Why Classified Ads?
You are a small business owner or marketing professional and your budget is limited. You need a free advertising solution that can potentially reach new customers. Therefore, classified ads are the way to go.In June 1836, French newspaper La Presse was the first to include paid advertising in its pages. This advertising system allowed it to lower its printed price, extend its readership and increase its profitability and the formula was soon copied by other papers.
Digital media is the new print media, and nowadays classified ads are often free! Therefore you get free ads and a backlink to your website as long as the ad is running (most free classified ads will run for 30 - 45 days, but the amount of time may vary). Some sites may charge you for what they call "premium" posting, but for the most part, you do not need to waste money on this.
Classified ads are a great way to get a backlink to your website. Given there are no follow links, they are still good to have, so a user can get to your website, which in a sense indirectly helps with SEO and page rank as long as that person does not bounce (leave the site right away).
Let us take a look at some of the most popular free classified ad sites out there and examine each one closely.
Free Ads Time
As the name implies, this website allows you to post free classified ads. The setup is clean and the categories are clear. You can post an ad with or without an account. If you know how code the link by hand in HTML, then you can add it manually and you can add a backlink.Pros: Simple easy to use. You can either create an account and keep track of your ads or post an ad without an account. If you post an ad without an account, they will notify you by email and you will be given links to edit the listing.
Cons: There does not seem to be a lot of posters using the site (this may depend on city and region). Manual implementation of HTML links.
FinderMaster
Pros: Ads can be posted for free both as a member or as a guest. Its ease of use can’t be ignored and it covers a large number of areas and categories.
Cons: A great number of ads are posted in certain regions or countries and the other countries seem to be low in the number of posted listings.
WallClassifieds
This classified ads site has differentiated itself both through its user experience design and its user interface design. Basically, navigating through the website is quite intitule and it very well can be a to go place for posting almost anything. It’s free, local, and yet again quite easy to use.Pros: Most classifieds force you to browse through a few pages before seeing the results you’ve been after and this is not the case with the WallClassifieds. It saves you those extra steps and it enables you to select a city and the category right from its homepage.
Cons: You won’t be able to spot certain filters such as selecting the number of doors for a vehicle through its search pages.
Classified Ads
This is a free classified ads site that is easy to use. All you have to do is click on "Post an Ad" and the site takes you to a page where you can post an ad first and fill out your account details later. The site is very clean and the categories are very well defined. The site is also very active with a lot of traffic.Pros: It is quick and painless to set up a user account. You can add HTML to each listing, which means a backlink to your site.
Cons: Poor search engine. When I did a search in my city, I did not just get results for my city. The search results showed ads from all over the place, from Los Angeles, California, to Detroit, Michigan to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Only one of them was from anywhere close. This is annoying for someone who is impatient.
Backlink: Yes, no follow
Classified Ads Pro Tip: Use this site for backlinks. You can add as much HTML as you want. This will take the ad viewer directly to your website's landing page and that's exactly where you want them.
Oodle
Oodle, Inc. is an online marketplace based out of San Mateo, California. It was founded in 2004 by ex-Excite executives Craig Donato, Scott Kister and Faith Sedlin.Pros: Easy to use. It is integrated with USA Today, so your ads also appear on their site. As long as you manage to create an account and not get your account flagged for no reason, then it should be a powerful tool to reach new audiences due to its appearance on USA Today's classified section.
Cons: They do not offer HTML linking, so you cannot get a backlink to your site. The site is also either very buggy or it just did not like me, because it flagged my very first post and banned my account after I tried to make two more.
Oodle Pro Tip: Make sure your user account information is consistent with your social media profile.
Backlink: No (Yes if you have a premium, paid ad)
Penny Saver USA
This is a popular site for anyone looking for coupons and discounted goods or services. Pennysaver USA has an easy way for you to upload coupons in the form of image files. You can also set a discounted price within the ad itself and you can also give people the chance to give you a best offer if you are willing to work with custom pricing.Pros: A great place to promote discounts and coupons.
Cons: No outbound HTML links. You do however get one business profile link where you can add a single website. I do not see this as effective, because it is not noticeable.
Penny Saver Pro Tip: Be sure to have your coupon saved as an image file that can be uploaded. JPEG is always a good format. Make sure the image size is also not too large or too small. 600x400 pixels is a good size.
Backlink: Yes, no follow.
Locanto
Locanto is a worldwide online classifieds network with areas dedicated to jobs, personals, for rent, for sale, services, community, real estate, vehicles, and pets. Locanto Classifieds is available in more than 60 countries worldwide.Locanto Classifieds sites are operated by the German startup company Yalwa located in Wiesbaden, Germany. Locanto was launched in July 2006 with a local classifieds site for New York City. One month later, on August 21, 2006, the service was extended to the U.S. cities. With Locanto, you are allowed to include HTML code, links, and pictures in your ad, and your ad will remain on the site for 60 days.
