Help Centre

SEO for your marketplace

What Yclas already does to help search engines understand your marketplace, and the handful of things only you can do to rank better.

SEO (search engine optimisation) is everything that helps your marketplace show up when people search Google or Bing for what you list: “used tractors in Ohio”, “rooms to rent Leeds”. Yclas takes care of the technical side for you. What makes the real difference, though, is content: good category and location names, useful descriptions and, above all, lots of fresh listings.

What Yclas does for you

You don’t need to set any of this up:

What How Yclas handles it
Readable addresses Listings, categories and pages get addresses made of words, such as /cars/blue-ford-focus-2019.html.
Page titles Each page gets its own title: the listing title with its category and location, the category name, the page title…
Meta descriptions The short text under your link in search results is filled in for every page: your site description on the home page, the category or location description (or “All category in site”), and “listing in category on site” for listings.
Structured data Listing pages tell search engines the product name, photo, description, price and, if you use them, stock and review ratings, so they can show richer results.
Social previews Every page has the tags Facebook, X, WhatsApp and LinkedIn read to build a link preview.
Sitemap A sitemap of your pages is built and refreshed daily. See Sitemap.
robots.txt Search engines are kept away from endless search-result pages so they spend their time on your listings. See Search engine visibility.
Mobile-friendly themes Search engines rank mobile-friendly sites higher, and the current Yclas themes adapt to any screen.
Empty profiles Profiles of members with no listings are kept out of search results, so thin pages don’t drag your site down.

What you should do

1. Write a good site name and description

Go to Settings › General › Your site. The Site Name appears in every page title. The Site Description is what Google usually shows under your home page; keep it under 160 characters (the panel counts for you) and say plainly what people find on your site and where.

Good: Buy and sell used farm machinery across Ohio. Tractors, balers and parts from local farmers and dealers.

Weak: Welcome to the best classifieds site on the internet!

People search “apartments for rent”, not “Residential – Type A”. Use the words your visitors would type. Then give each important category and location a description, and fill in its SEO Meta Data: a Meta title and Meta description that say how it shows up in Google. Leave them empty and Yclas builds them from the name and description. See Categories and Locations.

3. Get listings, and keep them fresh

Search engines love sites that change often and have many useful pages. Every listing is a new page that can rank for its own search. A marketplace with five listings won’t rank, however good its settings. Seed your site, encourage members to write full descriptions with good photos, and make sure expired listings get renewed.

4. Write content around your niche

Use the blog, the FAQ and pages to answer the questions your visitors ask: “How to check a used tractor before buying”, “What documents do I need to rent a flat”. These articles bring in searches your listings never would, and they’re easy to share.

5. Connect Google Search Console

It’s free, it tells you which searches bring people to your site, and it warns you about problems. See Get your site into Google.

Links from other websites are still one of the strongest signals for Google. Get listed in local business directories, ask partners and associations to link to you, and share your listings where your audience already is. See Promote your marketplace.

7. Use your own domain

A domain of your own (farmtrader.com rather than a subdomain) is easier to remember, easier to link to and builds authority over the years. See Connect your own domain.

Things to avoid

  • Hiding the site from search engines by accident. Check that Hide from search engines is off under Settings › General › Access & privacy, and that the site isn’t in maintenance mode or private.
  • Keyword stuffing. Repeating the same words in titles and descriptions makes your pages look like spam to both people and Google.
  • Changing addresses often. A category’s or location’s Seoname is part of the address of every page in it. Change it and search engines have to find all those pages again.
  • Copied descriptions. Listings copied word for word from other websites rarely rank.

SEO takes time. A new site can take weeks to appear in Google and months to rank well. Keep adding listings and content, and check Search Console every few weeks rather than every day.

Updated 7 October 2026 · Suggest an edit