A post over at Odd Time Signatures by Karoli pointed to a Todd Cochrane post that was talking about a new SEO technique that was meant to game the tech A-list bloggers - either knowingly or otherwise.

Apparently the way it is meant to work is to release advance PR to a specific list of leading bloggers, get the bloggers to write reviews which is meant to build buzz, in these post the bloggers are paid to place specific links into the post and then when the A-List post hits Techmeme the linking pile on begins as does the the Google juice for the target of the post.

Like Karoli I have a really hard time believing that TechCrunch and other top tier blogs would stoop to dealing with this kind of practice - especially without disclosure. After all, the ad revenues alone wouldn’t be worth risking if people found out that TechCrunch or Mashable or Read/WriteWeb were playing such an underhanded game.

While there may not be such an overt practice of gaming the top tier the fact of releasing advance PR to top tier bloggers is in itself a method of gaming in that the moment these bloggers post anything they get linked to by every other blogger wanting to get some visibility; which also means increased page views and ad revenue as a result.

But then there is always the question of .. what if .. especially now that the very question has been raised.

Listening to: Traffic - The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys - The Low Spark Of High Heeled Boys

Conversation Tags: blogs, blogging, A-List, PR, public relations