The typical use case for AdSanity is to provide advertising features. Most of the time this means you’re placing ads on your WordPress site which lead to other sites that are promoting a product or service. However, there are several other use cases for AdSanity and one of them is to create inline images for interlinking within your own site.
Linking Strategies
Part of the SEO effort of any website is a solid linking strategy. Half of your link strategy focuses on connecting your site to other sites. This serves as a good indicator of interrelated content. Ideally there are incoming links to your pages from external sites, but having outgoing links is a positive factor. The other half of your linking strategy focuses on links from one of your pages to another. These interlinking pages help the user and the search engines by indicating when content is related. This helps to establish your content silos so that better results can be returned to the user. The result is that people find the details they are looking for faster. Links are often created with text alone but using an image draws more attention. Also, the text (or in the case of an image the Alt tag) provides context for this link. This text ideally matches both the sending pages content and the destination pages content in a significant way. This text interlinking is improved by using an inline ad.
Inline Ads
We’ve talked before about how inline ads are often the most successful ad types. Inline ads can be closely tied to the topic of the page so they are hyper relevant for the reader. Additionally an inline image ad provides vital visual interest for the page that keeps readers interested. Instead of just placing an image on the page, using an ad format provides you with some immediate advantages. AdSanity ads used in the way we’re describing provide an almost instant burst of relevance because you’re using the name of the ad in the link which helps confer that link context we need to make our interlining strategy shine. Additionally, you’re able to see the view and clicks for the ad so you can gauge the success of the SEO strategy. With a typical image you wouldn’t be able to get this additional data, but with AdSanity you can dig into each ad to track performance.
The Use Case in Action
Our good friends at MemberPress make a solid use of this technique. Take, for example, this post about pricing your online course. On this page they are highlighting a post about identifying your audience in the section about knowing your audience. This not only creates a strong visual on the page it also links to highly related and relevant content. This gives MemberPress flexibility while creating new content and making connections back to material that helps their users make the best use of the information. This helps the user and increases their engagement with the site. They can also measure the success of the ad and impact to the linked content.
This use case may not be for every site. But, if you have a service or product featured on your site, inline ads can give a big boost to your interlinking strategy.