Text Links
Search tags: text links, search engine ranking, search engine, link popularity
Search Engine Optimization: Text Links
Text links have created quite a stir in the minds of search marketing experts and webmasters. Will they improve your search engine ranking, or result in getting your website banned? Will they help improve your link popularity, or increase the page rank of your website? Do text links have the ability to increase the flow of targeted traffic to your website? These, and many other questions might rankle your mind while on the subject of text links.
On the face of it, buying a text link (read ad) on some other website that directs visitors to your site is an innocent act. There is no harm in advertising your site, and it is your right to do so. Search engines have no qualms if you use links to advertise your website, as it is perfectly legal to advertise your business.
Then where, you may ask, is the glitch? The problem with text links arises when they are not purchased with the intention to drive targeted traffic to a particular website. Many site owners or webmasters may make an effort to artificially raise the link popularity of the site being advertised. Links might act as a trade off between two webmasters, or an ad. It is not easy to learn the purpose of a link, and that creates problems for search engines. Text linkers normally keep tracking codes off since their web analytics software does not require them. Moreover, people buying an ad may as well get link popularity credits as part of the deal.
Thus, search engines are having problems with their algorithms. It is certainly difficult to tell apart the difference whether it is vote for a site or a paid advertisement. However, search engines can trace from the codes whether they are ads, which requires a lot of work, and thus not pass any link popularity. This way search engines count only the votes and not ads. Thus, your search engine ranking could drop, if you were dependent on link popularity of paid links.