Paid Text Link or Banner Link?

[dailypress]

Hello all,

I am advertising on a few sites with a high Page Rank and I'm debating whether to put an attractive flash banner, or JPEG (with an ALT tag) or a Text Link (includes space for a description).

I think the banner would draw in more traffic but the text link would pass some link juice.

I know both Text link and Traffic plays an important role for search engines hence why I'm a bit lost here. Which is more important? My goal is to enhance my ranking for one specific keyword.

Unfortunately the website's requirement is to pay full for minimum 6 months worth of advertising! :(

Both prices are the same and the ad space is also the same. (728x90px)

Please let me know your thoughts. Text Link or Banner?

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

[GreyBeard123]

My goal is to enhance my ranking for one specific keyword.

For ranking purpose it's simple, take the one that will give you the most juice...

[dailypress]

Well doesnt the amount of traffic passed on (referral traffic) play a role on the Link juice?

btw I forgot to mention that they said for an additional 30% they can include both. A Text link as well on the top left corner of the banner.

I was told I will get about 500-1000 referrals a day with a banner. No data on the text link.

[GreyBeard123]

Well doesnt the amount of traffic passed on (referral traffic) play a role on the Link juice?

No..

If both are on the same page, and both are direct do follow links, then both will give you the same amount of link juice...

Keep in mind that some people tend to get "banner blindness" especially on forums...

If they are on different pages, and you can afford it, take both...

[martinibuster]

How times change. In 2005 Newsweek wanted to interview a white hat SEO so they chose Rand Fishkin (article archived here). [web.archive.org] Here's a quote from a blog post about the article by Matt Cutts [mattcutts.com]:

The article also implies that (name removed by mb) is ranking higher because Rand Fishkin bought some backlinks. We’ve already covered this territory. [mattcutts.com] Rand, those paid links from the Harvard Crimson and elsewhere aren’t helping the site. In fact, it looks like you bought links from the same network that the other two sites at the site clinic were buying from.

Leaving aside the quaint image of Rand Fishkin wearing the big white hat for Newsweek Magazine while simultaneously outing the client he bought links for, the important thing to note was that Google already had the paid links fairly well in hand, at least from the known networks Fishkin was buying from in 2005.

Another consideration is that it's easy to discount links from images. It's even easier to further discount links that conform to IAB ad unit sizes. Links are a signal to be purified, whittled down, discounted so that all that is eventually left are the links they want to count. The value of links have been dwindling for about 14 years now. I believe the links under discussion in this thread may have poor SEO value.

Advertising and brand building value might be better. However do consider that even on a site with millions of unique visitors per month the CTR on banners is generally and typically less than 1%.

[dailypress]

The value of links have been dwindling for about 14 years now.

Then what are they putting value in if links and natural links are being devalued?

I think one issue I am facing with my site is the number of pages compared to competitors. I created a directory while other relating sites are eCommerce. My site simply links to the eCommerce sites and I am having trouble competing with them although I created an interesting interactive MAP of the world where when you click on each country, you find a useful listing of where to shop a specific valuable product.

[martinibuster]

Then what are they putting value in if links and natural links are being devalued?

I didn't say anything about natural links. ;)

The value of links have been getting deprecated, that's a fact. I reported on WebmasterWorld in 2003 or 2004 that Marissa Mayer revealed at SES San Jose, in response to my question, that "powered by" links did not pass full PageRank. That was an important piece of information because it was the first time anyone from Google had publicly discussed the depreciation of links because of relevance. But it did match what we were seeing. Prior to that date web design firms were ruling the SERPs based on "powered by" links and their high toolbar PR scores were evidence of that. Then they started whacking low quality directories, reciprocal link pages based on the URL patterns and so and so forth. Whack, whack, whack.

[dailypress]

Ok got it! Links VS Natural Links. Thanks :)

[dailypress]

Just a friendly update: Right after they (a website with high Pagerank and lots of backlinks, several of .edu and .gov backlinks) included my text link next to the banner, my rank for the specific term increased within 2 days from page 3 to page 1 on Google for searches originated from the same specific country.

It also moved up 2 levels from page 5 from Google searches in US. (How is that?)

I'm surprised though, because I heard it usually takes about 1-2 weeks and sometimes months to see the effect and changes of strong backlinks.

My goal is to rank on page 1 for USA Google SERPS. I now get over a thousand referrals a day from the backlink+banner.

So far happy about the investment. I will need to wait a bit and then try to monetize the traffic. I purchased the ad for 1 whole year. My website itself is less than a year old.