Every time I research something using classified sites, I'm surprised at two things: Firstly, very few people understand the first rule about writing what amounts to title tags, which is getting people to click on the link. Secondly, it surprises me that even though I know some of the ads might contain great content, I rarely click on ads that are badly worded. Surely I've been doing this for long enough now to know that a horribly-worded Craigslist ad may contain the thing I'm looking for! As it turns out, I'm as fickle as every other Internet user who judges ads by their covers.

I'm looking for a new place to live today. When I moved into this apartment, the rent was relatively low and although it's not stellar, it's better than my old one. However, the management company has upped the rent incrementally until it occurred to me that I should be living in a palace by now. In typical Internet fashion, I went straight to Craigslist to find my next residence.

I find everything on Craigslist, including every place I've ever lived and this job. I love the site's bland, simplistic layout. There are no distractions or confusions and there is no chance of a page taking more than a fraction of a second to load. There is a lot of clutter and junk listed on the site's white pages, but there are gems hidden in there as well. When I was looking for a job, I searched through hundreds of ads with titles like, "Junior copywriter in Kent WA," "Asst. Editor Downtown Seattle," "Writer / Editor Needed," and "Entry-level Coffee Machine Assistant." A listing with the title, "Do You Use Your Powers for Good... Or for Awesome?" was far more intriguing. As a fun piece of trivia, I submitted cover letters and resumes to at least thirty places and SEOmoz was the only company who called me back. When I returned from Pubcon Las Vegas in mid-November 2006, I found a letter in my mailbox from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, telling me how they weren't going to hire me. I'd submitted my resume to them in August. Old media is hilarious.

Today, the badly worded residential ads are not getting my clicks. There are just so many of them and I've developed a pretty good method of sorting through the mess. First, I look for location. I'm pretty well-versed in the geography of the Seattle area and I can tell if a location fits my needs. If there is no location specified, I don't want to click on the ad. I know I should take a look; the listing could be perfect and I'd have missed a fantastic opportunity. Sometimes, I make myself take a look, but I guarantee that most people have a good idea as to where in the city they'd like to live. They are probably also hesitant to waste time on listings that mightn't be in their desired locations.

Secondly, I look at the rent. Most people are smart enough to include the cost of rent in their ad. A small number don't. After that, I'll look at the description. Too many words in all-caps and too many exclamation points turn me away very quickly, but that's quite an obvious turn-off. The more subtle things that make my eyes skip to the next listing are a lack of a good description of what makes the house or apartment interesting; however, an incredibly dull ad doesn't attract me, either. I want to see some of the place's features (such as number of rooms), combined with a good reason why I'd like to live there (fantastic view!).


 
I don't know what goes through people's heads when they think it's a good idea to advertise their property as the one that "finally allows pets." I'd already narrowed my search to include places that welcomed dogs; the list is still incredibly long. That seems a bit like advertising your social networking site as one that "finally allows you to upload a profile picture."

Similarly, I'm rather horrified by the "Love, Kisses, Teddy Cody warming Bear @ Hunt Club" listing. Someone please tell me what on earth that means. Clicking through to the listing itself doesn't enlighten me as to what constitutes a Teddy Cody warming Bear. Even Google doesn't know.

People stand to make a lot of money out of rental properties, especially in a city like Seattle. I'll be handing over lots of money to the landlord or company whose apartment, townhouse, or condo I choose to rent. Listing after listing loses business because of carelessly worded entries. While I clicked on just about every listing when I was looking for a job, I can be a bit more choosy with my search for housing. Admittedly, SEOmoz takes a bit of a risk when we post "inventive" job openings, because we get quite a few applications from people who seem to think we aren't particularly serious about our job requirements, simply because of our creative "title tag." However, we definitely make sure that our ads don't go unnoticed and don't get skipped over.

Craigslist is no different to a search engine when someone is using it in the way I am, aside from the fact that listings are ordered according to time. Perhaps it is more like a blog search, as ordered by date. A lot of what we know about attracting attention within search engine results pages applies to classified ads, and I'm surprised that more people haven't thought of their all-important CTR when advertising their properties, products, services, and job openings.