Is Image advertising black hat? monthly banner ads, in particular.

[Joshmc]

I am suffering some of the google serps problems others are reporting and have been doing some digging into different advertising options in some of the blogs in my niche. I dont want to stray into the black hat area so I was wondering what you guys feelings are on paying monthly for a banner on a website. Would the big G see that as black hat, and would a penalty be possible from it?

Thanks!

[goodroi]

hi Joshmc,

advertising on relevant websites is white hat and allowed by google. every fortune 500 company buys banner ads and even i make room in my frugal marketing budget for relevant banner ads.

when this starts to get abused and a webmaster solely buys advertising for link juice then it strays into the black hat area which google does not like. most of the times when google thinks a webmaster is breaking the rules they simply devalue the link juice of the suspected links and/or change the toolbar pagerank.

my simple rule is that if i think a banner ad, text link or any other ad will generate real traffic that will convert then i do it. i rarely have issues when i follow that rule. it is sometimes hard for google's algo to separate the white hats, black hats and greyish hats. to decrease the chance of accidentally triggering google's tripwire i would suggest you proceed slowly and gradually overtime.

good luck :)

[eltercerhombre]

Hi Joshmc,

Among what Goodroi says:

- how many bought image ads are on the site where you want to buy?

- will it help your brand because it's very close related to your niche, or do you do it just for the link and the PR flow?

Ask yourself also these questions. If just a matter of common sense, you'll see it.

[Joshmc]

Thank you for these answers! I really appreciate it!

[ecmedia]

Josh, if you use simple HTML (and not javascript to serve the banner) you can provide the code with a builtin nofollow tag and that would be perfectly kosher.

[Joshmc]

@ecmedia, another great idea, thank you!