TLA (or textlink ads), is a dominant player in the link brokerage business. Despite the rise of competitors like TNX, the company’s grown in clientele and userbase. After Google slapped them with penalties last year, I fully expected TLA to sink ship. It didn’t happen. People still took their services and TLA continues to outmaneuver the competition. Now, they launched a new service called InLinks. This offering provides in-content link (departing from header/footer/side links) for advertisers whilst providing easy revenue to the publishers.
What makes Inlinks so attractive is that it addresses a grave problem in the link sales industry. As we all know, Google pursues sites that sell links. The search engine giant easily detects such behavior because sponsored links tend to appear in headers, footers and side links- locations where link brokers plug in their wares. These links are quickly devalued, and so link sellers constantly think of ways to evade detection. If they’re caught- goodbye pagrerank.
Inlinks promises a potential solution. With this new service it is possible to sell or buy text links with a considerable amount of stealth, because the links are actually embedded into the content of the page and does not show on the top/bottom/side of the page. Inlinks call this Natural In Content Placement. When advertisers purchase links, these are popped within the content area on web pages. You simply search for instances of your top keywords and replace those static keywords with a hyperlink back to your website.
Looking at friends’ sites with Inlinks in operation, I’d say it’s far less intrusive than Kontera which bounces annoying balloons when the mouse hovers over it. The link appears naturally- like something the blogger really intended for. No one would know you were harboring paid links. At least for now.
I’m seriously considering this service on throwaway sites that have PR2 and PR3. There’s extra money to be had and it won’t be a biggie if google tanks those sites. However, I’ll refrain plugging the inlink codes into my flagships. An extra $200 or so a month isn’t worth the risk of losing a PR6 site.
Are you already on the inlinks wagon ?
