Text-Link-Ads Founder - Patrick Gavin Patrick Gavin, founder of TextLinkAds.com is one of the most recognized search engine and internet marketing pros today. Patrick now runs the display division of MediaWhiz, the current owners of TextLinkAds.

First of all, I just want to thank you Patrick for taking some time to spend with us and tell what you are all about and share some tips.

1. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Your name, age, location, hobbies, etc.
Patrick Gavin, I co founded Text-Link-Ads.com with Bill Fish which we sold in November 2006 to MediaWhiz where I am today. Hobbies are really spending time with my wife and two young children. I live in Iowa City, Iowa and make frequent trips to NYC where MediaWhiz is headquartered.

2. Do you look up to anyone?
I have learned a lot about business from my father.

4. You are the founder of Text-Link-Ads, a site loved and adored by thousands who want to get quality links. What gave you the inspiration to start the site?
I founded a reclaimed brick and stone business with my father in 1999 and I learned how to market the business online. I then wanted to offer these same services to other businesses so we started doing SEO and PPC client work in 2001. We soon figured out link popularity was the top factor in natural search and saw a need to provide a marketplace where site owners can purchase static text links. We started doing this in 2003 and spent all our time since then building technology and a business around that concept.

5. Anyone can go to a site and buy a text link, what gives your clients the advantage of going through you rather than going through the site owners directly?
The main advantage is the simplicity of managing all your paid links through one central interface and billing center versus having to manage all those relationships with tens of unique site owners.

6. How do you maintain quality publishers on Text-Link-Ads? Do you check each individual site and see if they are Text-Link-Ads quality?
We check sites link popularity, alexa, etc to get an idea of quality and then hand check before they are allowed into the system.

7. Do you think that on page optimization is just as important as off page?
No. I feel strongly that off page is and will continue to be the much more dominant factor in natural search rankings. Google made link popularity famous and relies much more heavily on links versus on page factors and the success they have had with that model speaks for itself.

8. For readers who just started a website and are new to the online industry, what would you suggest for them to do?
Create unique content, make a lot of friends online: via tools like Linkedin, Twitter, buying advertising, and meeting in person at conferences.