Tom’s Graphic Design Journal

Ok so maybe not a million dollars and once the idea gets done there will be many copy cats. So rather than go through all the hard work, I'm going to put my feelers out to see if it's something worth pursuing. Who knows, maybe someone will like my idea and go ahead and do it and then I won't have to bother coding it

As we know the biggest downside to advertising on the internet is that many of the ad programs don't give you the lovely back links that search engines thrive on. So your site doesn't necessarily raise in rank on search engines. Therefore the ad you ran might only be worthwhile for human visitors. Remember, there are two types of traffic, human and search engine.

There are text link exchanges, programs, and even just links to buy that do in fact help your site acquire back links that will help your site in search engine rankings, but they are often quite expensive.

My alternative solution is a dynamic link injection ad. Here's the catch, it can't use javascript. As we know search engines ignore that so they will miss the links. In fact, there are ads that already work this way. However, we'll be using PHP or some other language to make sure the links are followed.

How it works
1. A list of keywords/phrases are stored in a database with associated advertiser links (multiple links can be assigned to the same keyword/phrase actually and simply rotated or randomized)

2. Anywhere on the page where there's a keyword/phrase, a link gets created to the site.

3. Optionally, a javascript rollover effect can be created for further clarity...It would be nice to alert visitors that it is a paid ad they are clicking on, or let them know they are leaving the site before clicking (this is unseen by search engines but that's ok, the link is hard-coded to the page already).

That's it in theory.
In practice, a cost per click program can be used with this or many other types of payment. Monthly fees, by number of occurances, bidding systems, etc. Statistics can be recorded for tracking, etc.

Important note
This puts more relevant ads on sites as advertisers won't or can't advertise on a site that isn't related...there would be no (or not many) valuable keywords/phrases to use.

Another thought
Ads generally are shoved to the bottom of a page or the side and are quite noticably ads. People's minds automatically turn off and ignore ads. Furthermore, eye tracking studies have shown that we skip over content to the far right of our screens while reading. Not to mention ads are often invasive to visitors and disrupt the style and layout of web sites.

By including ads within the body copy of a page, we should have not only more clicks, but also more qualified clicks, due to the anchor text.

Anchor text brings me to my last point. Anchor text (the text that's highlighted on links) is important for search engines. Both parties benefit from good anchor text. This makes it possible for people to choose their anchor text which is even better.

Application
Of course this internet advertising method can only be valuable on certain sites. Blogs and news sites in particular, but any site with a lot of content. Simply because the chance for keyphrases/words to appear is higher on sites with a lot of content, but that's not to say any site can't use the ads, they just may not be able to charge as much for them.

Another idea is to make a plugin for a blog, such as WordPress, to take advantage of this advertising method.

I hope this makes sense to someone out there. I will probably code this one day, but right now I have too much on my plate. I think that this method really combines the best of two worlds. It's like a text link, but the links are not on some "links page" that has no page rank. It's also like a cost per click ad program if setup that way. Finally, it caters to both search engines and human visitors.

Many people have some misconceptions about blogs and search engine optimization...and just SEO in general. I see it all the time. I can't blame anyone nor do I get annoyed because truthfully search engines do hide information from us. We can't know their algorythms, it would be cheating. We only know what we can research and that information has been fuzzy. I'll write about SEO tips later.

So what am I talking about? Blogs and SEO. Everyone thinks that a blog will help their site like some magic pill. True enough a blog can help since it increases the content on your site/domain. "Content is king" remember that. However, it depends on the type of content you write and how you set your blog up.

1. Links from other blogs to your site
It won't help your site's rank if you have a link in someone's comments. There's a "nofollow" on links there. Also, if the blog doesn't have search engine friendly urls, then even a link inside an article may not help too much. The actual article page needs to have a page rank assigned to it and if there's & % = etc. all over the url, then search engines have a hard time getting to it sometimes. Look at my urls, they spell everything out and use backslashes. aka "mod_rewrite" ... you want that.

2. "Throw-away" blogs linking to your site
A "throw-away" blog is when you make a free blog (WordPress, Blogger, etc.) and link to your site. This will not help you unless it's active because it won't have a "page rank" assigned to it. Stop wasting these people's server space.

3. Tagging sites
Tagging on Technorati, etc. only helps you bring people and not search engines (as much). What? You must think I'm out of my mind. Ok, try this...go to Technorati and go under a category tag...let's say "ajax" that's super popular these days. Being on the first page of results for ajax gives you a link from a page with a rank of 3. That does help. The subsequent pages all have 0 page rank. No search engine love there. HOWEVER, it does help bring you actual people to your site and have other blogs link to yours. So yes use tagging systems, but just understand how they are going to help you. In other words, you need content people want to link for them to help you.

4. RSS
Oh, boy...this is an under rated technology. I need to get more active with it, but syndicating content helps...but only if it gets syndicated. Just having RSS turned on isn't going to help your site magically. It needs to be used. What can you do? Well, you can hope people use it, but there are also sites out there that allow you to submit your feeds. These can in turn give you some back links that may get picked up by search engines.

Also, don't forget the blog design. If it's designed poorly for people or search engines, it can hurt you. While my current blog theme may not be XHTML valid, the design can be spidered and actually does have optimizations made to it. It's also very easy to read and I feel attractive. So I'm willing to trade up XHTML validation.

Yes blogs can help your site...and they can also be a waste of your time. You merely need to know what does and what doesn't help.