How to get multiple deep-links from a single banner advertisement.

• We recently purchased a banner ad on a popular site in our niche. Since it's an image and not a text link I'm not sure how much it benefits us.

  Does the banner still pass PageRank? What about the anchor text? Is there a way to get anchor text from a banner image link?

Answer: As long as the banner links directly to your site, you will get credit for that link. But if the banner is redirected through an ad server on someone else's site, then in most cases you will not get credit for it. Look at the URL in the href section of the link. If it contains a link to your site, then it should help your rankings.

However, since search engines don't read images you won't get any anchor text benefit from that image link.

Fortunately, there's an easy way to add anchor text to images. You simply put your keywords in the alt tag of the image.

In fact, if you're smart and use an image map for your banners, you can actually include multiple links to several different pages on your site, all with their own keyword-rich alt anchor text.

An image map breaks an image up into sections, with each section getting its own link. For example, take a look at the following image map of Africa. Notice that if you mouse over any of the countries on the map, the status bar at the bottom of your browser will show you a link to that country's Wikipedia page...