When we launched our Billboard Link Ads back in April of this year (2005), the power of this product was obvious to us. As more tests have been run and clients have reported, we are still discovering all of the benefits that come with a billboard ad. The complex webs in which one can create with billboards are endless, making many possible avenue’s for a potential customer to reach your website. With billboards still catching on, we thought a few possible billboard scenarios might help advertisers better understand and implement them into their existing campaigns.

We do recommend to compliment any billboard campaign with traditional text link ads. The ratio we use is 10:1; or for every one billboard, add ten text link ads. A billboard will almost always be a brand new page, so building that page’s popularity is a must. With the ten text link ads purchased, point two or three to the billboard. Now on to the scenarios. . .

SCENARIO ONE
The first example will involve a relatively small campaign that involves a single keyword or keyphrase. It is scalable, so for each additional keyword or phrase, double the numbers. Your first step would be:

• create three (3) very well written and unique pages on the subject revolving around your keyword or phrase. Use all SEO tools and tricks to ensure the page is developed as search engine friendly as possible. Make each of the three billboards a minimum of five hundred words or more. Do not duplicate the same billboard througout your campaign because search engines will identify duplicate pages and it will not work as well. Once the billboards are created, proofread and ready to go, create them in your LinkWorth account and approved. Be sure to not use any images, scripts or include any file outside of the page as it will not be accepted.
• Once the billboards are approved, visit the buy billboards section and find three relevant sites to your own and make sure their Linkrank is a minimum of two and PageRank is at least a three. The reason for this is to ensure the partner site is actively being indexed so your billboard will be found soon.
• Once your billboards are securely placed on the three partner sites of choice, create at least three text link ads using variations of your keyword or phrase. For example, if your keyword is text links, use other anchor text combinations like buy text links, or sell text links.
• Create unique text ads with the different combinations of anchor text and make the url of one to your website or maybe to an internal page of your website, then create a duplicate text ad and point the url to one of your billboards. Repeat this step until you have created all of your text ads. In this example, you would have a total of six (6) unique text ads created. Three hyperlinking to billboards and three hyperlinking to your website.
• Now search through the LinkWorth database and select all relevant partner sites and add them to your wish list. Using the wish list will allow you to add whatever you think might work, then once you move to the wish list, it’s just the task of shaving things down to the most relevant and cost effective. Try to add ten partner sites for each billboard, so in this example it would be 30 partner sites in your list.
• On the wish list, divide all 30 partner sites so each billboard receives at least two text ads with it’s respective keyword pointing to it, then the remaining eight text ads with that keyword are placed on partner sites pointing to your homepage or subpage. Repeat this process for the remaining two keywords using the remaining partner listings in the wish list.
• Now you are ready to put the remaining parts of your campaign into progress. Make sure all listings are checked, possibly use the calculation tool to see the prorated amount and the monthly renewing price, then press the buy links. This will not only build link popularity from relevant sites, but it will also boost the site’s authority with entire expert documents pointing to your site.

Now this may be confusing, so we plan on providing illustrations below. This may help paint the actual picture. Billboards can be tough to comprehend at first, but it’s like riding a bike. . .once you learn, it never leaves you.

SCENARIO TWO – GRADUATED CAMPAIGN

The philosophy behind this process it to gradually create and add five text ads and one billboard per week. This not only allows enough time to create unique and creative advertisements, but you also build your campaign in a more natural method. This is referred to the 5:1:1 process. Purchase five (5) links, create and purchase one (1) well written billboard, all in one week. The break down is as follows:

• Week One
  • Create and purchase five (5) text ads using your keyword or phrase on relevant websites.
  • Write a minimum of 500 words about your keyword or phrase using good seo copywriting skills. Hyperlink your main keywords within the content to your website.

• Week Two
  • Create and purchase five (5) additional text ads using the same keyword in different forms (ex: if your term is medicine, different forms would be buy medicine, or sell medicine or cheap medicine online)
  • Write another unique 500 word or more article about your keyword or phrase. Hyperlink your main keywords to your website. **Now on this billboard create one hyperlink using a keyword that represents the first billboard you created in week one, and point it to the first billboard placed during week one.

• Week Three and moving on until your budget is used
  • Repeat the steps in week two for each week until the desired budget is met

The graduated campaign is a very popular method as it allows a more slow and easy to manage page. It depends on how fast you wish to have things gonig and the time to put into it.

SCENARIO THREE – BILLBOARD SITEMAP

This method is similar to creating a sitemap on your own site, except you are doing it on a partner website. Our rules on billboards have always been a maximum of ten links but only to one domain. We are changing this to allow links to other billboards and also up to three (3) additional links to other resources related to your content. This allows your billboards to become more of an expert document.

Now the steps to this campaign are fairly simple, but will require some time spent writing unique and content rich billboards.

• Step one is to create a minimum of ten (10) unique, content rich, seo copywritten billboards and have them ready in your account.
• Next, create a few text link ads using the necessary keywords needed and save them in your account.
• Now go through and add 25 to 50 partner sites to your wish list. Make ten (10) of them billboard partners, with the rest text link partners
• Shuffle around your text ads and buy the links, however dedicate 5 text link partners to a billboard text link ad.
• Go ahead and purchase the billboards on the partner sites chosen. Pick just one (1) of your billboards to be the sitemap BB.
• Now create a text link ad which links to the sitemap BB you have selected and place this text ad on the remaining five partners in your wish list
• Now edit the billboard you have chosen to be the sitemap bb and create a menu of sort, using your top keywords as anchor text, and point a single link from this billboard to all of the other nine billboards published.
• Another creative step is you can replace the text ad which points to your billboard with one of our rotating link ads. This way you can list all of your keywords and the link pointing to your billboard can be one of many keywords. This is just an alternative idea.

These scenarios are techniques that have either been tested by our own team or have been discussed with some of our clients and actually put into action. Results have been very good with traffic increasing tremendously. The billboards are wonderful pieces of advertising that prepares the reader before reaching your website. Make the information clear and easy to understand, but just enough to peak their interest. Search engines also can treat these billboards as expert documents helping your natural listings based on your content. Another big plus that can and will happen with your billboards is, more than likely you will see your billboards in the top of search results when your keywords are searched. We’ve witnessed situations where in the top 10 results, there were three of the advertisers well written, unique, content rich pages showing and then the actual advertisers website mixed in as well. This was four ways to capture all of the traffic and also builds a great visibility and name recognition factor that is invaluable..

We will have graphical illustrations of these 3 scenarios soon.