Selling Online Advertising On The QT
This post was originally planned to be a list of suggestions to keep publishers from losing traffic or PageRank from selling advertising. I thought some of these recommendations would tend toward the paranoid side, but with the idea that search engines will only get smarter about discounting paid links.
Well, now it looks like the big G has already decided to crack down on Webmasters selling paid links.
And the suggestions I had planned to avoid penalty have already been nicely summarized.
Our personal take on the whole links debate is this: Do what you want with your website. If you want to sell advertising, go ahead. Google doesn’t control the Internet - though they happen to control the most influential website on the Internet. Google has made it clear that they do not look favorably on websites that apparently sell advertising — particularly the type that hypes an SEO benefit.
Regardless, text link advertising will continue to have significant value for both advertisers and publishers.
You can count on the fact that search engines will be able to better tell paid advertising (and likely devalue the links) in the future. This is where a lot of ad networks are getting into trouble.
Rather than a network, Web Ad Classifieds brings a bit of ‘old school’ back to link building and advertising. Publishers list their advertising opportunities, and advertisers can contact them directly and discreetly on the QT - without having to post on an ad network that could end up hurting either parties.
