New Standards Will Make It More Difficult for Craigslist Ads to Stand Out

Standards are about to change for those who post listings for rentals and homes on Craigslist. According to The BiggerPockets Blog, Craigslist has discontinued its use of certain HTML tags within listings that allow users to customize their posts using third party web applications. Links to outside websites may also no longer work. These changes has been made effective in Florida, Texas, Washington and others.

These new standards will make it more difficult for your listing to stand out. Before the changes were enforced, third party companies allowed you to upload the property information directly on their web application, generating a long code which included numerous “tags” that directed Craigslist to show certain items, such as logos, photos, tables and more. Now, all “enhanced ads” have been denied by Craigslist, making every ad look similar. This means investors and agents who post listings on Craigslist are now limited to 12 low-quality photos, and there is no way to incorporate their logo on the HTML.

Craigslist has offered no explanation or details on why they chose to enforce these rules, how many have been affected or what their plans are for the future, which has frustrated many Craigslist users.

Make Your Listing Stand Out on Craigslist

Even though many outside links don’t work on Craigslist anymore, The BiggerPockets blog mentions that postlets can still send your listings to Zillow, which can generate leads. It is also recommended that you create your own website for your listings to post in your Craigslist ad – the link may not be click-able, but people can still type in your website name and visit your site. Doing this allows you to post more higher-quality photos, videos and other features of your property.

Since you will no longer be able to show your brand and logo in photo form, The BiggerPockets blog recommends you use your company name often to compensate for that, and bold it when possible to make it stand out. It also recommends using short paragraphs, headers and bullet points in your text to make it easier to read.

It is gong to be much more challenging for investors and agents to make their ads unique on Craigslist, but hopefully these tricks will help with that.