How to sell banner ads and not upset Google

[gouri]

< moved from another location >

I have a situation where an advertiser wants his banner placed on several pages of a website and linked back to his company's website.

I was wondering if it is okay to do this or should the banner only appear on one page? Could the same banner appearing on several pages linking to the advertiser's website be something that Google does not like to see? Is it possible that this might be considered sitewide linking and impact the site where the links are coming from?

Also, earlier in the thread, I asked if it would be better to have links in banner ads going to the advertiser's site as nofollow and the responses I received said that even if the links are nofollow, there is some pagerank bleeding so it does not make a difference.

In this situation (with there potentially being several outbound links), is it better to make the links going to the advertiser's homepage nofollow? Would there perhaps be a little less pagerank bleeding by using nofollow?

[edited by: gouri at 7:23 pm (utc) on Mar 31, 2011]

[edited by: tedster at 7:58 pm (utc) on Mar 31, 2011]

[tedster]

It's common for the same banner ad to appear on more than one page - no problem there. Google's policy is that all ads should be nofollowed or processed through a script that Google cannot index. But since Google changed the way PR is voted several years ago, nothing stops links from sending some PR into a black hole, even if nofollow is used.

[gouri]

Thank you for that informative response.

I think I'll go ahead and use nofollow and let the advertiser know that I can place the banner on more than one page.

[bramley]

I presume a JS trick would avoid PR loss as there is no link as such. For example, use a span with onclick

[mromero]

Is there a recommended JS to share or is nofollow as good?

[tedster]

nofollow is fine - or any kind of script that is disallowed to googlebot so the link isn't indexed.

[gouri]

nofollow is fine - or any kind of script that is disallowed to googlebot so the link isn't indexed.

When you guys say nofollow, does this mean a nofollow link?

Or are there some other things or features that nofollow can refer to?

Just wanted to make sure.

[GlobalMax]

Yep, generally an attribute rel="nofollow" on an link:

<a href="http://www.example.com" rel="nofollow">widget</a>

BTW, there's also an older, page-level meta construct:

<meta name="robots" content="nofollow" />

Read more about nofollow here: [google.com...]

[bwnbwn]

gouri best way to do a banner ad is IMO is have the banner go to a page about the company or product built on your site. Then there you can add the call to action. Two things happen you actually build a page that can get traffic, and your banner click can be counted on your end just to see what your sending to the page and counted to their site. They have a great chance to test different types of actions and ads. This is also important to see the traffic numbers for future pricing.

[gouri]

Thank you for those responses.

gouri best way to do a banner ad is IMO is have the banner go to a page about the company or product built on your site.

bwnbwn,

I was hoping to ask, if you built a site about working out and you have an advertiser place an ad about some exercise equipment on your site, are you saying that the advertiser's banner when clicked from a page on my site should take them to another page on my site and from there, there should be another banner for the same advertiser that when clicked goes to the advertiser's website?

I apologize if you were trying to say something else and would appreciate if you could please tell me again.

[bwnbwn]

gouri it could be a banner or link or a product picture. This is the neat part you can test what works best. But yes were the banner is placed on your site if clicked goes to a page you build or the content the advertiser sends ya, and from there to the desired landing page on the advertisers site. There are so many possibilities to test different elements here it helps get the advertiser working on your site to help him out. This maybe a little more work, but I feel it keeps an advertiser paying on the site longer.