Interview: Text Link Ads
Interview with Patrick Gavin, President of Text Link Ads – http://www.text-link-ads.com
[Mike] Patrick, thank you for taking the time to provide our readers with an insight into the background and operation of Text Link Ads. You are the President and co founder of TLA, a pay per click management system that you founded and have been operating since 2003. Your introduction to the world of SEO marketing was in 2000 when you helped develop your reclaimed brick and stone business online – this lead to your understanding of the importance of backlinks which progressed into the concept for TLA. Needless to say TLA is quite a jump from reclaimed brick and stone, did you ever think your SEO knowledge would progress so quickly and was the concept of TLA something you conceived when you realised the importance of backlinks or did it take some time and a lot of thought and planning for the text link ads concept to become fully developed?
[Patrick] It definitely took time to evolve. We started up as a pure PPC management shop in 2001 and once we started offering PPC services these same clients were interested in SEO. We found that the secret to SEO was finding ways to get links to our clients sites and came across the practice of purchasing links. At the time there was not a central marketplace bringing together advertisers and publishers who were interested in buying and selling static html links so we evolved into Text-Link-Ads.com in 2003. We started off by doing everything by hand and then took our processes and built a custom technology around them which allowed for the business to really take off.
[Mike] TLA is quite obviously a large project that has taken a considerable amount of time to develop and create. You obviously have a strong understanding of SEO techniques however how was TLA developed? Did you learn about the techniques and skills needed to develop the backend server side sections or have you worked along side other associates to develop and create TLA? Are you a designer or a programmer at heart?
[Patrick] I am not a designer or developer and far from it. We have been very fortunate to have worked with great developers. We started our project by using www.Rustybrick.com and still use them today along with five of our own developers now.
[Mike] As with any new service or product the key is being seen and attracting customers. How has TLA managed to reach both advertisers and publishers – is it all thanks to you strong marketing campaign through the use of advert banners or are there any other marketing methods you have used to attract visitors? You obviously have a proven background in SEO and marketing - is there anything you would have done differently to ensure an even greater exposure or anything that you felt worked particular well and helped to put TLA’s on the map? I understand that in 2005 the blogosphere helped tremendously to allow the publisher program to grow virally!
[Patrick] Yes the blogosphere was a huge help as what we have found is when bloggers make money they like to share their success stories which leads to more and more traffic. In addition to viral growth we do spend a significant amount of money on targeted ad buys as well as having an active affiliate program.
[Mike] Quite a lot of TLA’s online marketing appears to have been based around banner adverts (as previously mentioned) – a rather visual and eye catching method of attracting both advertisers and publishers. You obviously feel that banners are an excellent promotional method although TLA obviously deals specifically with the text based advertising market. Are we going to see Banner Link Ads or any additional advertising methods such as inline text links as used by competitors such as Miva or are you going to stick with your current and proven system?
[Patrick] Yes. We are keeping our plans under wraps but there are some clues of our next project here http://www.linkbuildingblog.com/2007/06/rant_crazy_doma.html 
[Mike] Google and Yahoo are probably two of the most recognised online advertising publishers on the web however because you have targeted text links specifically and maintain a relatively good return ratio for publishers, TLA has grown to become one of the most recognised text link advertisers on the web. We’ve already touched on banners and inline ads as methods used by other online advertisers however who do you think is your main competitor and what do you feel TLA offers that others do not? Do you feel TLA is ahead of the current competition?
[Patrick] Every online ad company is essentially competing as everyone wants the best page position. That being said we do enjoy a leadership position in the static text link game and having an ad that can deliver a dual benefit of traffic plus link popularity. We do feel within the static text link market we are able to keep an edge over the competition because of our technology platform and will continue to grow due to new products in our pipeline.
[Mike] TLA also provide a text link price calculator – how accurate do you feel this tool is for calculating the price per link per page or do you feel (as per your view that theme has specific relevancy to link price) that ultimately the price of a text link can only be set by the combination of factors such as the quality of site content, traffic and specific site niche? Ultimately you can’t set a universal price, everything’s only worth as much as the price that somebody is willing to pay whether we as sellers think its worth more or not?
[Patrick] Our link calculator http://www.text-link-ads.com/link_calculator.php seems to do a decent job with giving you a ballpark of what the market prices look like today. Obviously it is not 100% accurate and you still need to match up the supply and demand.
[Mike] TLA’s text link price calculator is just one small but popular tool - are there any thoughts about adding any additional webmaster related tools to the site, or perhaps allowing TLA to grow into more of a community with a SEO related discussion forum?
[Patrick] We have no plans of adding on a forum at this point and unfortunately don’t have any new tools on the horizon at this time.
[Mike] As mentioned in a previous interview you highlighted the fact that acceptance as a TLA publisher is based on backlinks, website theme and traffic (derived from Alexa data) – PR is not a factor in the algorithm for TLA. How bigger part does the traffic rating equate to when considering the acceptance of a TLA publisher? As many will know the traffic ranking that Alexa generates isn’t an entirely reliable indication of traffic measurement as this information is generated purely on visitors having the Alexa toolbar installed and running when visiting a site, a recent poll on the Digital Point forums even highlighted (generally) the diminishing fact that the Alexa toolbar is being used less and less these days. Despite the importance of traffic estimations will TLA perhaps be looking to exclude this part of the algorithm?
[Patrick] Well we have to use the data that we can get our hands on. I agree Alexa is not extremely accurate but it does give you a general idea of the traffic levels of site. For instance if a site has an Alexa of 4,000,000 it is safe to assume the site isn’t getting much traffic and wouldn’t be a good fit for our program. So until superior services are in place we will still be using it as a rough data point. As competitors like Compete.com develop it should give us more data points to pull together and make better assumptions.
[Mike] As with the chicken and the egg scenario, TLA is reliant on its advertisers but its publishers are just as important – one cannot operate without the other! Do you feel you concentrated you’re attention more on one or the other when you first launched the site or do you feel an equal balance was given to both?
[Patrick] We rolled out our automated independent publisher network in February of 2006 and definitely crafted our ads towards recruiting publishers first at that time. After a couple of months we pushed the creatives more towards advertisers. Since then we have done a pretty good job of mixing the message 50/50 and our affiliates have done a great job helping that message.
[Mike] Finally, going back to your SEO roots and inspiration behind TLA, could you provide our blog readers with your top SEO tip, something that you have learnt and found really makes a difference when enhancing a page or site for the search engines or perhaps provide us with a common misconception that people have about the SEO industry?
[Patrick] Well I do believe top rankings are still all about the links your site can get. That being said you can’t expect to “buy your way to the top” either. It takes a very balanced approach. In addition to buying links, acquiring links by creating great viral content seems to be one of the more effective approaches this last year. Thanks for the opportunity Mike!
