Comments on: Shopzilla Learns About Link Building

By: migriffin

migriffin — Tue, 01 May 2007 04:19:41 +0000

I have to admit that this is a pretty weak attempt at SEO. They’re using existing properties that are affiliated and pushing the links to the bottom of irrelevant pages. If you look at algorithm changes that Google has made in the past years, they value relevance and transparency and discount random links placed at the bottom of a page. Google is much too wise for these tricks and if reported will quickly recognize that they are owned by one parent company and automatically discount any interlinking. Dare I challenge Shopzilla to actually build content worth linking to? Or is extreme innovation outside the realm of 1.0 Shopping Engines?

By: SEO'Brien

SEO'Brien — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 15:30:03 +0000

Nice find! Keep in mind though that your own definition of inbound links is relevant: “quality”
Parents looking for warning signs in kids don’t really need to â€˜Comparison Shop for Digital Cameras and Appliances at Shopzilla& BizRateâ€™ The engines will see it that way too.

Still, something is better than nothing. At the very least, they’ll push spiders to shopzilla and bizrate (though, I’d expect they are getting hit daily already)

By: nicolasleroy

nicolasleroy — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:00:40 +0000

Well, the way the links are displayed (bottom of the page, below the logo, copyright…) suggest they are looking for more inbound links to increase the PageRank of Shopzilla pages, rather than pushing readers to click on those links.

“Scripps has therefore said it would concentrate on brand building and driving free traffic”

That means they are now looking for spontaneous and SEO trafic, rather than SEM ? Sounds like a strange move. I understand they want to increase spontaneous trafic.. But I feel hard to understand their SEO strategy, when we know Google is now focusing more on User Generated Content rather than comparison pages (that can be considered as spam).