You guys know me by now… I’m a bit of an interview freak. Having only just been accepted into both ReviewMe and Text-Link-Ads, I jumped at the chance to get a hold of Patrcik Gavin and managed to squeeze an interview with him. Having spoken to Patrick a few times - I can tell you that he’s a really cool guy, who sure as anything knows his stuff. But then again - I’d be worried if he didn’t… So here it is!

Hey Patrick, it’s an honour to have you with me today at TechZi. Can you introduce yourself to everyone out there, who might not know you at present?

- David, thanks for the opportunity. Sure, my name is Patrick Gavin and I am the President of Text-Link-Ads.com and ReviewMe.com

Great - so how long have you been in SEO, and when specifically, did you start Text-Link-Ads?

- I got into pay per click management and SEO in 2001 and it morphed into Text-Link-Ads.com in 2003 and that became my sole focus.

What are some of the more creative uses of TLA? For example, have you seen any buyers of adverts using them to promote their affiliate links in order to get higher rankings in the search engines for a specific product phrase?

- TLA is used to promote a very wide range of products and services. That is the great thing about the product, there is no limit to what keywords you can focus on. Some of the more successful campaigns I have seen is when our advertisers deep link into specific sub pages on their websites with very specific keywords.

What do you have to say to people who consider the buying and selling of links ‘blackhat’? For example, Matt Cutts, a Google employee recently stated on his blog that Google would be cracking down on the buying and selling of links. Do you think in the long-run, that sites using this method of promotion might be eventually blacklisted entirely from Google’s rankings? Will we perhaps see other search engine companies follow suit? Has Google perhaps gone too far? The way I see it, Google is asking webmasters to stab their mates in the back and become informants of paid links. Asking site-owners to rat each other out. But enough of my speculation… What are your thoughts?

- At TLA we have always pushed our ads a dual benefit product. An ad that can send targeted traffic and help your natural search engine rankings. Our publishers have full editorial control and we encourage them to only accept relevant advertisers. Our advertisers want to buy from relevant sites so the marketplace seems to police itself nicely. At the end of they day if our publishers are selling links that are relevant to their audience and
sending our advertisers targeted traffic then we feel we are providing a great service. My opinion is the search engines are looking to devalue sites selling ads for PageRank benefit only, ie links to unrelated sites. That is not our goal here at TLA.

In recent months, you launched popular sponsored reviews service for bloggers, ReviewMe.com. Since then, the service has been a massive success. What do you think the main reasons for this have been? The fact that TLA is already a strong franchise for which the service can be associated with, or simply because ReviewMe offers a more unique twist to Sponsored Blog Reviews than the other services, like PayPerPost, currently competing for the No. 1 spot?

- There is not doubt we had a nice head start because of the great blogs that were already participating in TLA. ReviewMe.com also got some great press out of the gate that really fueled growth. We did launch with a unique twist of a premium only marketplace of blogs that advertisers could browse to purchase a review off specific relevant sites. This was different from our competitor’s marketplace of advertiser offers at the time. We have since launched an advertiser offer based marketplace in addition to our premium blog marketplace.

What have you got planned for the future? Will expanding existing ventures be important in your long-term success online, or is the net changing so rapdily, that we need to be on constant watch, looking for new innovations?

- We are always innovating here. That is the only path to continued growth that we see. Just in the last two weeks we launched Post Level TLA’s so our advertisers could sponsor single popular posts on our publisher’s blogs and we launched our new ReviewMe advertiser offer marketplace. Stay tuned for more new products and features in 2007 for sure.

Some would say that you ‘reinvented the wheel’ when it comes to SEO. Have you got any top-tips for anyone hoping to achieve higher search engine rankings?

- Well links are still the key to top rankings but no one should rely solely on buying links as their strategy to achieve this. Buying links is a great supplement but creating great content is still the best bet for a continual stream of inbound links.

What do you have to say on the ‘Quality Vs. Quantity’ linkback theory? For example… What would be more important to you? A single PR5 linkback or 5 PR1s?

- I prefer a higher number of links from unique domains versus a single higher quality link.

I actually find that very interesting, considering the past research dug up my algorithm diggers that hints towards a single quality link boost rankings more. Anyhow… It just goes to show what a complex business SEO is. What challenges do you expect the SEO industry will have to face in these coming years?

- I think it’s the same challenge the SEO industry has faced the last few years… it gets more and more competitive every year. There are new websites created every day but still the same number of results on page one
of the search engines.

Has Text-Link-Ads ever been forced to reject advertiser’s placements? Have people ever attempted to ‘game’ the system - and bought phrases unrelated to the website they’re linking to?

- Definitely but it is usually our publishers who police this for us as they have editorial control to approve or deny any link before it is publisher on their website.

Outside of SEO, have you ever really had much success on earning an online income? Affiliate programs perhaps? If so, could you tell us a little more about how you went about doing that and what it took you to achieve that?

- Yes. I have personally had success with some e commerce sites on the side. My tip would be focus on a niche.

Finally - before you go… Will you be buying a Text-Link-Ad from TechZi.net?

- I will have our sales team push your site a little harder to our advertisers, will that work?

Great stuff, Patrick! Anyhow - that just about wraps it up. Thanks again for the opportunity!