Pros: They have a good search engine. You can set your search radius as low as 20 miles from your city or more and the keyword search is accurate and precise, so you get exactly what you want. Social media share buttons. Mini analytics.
Cons: I really did not notice any issues. The only downside would be a lack of users in certain areas (they seem to be more popular in some cities than others).
Locanto Pro Tip: Take advantage of their mini analytics options in the My Ads section of your account. You can keep track of how many people viewed your ad to find out if it is doing any good. Also, take advantage of the convenient social media sharing buttons.
Backlink: Yes, no follow.
USA Free Ads
This site looks like someone created it in the early 90's and just forgot about it. Not only is it aesthetically unpleasing, but it is also not mobile friendly. I seriously have no idea why anyone would still use this site, but there are obviously still people making classified ad posts, which means there is still a good amount of traffic. Ads remain active for 40 days.Pros: They allow HTML, so you can get a backlink to your website's landing page. This is great as a call to action ad in order to get people to click on your link.
Cons: Just about everything... The site needs a serious makeover. They are stuck in the 1990's. When I first hit the registration button, they had a wall of questions where I had to click a radio button to indicate whether or not I was interested in the service the site offered.
USA Free Ads Pro Tip: Do not sign up for the paid monthly memberships, they are not worth it (obviously).
Backlink: Yes, no follow.
Adland Pro
Pros: Somewhat easy sign up. The categories are clear and the search engine gives you exactly what you want.Cons: The design is a bit outdated. Not really that far outdated, but let us say this site would only hold up to classified ad website design standards before 2010. You also cannot put HTML links in the ad itself and the backlink to your website is not easy for a user to locate.
Adland Pro Pro Tip: You can sign up for an affiliate account and possibly earn money on the side if you have a website.
Backlink: Yes, no follow
Craigslist
Founded by Craig Newmark in 1995, Craigslist is definitely the most well known. Craigslist has sections devoted to jobs, housing, personals, for sale, items wanted, services, community, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Throughout the years, Craigslist may or may not have developed a bad reputation as being a site frequented by criminals and unscrupulous individuals, but this is just a small outlier. The majority of Craigslist users are just regular people looking for goods and services. Ads remain active for 7 to 45 days depending on the location.Pros: Almost everyone has heard of Craigslist and they still get a lot of traffic to their site. They are often considered the number one classified ads site.
Cons: Craigslist only allows you to make two free posts a day for services per email account. There are A LOT of people using Craigslist, so popular categories such as Automotive Services, for example, can get quite spammy. Craigslist has also had a bad reputation in the media as a site frequented by dirt balls and psychopaths, but the media hype aside, that was just one guy out of hundreds of millions of users. Therefore, I would not hold it against Craigslist.
Craigslist Pro Tip: You can add HTML Links in the Employment and Community Sections. You can also get away with creating more than one Craiglist account if you want to make more posts per day. This may get tedious, but if you are getting leads, then it it may be worth the effort.
Backlink: Yes and No. Outbound links may or may not be allowed depending on what category you are posting your classified ad in. All of the service categories do not allow backlinking. You have to log into your account to renew an ad and you some renewals count against your daily post limit.
Final thoughts about classified ads sites
Disclaimer: Classified ads sites may or may not work for your business. In theory, classified ads are a great idea for free advertising, but you still have to keyword optimize your ads for full effectiveness. Sites like Craiglist have their posts indexed and crawled by Google, so keyword optimized ads also have a chance to appear in organic searches if you write the ad copy in an SEO friendly way. Keep in mind that the classified ads site itself also functions as a mini search engine for keyword optimized ads appearing on the site itself and if your ad is missing a popular keyword in the title, then people might miss it if they are using the classified ad site's search engine.Are classified ads a waste of time and effort? What if no one is looking? What if the classified ads site itself does not have any relevant user traffic? The obvious answer is that no one is going to see the ad you posted, but you never know. It is like the old saying, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" If no one is there to witness this, then the answer is no. But is this ad a waste of time? No, it is not, because, at the very least, a classified ad will give your website a no-follow backlink, which is still better than nothing.
You may hear a lot about how useless no-follow links are, but look at it this way; a no-follow backlink on a site (even on a site that rarely gets visitors) is kind of like a way marker for someone who happens to exploring the less beaten path of the woods. What if that lone explorer happens to be there at just the right moment and hears the tree fall? What if that person turns into a loyal customer? Not bad for a free classified ad right?
I hope you found these sites and tips helpful. Feel free to share with your team. If you have any questions or need help with anything in your home business, please feel free to call or text me at 612-208-9434. I am always here and happy to help!
Happy Classified Ad Posting~