The websites, TerrifiPets.com and NextDayPets.com (among others) have a link building plan that has been very effective. You may have seen it: it basically involves awarding mostly mom and pop websites a “website award†that is filled with text links back to their own website. Those who think that this is a scam say that these “spammers†fool webmasters (most of whom no little about the web, much less SEO) into thinking that they are receiving an award for their website, when in reality these pet sites are just using these fake awards as a linking building plan. Check it out; NextDay Pets is doing something similar as well.http://www.terrificpets.com/website_awards/ & http://www.nextdaypets.com/directory/dogs/website_directory/submit.aspx If you do a search in G for virtually any dog or cat related term, these sites are always found at the top for the same terms they list in their banners. Is this really a scam or just a great search marketing plan? The people are willingly linking back to these pet websites. The links are not hidden, but rather styled in a way that makes them look like normal text, just like many other links. Do you think Google will eventually catch on to this and deem this as a scam and penalize these sites? What are your feelings about this? http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/Googles-Pet-Scam-Conspiracy/ This guy definitely thinks it is a scam, I’m not so sure. If the links were hidden, than that would be one thing, but they are clearly not? Would you recommend that webmasters try this link building “plan/scam�
I remember reading about that trick years ago on some kind of SEO for newbies kind of page. But looks like it is working better than ever (or something is ) for the site in question. I don't think of it as scamming the SE's, just a trick to entice people to link to you, (kind of like link-bait is...).
A very clever trick! This never really occurred to me as a way of getting backlinks before you just mentioned it! Its harmless for the site showing the "awards" though. They're happy they've got something to show for their site (even if it isn't 100% genuine), and the site has got a backlink!
There's no scam about it - it's a perfectly legitimate way to get people to link to them. Kudos to their ingenuity.
funny you mention them, I am trying to go head to head against those big boys with www.k9stud.com , i use a similar tactic but instead of saying the website won an award, it just displays as if they have a "Cool K9 Website" see here, http://www.k9stud.com/linkexchange.aspx the links back to my site are more apparent than the big boys, i try and keep everything on the up and up, but in all honesty, since I am in the race to catch up to them i dont know what to say about that, I think it is a safe and "smart" SEO tactic. If you want to help me catch up to them place a link on your site to mine hehe