Ok, i'm looking to start advertising on WHT, using the showcase adds. Will that raise my placement on google? I know that google places sites not only by their content, but also by the rank of the sites that link to your site. So, if google crawls WHT and sees my domain, does it raise me significantly or just a little bit? thanks

Google is very competitive. Especially for the target keywords/market you are going after.

You need many many sites linking to you before it makes a large difference in google. Your best bet is to figure out a niche hosting market you want to go after and then use the Sponsor ads (pay-per-click0 to get you at the top based on those niche keywords.

Advertising on WHT is a whole seperate market to Google really.

WHT has people who are looking for only web hosting, so they will see your banner and think, "that's my price range, that's the company I'm going for". The high volume of visitors helps a lot too.

Google have people surfing through hundreds of providers, so it's more likely you'll get business through WHT than Google.

WHT is a lot more expensive though. :D

We have not personally used WHT paid advertising but I know of some people who have spent several hundred dollars on it and gotten absolutely ZERO customers.

Think about it.. click on a banner ad from a reputable company and pay a little more for good service, or post a request in the forum and pay next to nothing to get hosted by a high school kid with a reseller account. Unfortunately most people take the latter option.

Good luck if you do advertise through banners on WHT. I'd be curious to know how it works out for you.

Regards,

Rob

I think it's about 50/50.

Some people go for the banner ads from reputable companies, some people go for the high school kids in the request forum.

One thing though, a high school kid usually wouldn't be able to afford to advertise on WHT. So you have a certain amount of security by looking at the banners.

Think about it.. click on a banner ad from a reputable company and pay a little more for good service, or post a request in the forum and pay next to nothing to get hosted by a high school kid with a reseller account

I've seen some pretty dodgy hosts advertising on WHT. Don't let the fact that they can afford a couple thousand impressions fool you.

I've seen some pretty dodgy hosts advertising on WHT. Don't let the fact that they can afford a couple thousand impressions fool you.

Good point...

Originally posted by Matt2001
Ok, i'm looking to start advertising on WHT, using the showcase adds. Will that raise my placement on google? I know that google places sites not only by their content, but also by the rank of the sites that link to your site. So, if google crawls WHT and sees my domain, does it raise me significantly or just a little bit? thanks

A WHT ad will have no impact on Google. You are right that sites that link to you is a factor, but an ad is typically not a link to your site - it links to a page on the ad server that logs the click and redirects the user to your site. This means that as far as a search engine is concerned - it never sees a link to your site.

Originally posted by NovaW
A WHT ad will have no impact on Google. You are right that sites that link to you is a factor, but an ad is typically not a link to your site - it links to a page on the ad server that logs the click and redirects the user to your site. This means that as far as a search engine is concerned - it never sees a link to your site.

Oh, good point there.

A WHT ad will have no impact on Google. You are right that sites that link to you is a factor, but an ad is typically not a link to your site - it links to a page on the ad server that logs the click and redirects the user to your site. This means that as far as a search engine is concerned - it never sees a link to your site.

Ouch never thought about it that way... but it is good thinking.

Oh yeah, forgot about that. Um, if i'm not doing a CPM add, can i just have them skip the redirect and go to my server directly? I dont' really care about the stats they offer, i have ways of tracking that myself. Although, i should probably just ask the advertising people here at WHT instead of on the board.

Remember that even if WHT would sell you a straight link (highly unlikely) - for it have any search engine benefit you'd have to advertise on WHT forever and it would have to be on the page 100% of the time. The ads rotate - so when the spider comes along your ad might not be even on the page.

The bottom line with ads on WHT is going to be look at it only from a click-thru / conversion viewpoint + branding by running your ad for 6-12 months. There is no search engine benefit to be had from the ads.

You can buy straight links on some sites but bear in mind you'd need to keep the spending on-going forever & you'd need to do it on a lot of sites, with in the end no guarantee of any search engine results at all.