Craigslist SEO : The Power of the Backlink
- Wednesday, July 9, 2008, 15:46
- Internet Technology
- 3,116 views
- 6 comments
Sure, everyone knows you can use Craigslist to sell your stuff, but you can also use Craigslist to help promote your website the way you want it to be seen.
Craigslist Backlinks
One of the greatest features craigslist has for the up and coming website is Craigslist HTML policy. Being able to create clickable links to your site is an often underused feature of Craigslist. To often, people fail to recognize the power Craigslist gives while posting. It’s easy to create links, as long as you have a little HTML knowledge. Craigslist is huge and search engines scour the pages of craigslist on a regular basis, so here’s a quick way to create some good backlinks on Craigslist.
Craislist No Follow Linking
Ok, there are going to be a lot of people pointing out that Craigslist uses no-follow links and therefore, the links aren’t as good as regular links. And this is true, a no-follow link doesn’t have the same ‘ummph’ as a regular link, but don’t let that deter you. Craigslist links are still quite valuable and beneficial, even if they are no-follow links.
Link with Purpose
If you’re going to put a link on Craigslist, make it work for you. Anyone can put a link to their website, but it’s the words within the link where people are missing the target. For example, if I link to dawhoo.com that’s great for people who are looking for my site, but I would rather have my site linked to a phrase that’s not my site name, like learn the secrets of Craigslist SEO. You can see the difference and so can search engines. It’s better to have your site associated with a phrase than it is your site’s name, unless you site is very popular, in which case, you’re wasting your time reading this post.
Gaining Visitors and Rank
While the links you’re going to get from Craigslist are not going to count as much as organic follow links, you will get partial credit from search engines as well as getting visitors. It’s a win / win situation! Just remember, link the keyword and not your site’s name and you’ll get more visitors and a higher search engine rank.
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6 Comments on “Craigslist SEO : The Power of the Backlink”
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I didn’t think about links anchored with phrases that’s smart
thanks for the Advice. I agree that there is a least some value to the anchor text being a keyword you are optimizing for. We post at least twice a day and simply use a template
I really appreciate this feedback. VERY helpful! I will utlize these suggestions and let you know how they work.
Great, you answered my question in an easy and precise manner. So even with the no follow link I should still get a little juice from Craigs List. It Makes sense as Alexa ranks it at 37 in the world.
what proof do you have that the search engines give you link juice with the no follow attribute? I don’t see many companies trying to create back links on Craigslist?
JakeB, here’s the proof: http://www.dawhoo.com/how-to-improve-your-search-engine-rank/
Check out the part about Joe’s Discount Taxidermy. I made a static page, unlinked in this blog to anything. In 6 hours after placing the CL ad, that page ranked #4 in Google for “discount taxidermy” out of 1.45 million results. Of course, you won’t see it in the Google results now, because it wasn’t related to discount taxidermy at all. The only link to that page was a CL ad. With only a CL ad, it reached #4 in Google of 1.45 milion results in 6 hours.
Why don’t corporations do this? For the same reason you won’t see Rolex watches at WalMart – product valuation. WalMart could sell Rolex watches, but Rolex doesn’t want their name to become affiliated with “cheap”. THey also don’t use CL ads, because they don’t have to. I do a lot of ecommerce work and I would never put an ad for it on CL, because: 1) I cost too much for the average CL budget (starting at 5 figures) 2) people who advertise their web services on CL are usually not very good 3) I don’t need to.