What Is a Text Link Ad?

Text link ads are one way to monetize your blog or website. In-text advertising turns individual words or phrases in the text into links. Usually, these links appear in a different color from the rest of the text. When visitors to your site click on the linked word or phrase, they are taken to a specific page on another website.

The publisher of the blog or website (you) is paid by an advertiser who is trying to drive traffic to the linked page. Publishers are usually paid based on the number of times visitors click on the text link ad (called pay-per-click advertising), but they can be paid a flat fee for publishing the link on their blog or website.

Advertisers place their ads on pages that have some relationship to the audience they are trying to attract to their websites. 

• The text link ads increase a website's brand awareness with a targeted audience. Visitors become familiar with the products and services offered.
• Text link ads can build links that search engines value, improving search engine rankings for the linked site.

Text link ads caused some controversy in the past when they were associated with a drop in Google search rankings or elimination from Google search results for both the publisher and advertiser sites entirely after Google uncovered an extensive spam effort connected to text link ads. Deal with reputable advertising program providers with a business history online to avoid any connection to spam.

Popular in-text link advertising programs include Google AdSense, Amazon Associates, LinkWorth, Amobee (formerly Kontera), and many others. They all offer contextual text link advertising opportunities along with other types of ads where text on your blog is linked to contextually relevant ad content. If you are interested, go to one of these advertiser sites and register. The advertiser will pair interested parties with your blog or website.