While banner ads are typically tracked by the impression and rotated with other advertisers, you don’t generally expect to get any SEO benefit from them. Straight text links, however, are a different matter. When swapping or purchasing a text link from another website, you should expect and receive a ‘clean’ link directly back to your site.

Unfortunately, there are some unscrupulous people who sometimes perform dirty tricks when placing text links on thier sites. They will swap or sell you a link to your site, but then set up the links so search engines will never see them. You should always be on the lookout for link partners that might double-deal you.

Some of the most common text linking tricks include:

• Using the rel="nofollow" parameter inside hyperlink text. This essentially tells Google this link is not trusted, and should not be considered when calculating the ranking for the site it leads to.
• Using the "noindex" and/or "nofollow" robot meta-tags in the HTML at the top of the page. This effectively prevents search engine spiders from crawling specific pages (and the links on them).
• Using robots.txt to make search engines never visit certain pages. To find this file, go to http://[domainname]/robots.txt
• JavaScript or Flash-generated links. Search engines generally cannot follow these types of links.
• No redirected links that do not directly link to your website. (Ex: http://www.thierwebsite.com/adserver.pl?http://www.yourwebsite.com) Note that redirected links are typically used for banner serving software, so that impressions and click can be tracked.

Pay close attention to those whom you exchange links. Examine how other links are structured on sites you wish to advertise with, and avoid business with those who do not provide what they advertise.

New logo created, but it will probably go through some changes before launch. CSS edits being finalized. User registration/listing setup and listing display all working. Next up is the domain detail coding that will allow advertisers to examine the domain details of the publishers. This will include Google PR, Alexa Ranking, number of backlinks from the major search engines, domain registration information, ect.

Categories have been reduced from 50 to 26. Figure we can break them out further if we need to in the future.

More later…

Building backlinks today is easier and more automated than ever. Any number of services that let you purchase links from websites, have others post blog articles about your site, or other link exchange arrangements.

As an owner of several websites, I’ve signed up with a few of the more well-known text link brokers. Never got a sale. Not even a nibble. Now these are PageRank 4 and 5 themed websites, so they were decent advertising opportunities. I know a lot of people do well with these services from both the publisher and advertiser sides. Why they didn’t work for me, I don’t know.

I get an occasional link exchange request. These are typically automated messages, and almost always ignored. Sometimes I get a personal request from someone who wants to purchase a link from one of my sites.

Like any transaction, it’s based on an element of trust. On one hand, there’s an existing, seemingly reputable website. On the other is an advertiser who is going to hand over money to the website publisher with the promise that the publisher will put up the link and keep it in effect for a set period of time.

The proper way to structure the deal, of course, is to have a contract in place to protect the rights of both parties. But, being that this the free-wheeling World Wide Web, the ‘contract’ usually consists of a few email exchanges and some money exchanged via PayPal.

I consider that ‘freestyle’ link purchasing. While brokered exchanges are best for many people, there a lot of reputable website owners who will gladly do a ‘direct deal’ with advertisers. Advertisers may find a better price than would get from a broker, and a publisher might actually make more profit than selling through a broker. It’s a win-win situation.

Of course, it’s a little more work to deal one-on-one, but who knows - the direct deal could lead to other opportunities that are far more fruitful than one-time link sales.