Dear Yclas users,
Are you starting your online business? Do you want to get more visitors? Without spending tons of money?
Getting more traffic is a cost-effective way to increase your leads and sales. With that being said, your business will need a good strategy for improving your online presence immediately.
Our team has collected these proven strategies that will increase the traffic on your website without cutting your monthly expenses.
Before You Start: How Getting Traffic Has Changed Since 2022
The tips below still work, but three changes since this post was first written affect how much traffic each one can bring to a classifieds or marketplace site.
1. Search sends fewer clicks for general questions
In a study published on 22 July 2025, Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. When Google showed an AI summary, people clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, against 15% when no summary appeared. They clicked a link inside the summary itself in only 1% of visits. Summaries appeared on 18% of searches overall, but on 60% of searches phrased as questions. Short, specific searches, like a product, a brand or a town, triggered them far less often (8% of one- or two-word searches).
What this means for you: a blog post answering "how to sell a used bike" is now likely to be answered by Google itself. A live listing page for "used road bike in Valencia" is not. On a classifieds site, your listings and your category-plus-location pages are your best search assets. Make sure each one has a clear title, a real description and photos.
2. Google penalises content made in bulk
On 5 March 2024 Google announced new spam policies and later said the update had cut low-quality, unoriginal content in results by 45%. Under its scaled content abuse policy, many pages made mainly to rank are spam, whether written by AI, by people or by both. Hundreds of near-identical "keyword + city" pages with no listings behind them are now a risk. Publish fewer pages, each with something real on it.
3. Speed is measured by every tap, on the mobile version
Google indexes the mobile version of your site ("Mobile-first indexing has landed", October 2023). Its responsiveness metric is now Interaction to Next Paint (INP), which measures every click and tap, not only the first. A good score is 200 ms or less, and anything over 500 ms is poor, measured at the 75th percentile of visits. Heavy plugins, chat widgets and oversized ad scripts are the usual culprits.
| Advice from 2022 | What works in 2026 |
|---|---|
| Write lots of keyword-rich blog posts | Grow indexable listing and category pages, and write fewer, original guides |
| "Make the site responsive" | Test the mobile version first and keep INP under 200 ms |
| Rely on Google for most visitors | Use email alerts, newsletters and social channels so visitors come back without searching |
If you run your site on Yclas, the Nova theme is built for phones, and sitemaps, clean URLs and structured data come built in (features), so you can spend your time on the listings themselves.
Simple & free ways to increase your traffic
Lasting Content
Have you heard of the term “evergreen content” Basically, all types of content that don’t go out of fashion, and are ‘considered stable and lasting.
Updating the content on your website, on your blog, or on social platforms can increase your online visibility and improve your ranking on Google. By using embedded links and certain keywords you’ll help your SEO.
Social presence
Even if you’ve created social media profiles and accounts, you can still boost your online presence for free.
Read how to improve your online presence on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, etc., and start from there. By the way, LinkedIn has become the world’s largest professional social network which means that you should be active there too!
Be precise and devoted, publish every day and results will appear. It’s simple but nobody said it would be easy!
Another piece of advice - be active on social media. This doesn’t mean that you should create 15 - 20 posts per day but that you can engage in forums and discussions about your field of business.
You don’t need to advertise your brand at all times, however, you should try to engage with readers.
Responsive & Fast website
Make sure that your website ( blog or store ) is accessible and easily viewable on any possible device. Optimize your content as much as possible, including your site’s page structure, third parties plugins, image sizes.
Don’t forget that if users can’t get to your site within the first few seconds it’s very likely that they’ll go to your competitor instead.
Even with basic websites, it’s crucial to have an adaptive and attractive outlook.
Information channels
Use your information channels to provide the right info on time. Leave a good impression of you and your website.
It makes a big difference when your customer knows that they can count on you at any time. Quick turnaround time should be on your list if you want to improve your revenue.
Structure
Organization and structures are two essentials for top performers. Your team has to be as considered as possible while doing their so-called ‘discovery call’. They should be able to get a “no” as quickly as possible if there is no need for the product at that moment.
Following the structure - ‘you’re busy, I’m busy, let’s get down to business in an assertive and empathetic tone can do wonders.
Create trust
Create an online community by using email newsletters and strong social media groups and any tools that might help you. Always answer all comments and reviews on your site. Show your audience that there is a real person behind the marketing and that they are heard. People always prefer to buy from other people.
