wasnt completely sure if this was the proper place to post this.. but o well here it goes.. so i am wondering if banners advertising a website, either directly or through a service like buysellads, will add to a websites backlinks? obv for the one being advertised.. or should i stick to focusing on text links? google emphasized btw. any help would be appreciated. thanks
As long as you have the a href tag with your link in there, it's a valid link vote (unless there is a nofollow whether on page or in robots). Some of those services use javascript though so it's a 50/50 on whether the link count is there. Can't go wrong with text links though.
Very few banner ads actually count as valid backlinks... probably some teenee, tiny fraction of 1%. You will almost never find a banner ad whose href attribute in the anchor element points directly to the advertiser's site. Most all are served up through affiliate companies, ad server networks, etc. And even when they do, if the <img> element within the <a> element does not have an alt attribute with the keywords the target URL is attempting to rank for then it does not help the target URL rank... it simply passes a little PR to the target URL. If, however, a banner ad for SiteA appears on SiteB similar to the following because the advertiser (SiteA) has a direct agreement with the publisher (SiteB): then the link would not only pass PR but also help the targeted page rank for "targeted keyword phrase" or variations of that phrase. Unfortunately, most companies who buy banner ad impressions send that traffic to a landing page (NOT their site) which is optimized to make the consumer convert... In other words, the landing pages rarely even have links back to the site and the consumer has 2 choices - buy/convert or leave. Banner ads used for affiliate marketting through companies like Commission Junction typically point first to CJ's site so that CJ can record the click and then they get redirected multiple times before FINALLY getting redirected to the advertiser's site. Usually one or more of the pages in the redirect chain at CJ is setup to prevent the flow of page rank (and credit for the inbound link) by disallowing the folder it's in using a robots.txt Disallow: directive or a <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"> element. Same goes for banner ads served up by ad networks like AdServer. If you click on the banner on a site, you are typically taken first to a page on the ad server's network so that they can record the click and then through a series of 301/302 redirects before finally sending you to the advertiser's site. And again somewhere along they way the ad networks usually make sure that no PR is passed to the final advertiser's site. So to answer your question... Banner ads almost NEVER help rankings unless your company has direct agreements with the site displaying the ad to link directly to you. Even then, if the company displaying the banner ad fails to add a rel="nofollow" to the link to prevent the flow of PR and credit for link text then they are at risk of being penalized for selling links should they ever get reported an Google performs a manual review.
Yay, thanks for the information. So it means that banner can only work if you are sure that there is a "nofollow". I can almost understand how linking works here. thanks a bunch.
banners are NOT the best way to build link popularity. The best way to build that is with text links with relevant anchor text included in the link. Banners ARE however a great way to drive traffic to your site provided you know how/where to place them. You can us the content network, BUT I would not do that until you fully understand how to do PPC or CPM marketing. BUT the questions will remain who shall I have link to me? AND how many links do I need? The best way to find out is to "spy" on your competition nd find out how many links they have and who is linking to them. The best way for this is to check out Yahoo Site Explorer.