Link advertising
What is Link Advertising?

Text Link Advertising

Exchanging links used to provide this link popularity, but now due to Google's changes in its algorithm it will just provide traffic if done the right way, with the right sites.

In order to buy text link advertising, some websites are paying hundreds, even over thousands of dollars just for a well placed link in a high traffic or high ranking site just for just one link. This may seem like a lot of money, and it is, however it could pay off if the site doing the advertising have enough traffic with the right prospects.

However, since the mayor search engines and directories profit by selling advertising of all sorts, including link advertising (feature listings, etc), they are not too happy with the new trend since it hurts their advertising sales.

Anyone should be free to buy or sell anything that is legal in the Internet, including links, however since the sites that are buying and selling these links are also listed in the mayor search engines and directories, they could be seen like "blood suckers" by the search engines and directories that are advertising them at no charge.

It's just like owning a very large house where you let many people live in rent free. There are some of those rooms that have been made very attractive by its inhabitants (a site with very high traffic) and also there are many other rooms in which the people living there are also living rent free but with rooms that lack the beauty of the first mentioned rooms (websites with little or no visibility). You decide to offer to rent (getting paid) rooms that have a nice view of the ocean (featured listings) but find out that some of the people who are living rent free in attractive rooms are renting some of their space (selling text links) to other people who otherwise might have rented out the rooms you wanted to rent for a profit (feature listings).

For this reason if they are found to be doing this their rankings could be lowered or their sites banned from the mayor search engines and directories where they are listed.

In order to keep the search engines from knowing about the sale or purchase of these links and avoid trouble altogether, many site owners are resorting to intermediaries who get paid a commission on each sale and keep the transaction secret. However Google and other large search engines and directories could be posing already as buyers and or sellers to find out who is doing what.