Text link ads can be a great way to give your website a boost in traffic and search engine rankings. I do them and sell them, but they are not for everyone. Here are 6 things to think about before you buy a text link ad.
1. First off what is a text link ad? A text link ad is a keyword phrase hyperlinked back to another page. For example if your website is about music downloads you could buy a text link ad for that phrase.
2. One text link will never hurt you with a search engine if it is on one page. If you buy a text link ad and it ends up on hundreds of pages for the same keyword you should make sure you are getting linked back to your website for other keywords as well of it could appear you are spamming the search engines for your one primary phrase.
3. Another thing is to link to pages other than your home page. This is known as deep linking and it is important not only for how your site is viewed by the search engines but also for the traffic it can bring you. People will search for multiple versions of a keyword and you want to come up on as many searches as possible.
4. When you buy a text link ad look to buy one on a web page that is a PR3 or higher. This is Googles’ ranking system for the worth of a page and it helps improve your own page rank when you are on a page that has good page rank. How much you pay will be determined by the page rank of the page your text link is on, but a PR5 will cost more than a PR3.
5. Look at how your ad will be displayed. A text link ad can be good for traffic as well. Try and get on a page or website that gets a lot of traffic. This will give you a chance to get a few visitors clicking on your ad as well.
6. View this as a long term promotion. You can buy an ad to get your site spidered quicker if it is a new site. But a long term view would be to keep that ad for future benefits. This is good if you are getting your ad on multiple pages such as a link directory a blog, or article directory.
Text link ads are not for everyone, but if you view it as part of a long term strategy to get traffic and improve your search engine ranking they are great.