Online Classified Ads Can Drive Web Traffic to Your Websites If Used Effectively

Not many people are aware of the power of online classified advertisements, both to drive traffic to your web site, and in the case of new web sites, to get them indexed quickly with the search engines.

If your not convinced that online classified Advertisements are worth investigating, consider that eBay have recently released an online classified service, and posting a classified ad on their can almost guarantee a new web site getting indexed by the major search engines within twenty four hours!

In the case of eBay, they offer a lot more than the traditional text ad, they also offer full multimedia options (video and audio), and are happy for you to link directly to your website from your ad, and to even show an email address. They do not allow this on their traditional eBay auctions.

I'm sure you will agree that eBay would not launch a new service unless they felt they could make money out of it (and lots of it!).

The real win is that the search engines absolutely love eBay content, and are checking many, many times per day or even hourly for new ads.

Thinking laterally you could use this to launch a website and get your website indexed in a day or so by the search engines. Contrast that with how long indexing can take with using other methods (weeks and months in some cases).

Now because it's relatively new, only certain categories with eBay currently allow Classified Ads but you can be sure this will grow over time.

The great thing about eBay is that you pay a fixed price for the classified ad to have it listed for around a month (or you can define a shorter period). Potential customers fill out a form on your classified ad page and the details are forwarded to you, Alternatively you can have a link to your sales page and the customer can navigate directly there.

Of course eBay is not the only classified Ads site, pretty well the biggest site for classified ads is craigslist.org (incidentally eBay owns a 25% stake in this company).

Craig Newmark (the owner) started the site in San Francisco (indeed when you surf over to craigslist.org you start off in this area).

However it has grown to include all states in America, as well as many countries including Australia, Canada, Mexico, Sweden, the UK and many more.

Once you hit the website you can easily select the area you want to focus on.

If your marketing a new product, craigslist.org can be an excellent way to attract customers.

Most of Craiglist classified ads stay online and available for up to 45 days, so you get great value in leaving them up. And just like eBay, the search engines love Craigslist as well, and you will find your website is indexed VERY QUICKLY after you post.

Craigslist has some important posting rules you need to be aware of, so be sure to read the help section so you know exactly what the rules are.

If your providing a link to your website from the ad, make sure it works!

The good thing about Craigslist is that unlike most other classified Ad websites, they place NO LIMIT on the space you can use for your ad, so get creative, get your text rich and compelling and get people pumped up to click your link and find out more about you.

Now we have discussed eBay Ads and Craiglist, as to me they are two most important places you want to be listed, but there are literally thousands of other classified ad websites you should consider.

Don't ignore classified ads; they can dramatically increase web site traffic.