Craigslist.org (CL) is the epitome of an easy to use message board for the masses.  Since most services are free, it is a great place to find tickets, buy a house or car, or get a date.  But many ads are not given the 3 additional minutes (or less) of optimization.

The CL search engine is one of simplicity.  As long as text is displayed within the ad, matching the search query, then your ad will appear in chronological order by which is was submitted.

If you were advertising commercial space and did not include the word “parking,” “dental office,” or “East Village” in the ad, then your ad would not show up in a search for those terms.  And if you did include the word your ad would show…pretty easy.

What other words could you use?  Your ad for commercial space, might include words related to professions, major highways, popular boulevards, nearby neighborhoods…and even common misspellings.

The time is Sunday, 8pm on the east coast, and PICTURED is a Craigslist drill down search for the NYC > Manhattan area for “Office & Commercial.”  There are 246 ads posted today so far.

Once the word “Elevator” is used in the search, only 24 ads from today appear.   That’s just over 10% of the ads still showing!!

By simply including the word elevator in the ad itself these listings are being returned.  But since Craigslist uses simple search technology, you could actually have a long list of related words at the bottom of the ad and not be faced with spam penalties that major search engines enforce.  For those that are frequent CL posters, this text would not have to be written new each time, but could be copied and pasted from another document.  Notepad is for PC users and comes standard,  and some Mac users suggest Textwrangler.

Have a question or need some direction? If you use Craigslist frequently, particularly if you use it in your business, feel free to message us below for tips to improving your Craigslist success.

Here is the first one – Even if what you are offering doesn’t need to have a picture, use a picture whenever possible. Picture tagged ads on Craigslist always get clicked more often than ones without.

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