to get your ad to show up on different searches, you can include some words that may or may not be applicable to your property. Using these keywords will broaden the ways that your post may be seen. However, it is important to recognize that there is a good way and a bad way to put these kind of keywords in your ad.

A tasteless way of doing it is to place a list of keywords at the end of your property description. Don't do it. For example, if you are advertising a 3/2 house with a large backyard in Gilbert, don't put a list of words at the end of your property description like (pool, sport court, tempe, mesa, apache junction...etc.) It looks unprofessional, as if you're getting paid by the number of times someone clicks on your post. This type of "keyword overload" is extremely popular with spammers, and you DON"T want your ads being associated with spammers.

There is a way to get that same list of words worked into your ad in a clean and professional way. Take the example of the 3/2 in Gilbert. Instead of a plain list, you can work the keywords into your ad in appealing way. "Large backyard gives opportunity for adding a sport court or pool. House is near Tempe border and is close to US 60 for easy access to both Apache Junction and Mesa". See how that gives your reader a better feel for the property and gives you the same keywords in your post? Subtlety of kewords is the newest addition to our list of keys in the "Good Craigslist Ad" series. In the next blog we will be talking more about the image that your ad projects and how to improve it!