webmaster talk

Text links have a surprisingly high clickthrough rate compared to graphic banner advertising. Advertisers know this and many have abandoned banners in favor of text link ads. Although buying links to your site isn’t in the spirit of organic search engine indexes, the purchase of text links is revolutionizing search engine optimization.

Buying search engine rankings certainly doesn’t sound ethical, yet those who don’t buy links, and who don’t set aside a good part of their budget to the acquisition of paid text link ads, can find themselves at a decided disadvantage. A quick look at the top ranking sites will reveal that most gain their rankings through paid text link ads. These text links, though small and seemingly insignificant, are in fact very powerful.

So, you’re aware of the pitfalls and the potential benefits. If you feel buying text links is unethical, or a waste of your time (after all, the search engines will likely find a way to avoid attributing any value to them), then it’s one less task to put on your SEO to-do list. Great! You might want to skip down to the last section, “Text Link Ads and the Google Sandbox” for the wrap-up.

If you’re curious as to how the purchasing and link placement systems work, however, we’ll consider this next.