Can InLinks – TextLinkAds 2.0 Hurt or Help Your Site?
Problogger.com is one of our staff’s favorite blogs pertaining to making money through blogging. Problogger.com recently wrote a post about InLinks’s text link ad service. InLinks is basing their business model off of bringing advertisers and bloggers together. At first, this sounds like many affiliate networks. InLinks’s has made itself unique by embedding txt links within a blog’s posts.
InLinks utilizes a widget that is installed into the blog. Advertisers purchase text links around certain keywords or categories. Bloggers signup to have text links embedded into their posts. InLinks’s widget then inserts links into the blog’s posts that appear like regular external links. The reader has no indication that the links are ads.
Image Problogger.com
A reader’s ability to distinguish InLinks’s Text Ads as ads is producing controversy. Problogger.com states “I personally would proceed with caution. If you want to rank high in Google then this is probably not for you.” Problogger.com bases this statement on the assumption that embedded text links would violate Google’s quality standards. Thus, lowering the quality of your site and decreasing your site’s page ranking with Google.
If this assumption is true then InLinks’s text ads could be self defeating. After all, InLinks’s text ads are built on the idea that readers to your site click on them and you are paid a commission. If these text ads cause your site to be rated lower by Google then you will receive less visitors. InLinks advertisers would then experience lower results and could stop advertising. Without advertisers, InLinks’s publishers will not make money and could stop showing the text ads.
InLinks’s system does solve the problem of “banner blindness.” Burns found that “An eye-tracking study conducted by the Nielsen/Norman Group finds Internet users avoid viewing banner ads. Text advertising is read more often than display ads” (Research: Internet Users Plauged by “Banner Blindness”, 2006). Utilizing InLinks’s text advertising would blend the ads in with the rest of the text. Users would see that there are links as they are reading the story.
Choosing whether to utilize InLink’s system or not is a business decision. Keep an eye on the search engines, especially Google. Google is known for finding new patterns of increasing your page rank and penalizing anything they do not like. While Google may not recognize InLinks’s text ads today, that does not mean they will not tomorrow. Like any other decision, you must choose what makes the best environment for your readers while maximizing blog monetization.
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