Text Advertising 101: Understanding the Phenomenon
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For one reason or another, text advertising, also referred to as text link advertising, has been suffering from “The Boogie Man” syndrome. I have seen countless forum posts and blog commentaries attacking this form of advertising. My mission here will be to expose some of the common misconceptions associated with text advertising and to lay down a rudimentary approach to managing a text advertising campaign. I’m sure that I’ll get tons of negative feedback in response to the assertions that I will make in this article, but I can take solace in the fact that it won’t be the first time!
Let’s start with some of the common misconceptions:
Misconception #1
Text advertising violates the terms of service for the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN).
Answer
Here is the official word regarding incoming text links (taken from Google’s “Information For Webmasters” section):
Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank...
This ruling can apply to reciprocal links, links that are solicited by webmasters via email, links that are solicited via a “Link to Us” button, and text ads. The key here is that acquiring a backlink via a text ad is not explicitly forbidden.
In response to the overwhelming growth of the SEO industry, search engines such as Google have outlined the do’s and don’ts associated with “naturally” optimizing a site for their search engine. Take a moment to browse through the following link:
Link Trading 
