Big Brands Still Paying For Links!
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We have been spending a lot of time creating unique and relevant content that is helpful to users in order to garner natural links. However, I still see large companies getting paid links to their site.
They still rank despite the paid links - many higher that before thanks to the increased brand/domain authority bias by Google. I have seen a number of blogs with posts that have dofollow links to sites like Amazon and Dirtdevil.
Are small businesses just getting buried or am I being too cynical?
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I have seen a number of personal blogs, ones that clearly state that they get some sort of monetary benefit for reviews, that have dofollow html links to some large retailers. I was actually surprised to see this, given the recent Penguin update.
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It may not be that they're buying links but because they have such a big following and customer base already they're getting linked to because they're just more popular. If 1% of amazons customer base links to them it'll be much more than 1% of a small businesses customer base.
Just my .02
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Linking to an authoritative site is part of SEO given the link is relevant to what is being discussed, are you certain they are being paid to do so?
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