You can call text link advertising a black hat SEO tactic, or you can embrace it as the future of Internet advertising. Either way, the topic is generating a lot of interest. In this first of two articles, Hugo Guzman interviews one of the leading lights in this field: John Lessnau, owner and chief operating officer of LinkAdage.com.
A lot of Internet advertising fads have come and gone. From banners, to e-mail, to pay-per-click, etc…each new wave of advertising promises to be the be-all and end-all. At the same time, countless SEO fads have risen to prominence only to sink back down into obscurity or outright extinction. There was keyword stuffing, then hidden text, then redirects, then guest book signatures, then reciprocal linking, and so forth. Now there is a new form of Internet advertising that is half advertising and half SEO, and it promises to blow the lid off of how we conceptualize the Internet, search engines, and advertising in general.
Text link advertising has always been a controversial topic. Some believe that it belongs in the black hat category along with the other usual suspects, while others believe that it is the only "pure" form of Internet advertising and can only help to improve the relevance of search engines in general.
I decided that it was time to get the record straight by asking for some feedback from John Lessnau, the owner and chief operating officer of the leading text link advertising market place, Linkadage.com (http://www.linkadage.com). I also decided to get some perspective from one the newcomers and potential trailblazers in the industry, Wesley Thomas. He is the creator of Linksmile.com (http://www.linksmile.com).
Before getting into the meat and potatoes of the interviews, I want to take a moment to address the Text Link Broker sites. In my humble opinion, text link brokerage sites may be heading towards extinction. Why? Because as webmasters and medium to large Web entities become more aware of the nature of text link advertising, they will take steps to manage and sell their own inventory, just as they often do with CPM and Newsletter advertising. Also, the large monthly commissions (sometimes as high as 50 percent) that link brokers demand for managing advertiser inventory inflate the pricing of said text links, so as the buyer becomes more educated they will shy away from these overpriced "brokered" links.
Now on to the meat and potatoes! We will start with John Lessnau from Linkadage.
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