If you’ve been an active user of the Internet for any length of time you know that the first form of online advertising was text advertising. A string of text forming a link, advertising a good or service, will lead you to just the right website for the product or service you are seeking. But what goes on behind the text, and how can you make it work for you?

The Basics of Text Link Advertising
Once your website was up and running you probably searched for it in Yahoo or Google. At first, your searches yielded nothing, but eventually the spiders (automated web crawlers which aggregate site addresses) found you. Still, you’re aware that there’s a huge audience of users who don’t know exactly how to find you, because a generic search puts you on page 60 of the results. You don’t have a huge budget, but you need to improve traffic. This is where text message advertising can help you.

Because text links use almost no bandwidth, and almost no physical space, they are the least expensive form of online advertising, and are best thought of as a sort of mini-network of related sites which focus on a specific product or service. As an example, if you are an attorney, while you would not want to buy links from other attorney (why help the competition) you might get links from notaries, paralegals, or document preparation services.

Benefits of Text Advertising
Aside from ease of use, there are four main benefits of text advertising:
• Better Search Engine Ranking: Search engine algorithms base the page ranks (PR) of sites in organic searches in part by the number of high-ranked page links with the text.
• Link Popularity: The quality and quantity of inbound links to your page – test ads are smaller, therefore more frequently used. (And inbound links from major directories carry more weight than those from obscure websites.)
• Traffic: text ads generally include search terms that will help drive users to your page, thus increasing the number of visitors you have.
• Low Cost: Unlike pay per click and pay per action programs, link advertising is paid for at a flat monthly rate. Whether you get five or five thousand click-throughs, your fee remains the same.

Pricing Factors
While text advertising is always charged on a per-month basis, not every link costs the same. Prices are determined by a combination of factors:

Page Rank or PR is a score that was a large part of the older search engine algorithms. It is determined by the page rank values of other pages with links to your site divided by the number of outgoing links from your sit, though there are other variables, as well.

Alexa (www.alexa.com) is a web service provider that aggregates information gleaned from many web toolbars disseminated around the internet. It is not representative of ALL traffic (nothing is) but it does provide the most accurate traffic rank available. provides most accurate traffic rank available.

Link Positioning involves not just which companies you choose to exchange links with, but also where links are located on a page. (Top Left is the best position, because the majority of internet users speak English, and therefore read from left to right, top to bottom.). Many people overlook this physical aspect, but it is a contributing factor to the prices of link advertising.

Industry. There are thousands of attorneys and web designers on the internet. There are fewer rubber duck manufacturers. The industry in which you do business affects link availability and consequently affects price. High-ranked attorney pages cost more than rubber duck pages.

Traditional or New – How to Go About It
Once you’ve assimilated the vast amount of information, the next step is to actually set up text links. There are two ways to do this. The traditional method involves compiling a list of websites that are relevant to your business, checking their PR scores and traffic on sites like alexa.com, and then contacting the site owners directly, and negotiating a rate that is fair for both of you.

The advantage of this method is that you form a relationship with the site owner – this is also how to increase backlinks: form a reciprocal arrangement in which you buy text advertising on their page, and they buy link advertising on yours.

Alternatively, you can sign up for an account with one of the many text link ad networks, such as text-link-ads.com, which not only sell text links, but also gives you the opportunity to sell your own. The advantage of this method is not just the “add advertising link” online interface that most such companies have (other sites include linkadage.com and linkworth.com) but also the integrated traffic reports, that allow you to see how well your ads are doing.

With either method, it is wise to consider consulting an expert in search engine optimization. Back links, especially, are more productive when the landing pages are optimized to have higher PR scores in organic (where placement is unpaid) search results. (Back links are incoming links from other sites TO your page.)

Important Factors to Keep in Mind
No matter the size of your budget or your decision to use a link-building service or contact website owners yourself, there are some key factors to keep in mind as you build your link advertising campaign:

• Buy text links from relevant sites only, and choose related businesses over businesses which duplicate your product or service.
• Location is important – your text message advertising is useless if the ad is at the bottom of the page., where no one will see it.
• Page depth matters. While many text ads do link to the homepage, or index, of a given site, sometimes it can be better to land on an internal page that offers specifics about your product or service.

Keeping these things in mind, with a reasonable amount of effort, and a budget you create, you should be able to use text advertising to increase traffic to your site.