Sites like Craigslist

Craiglist founded by Craig Newmark in 1995. It is an absolute interesting business serving the local market. Over the years, the site has refused to change its minimalist design and easy-to-use posting system. Although Craigslist is not as popular as it was a decade ago, it remains a popular and successful site.

This success of craigslist has spawned many imitators over the years. Most of those sites like Craigslist have failed before anyone knew they existed. Still, there are a few sites like Craigslist that serve a similar purpose.

Here is a robust list of free classified sites like craigslist and who have a market share in buy, sell and trade in local market.

    1.   Backpage

    2.   Oodle Marketplace

    3.   Patricks Post

    4.   ClassifiedAds

    5.   US FreeAds

    6.   Recycler

    7.   Domestic Sale

    8.   OLX

    9.   Adoos

    10.  Hoobly

    11.  Bookoo

    12.  Shopgoodwill

    13.  Krrb

    14.  Sell

    15.  Ebay Classifieds

    16.  Geebo

Which is your best place to buy, sell or trade in local market.

List more sites that are similar to craigslist, if you had a great experience with them.

See my other similar posts - sites like Amazon's Mturk and Groupon.

Sites like Groupon

The success of Groupon is known to all. The company started with the thought of community buying where a group of people come forward to buy a product or service in bulk, thereby making a saving. Group discount, daily discount or deal of the day is Groupon's business model.

Post Groupon, a lot of business have established with a similar model. Some have made a mark, while some have not been that great a hit.

Let’s take a look of some top coupons sites that have seen success in Group Buying Business Model.

Top Coupons Sites

1.    Amazon Local deals – Amazon Local is a daily deals site and is one more addition to the Amazon family of business. It sends daily deals to its subscribers to use in their city and online.

2.    Bloom Spot - Features unique local luxury experiences from top-rated merchants. Exceptional offers for weekend getaways.

3.    CBS Local Offers - Brings you the best local deals and unique experiences in your community. Offers ranges from enticing restaurants to exciting shows and events.

4.    Half off Depot - Provides customer acquisition programs over the internet for local merchants. This marketplace hosts an array of local experiences & services as well as products and travel offers. The offers availability ranges for an average of 15 to 30 days.

5.    Ever Save - Seeks your favorite local activities, restaurants, stores and spa, so you can play, eat, shop & relax for less! From spa treatments to cupcakes, yoga classes to ski packages – Ever Save finds the best deals and delivers them to you - in the form of a Save.

6.    Gilt City – It’s the local lifestyle site from the Gilt Groupe. Gilt City offers memorable adventures & exclusive offers, all at great prices.

7.    Google Offers - Google Offers are from the giants themselves. Amazing deals from local business available to Google Offers subscribers.

8.    In Bundles – Daily offer for ONE steeply discounted gift certificate to something related to food and beverage. The sale only lasts between 24-72 hours.

9.    LivingSocial – We know it all. This is the biggest competitive to Groupon and works pretty much on the same framework as Groupon. This is the closest website like Groupon.

10. Plum District – A site that is by Moms and for Moms. A community of moms connecting other moms to products and inspiration to make lives easier.

11. Saveology- Brings a large spectrum of high quality offers at deep discounts, with both national and local deals. Offers range from movie tickets and batteries to vacation packages and car leases.

12. Savored - Is a Groupon company with focus on restaurants. Not as known as the parent company, but it will get there with strong business model knowledge.

13. Scout Mob - Reachs direct to independent makers and merchants. Bridges the gap between buyers and sellers and removes all middlemen costs.

14. Travel Zoo - Excellent place for travel and entertainment deals.

15. Woot - Woot is an independent subsidiary of Amazon. A great place for community sources deals.

These are some of the Groupon like sites that are creating waves. If you know some more, please share with others in the forum.

See my other similar posts - sites like Amazon's Mturk, freebies and samples sites.

Best Sites for freebies and samples

Freebies and Samples are attractive for everyone. While you would find thousands of sites that offer no cost samples or freebies, knowing which are legitimate and which are not means a lot. 

You don’t want to share your details only to get some spam. There are a lot of scam sites floating around, both online and off. 

Legitimate Sites for Freebies and Samples

There are some legitimate websites that offer freebies, and samples and tips and advice to find even more free stuff. The following are the best sites for getting freebies and samples. While most of them are offered worldwide, some are specific to countries.

1.    Freaky Freddie’s – 100s of free samples in various categories. Free samples updated every day.

2.    F for Free - This has freebies for specific countries – Worldwide, US, India, UK. Check the discounts and coupons section on this site.

3.    I Crave Freebies - Freebies, Free Stuff, Free Samples, Coupons, Hot Deals.

4.    Free Snatcher - Expensive Giveaways, printable coupons, store deals and free money and stuff.

5.    Hey It’s Free – Lots of categories to choose from. Regular updates to freebies.

6.    Sample Train – Free Samples in USA and other countries. Surveys, Contests and Coupons.

7.    Shop 4 Freebies – Daily updates. Samples, print and online coupons for restaurants, beauty, facebook giveaways.

8.    Seriously Free Stuff - Free Stuff, Giveaways, and Sweepstakes & Coupons! Updated daily.

9.    Sample Stuff – Great freebies on perfumes and deodorants. Coupons and Paid Surveys. 

10. The Freebie Source – Lots of categories from pet food, weekend passes, free software, cosmetics, and birthday freebies.

11. Known Freebies – Deals for India, UK Australia, USA and some worldwide deals.

12. Wowzila – Freebies from around the world. Check free stuff for India, UK, USA, New Zealand & Canada.

13. Vonbeau - Loads of free coupons every day for kids, men and women.

14. Freebie Shark – Freebies, Coupons, Deal and Sweeps.

15. Absurdly Cool – New freebies updated almost every day.

16. Pumpkins Freebies - Thousands of free product samples and Giveaways. No S&H.

Share which are your favorite freebie sites.

See my other similar posts - sites like Amazon's Mturk, sites like Craigslist.

Best on page SEO practices

Improvising on your on-page and off-page SEO parameters would lead you to improve your SERP ranks. Improving SERP ranks would lead to more traffic. Converting traffic is yet another area which we would talk about some other time.

What is On Page SEO?

On-page SEO improvements are a set of areas that are purely IN YOUR CONTROL and help you rank higher in SERPs. I would emphasize - these are parameters that YOU CAN CONTROL.

The Google algorithm for search results keeps changing. The on page SEO has fairly taken a 25% share contribution to the search results.

Lets look at the best on page SEO practices that can optimize your page and improve your rankings.

1. META Title Tag

2. META Description Tag

3. META Keyword Tag

4. URL

5. Image ALT Tag

6. Image Names

7. Keyword Density

8. Long Tail Keywords

9. Usage of BOLD

10. Usage of Italics

11. Headings - H1, H2 , H3..

12. Internal link Building

I am not including Content here. Content is King. Remember ! Its a different animal in itself.

Improving on the above parameters would help you address about 25% of the factors that effect you Google Page Rank. You may check your page rank for a specific keyword before and after these on page updates. Also, make sure you check you SEO Score Weekly and track the improvement.

Once you make changes to a specific page, you may use a META Tag Analyzer Tool to check how well you score on the on page optimization. Here are some great tools to check your site SEO.

Share your thoughts on what you think is the best on page SEO Practices you use.

Does Domain Registration length affect SEO ?

If you are in a hurry to get your answer let me cut the crap right here. 

Yes, domain registration and SEO have a very strong relationship. If your domain is registered for a longer duration (read 5 years or 10 years), it gives you better results in terms of Google Page Rank and SERPs.

If your domain registration is done for a year or couple of years, go ahead and extend the duration.

How does Domain Registration help SEO ?

What is Google looking for end of the day?

-          Relevant Content

-          Trustworthy site

To help this, Google has arrived at an algorithm that reads 150 or more behaviors of the site and arrives at a decision of how quality, trust worthy and relevant the site could be categorized.

Domain Registration is NOT the only factor that impacts the SEO. It is one tiny drop in the scheme of things. The good part is, it is the easiest way to improve SEO.

Consider this:

1. If you ever registered your kid for some extra-curricular class, have you seen some great price reduction for annual fees vs quarterly fees vs monthly fees? 

2. If you are in a corporate environment, you would sometimes see that employees are given business critical projects while temporary consultants, who are probably better, are not.

WHY?

The answer is simple. It’s a matter of trust and commitment. Same goes with Google. Google bots are defined by people like you are me. When they see that the domain is registered for a length of time, they read commitment there. They do not consider you a spammy site and you get the brownie points by ranking higher, relative to other sites, considering all other parameters are EXACTLY similar.

In a nutshell, when Google looks at the domain registration, it adds an element of trust and hence gives you higher score. There are a lot of other ways to improve your rankings in Google, both on-page and off-page.

I have seen my rankings change for my online fashion jewelry store, once I extended the domain registration by 5 years.

Share your views on what you think on Google’s take on domain registration duration.