I see no smoking gun here or evidence of paid linking, or even link schemes. I just see legit guest posts, that could just as easily be meant to drive referral traffic.
Ironically, Tampa is where BlueGlass was located before they went bellyup.
Personally, I think articles likes these are fine for SEO. The articles are NOT PAID FOR and while the links might not be totally organic, you could certainly argue it adds some value to the post. (i.e. expedia's app is a good app for finding cheap airfare.)
Google has announced several times that they are going to crack down on poor quality guest posting, and I think expedia should be a little more progressive in their anchor text (i.e. linking with a brand name, url or even not linking... but just mentioning the brand name could help their rankings.)
Bottom line, Good offsite SEO today is a more polished version of this...
Step 1: Create Linkable, shareable, emotionally charged content.
Step 2: distribute your content socially.
Step 3: Do outreach to bloggers and journalists to get exposure to their audience, and perhaps attract links...
That being said, aside from the overly optimized anchor text, this is legitimate link acquisition and its what all SEOs do today... They create content and try to get distribution far and wide.
These links and posts could just as easily be traffic generation strategies, not SEO strategies.
Ironically, Tampa is where BlueGlass was located before they went bellyup.
Personally, I think articles likes these are fine for SEO. The articles are NOT PAID FOR and while the links might not be totally organic, you could certainly argue it adds some value to the post. (i.e. expedia's app is a good app for finding cheap airfare.)
Google has announced several times that they are going to crack down on poor quality guest posting, and I think expedia should be a little more progressive in their anchor text (i.e. linking with a brand name, url or even not linking... but just mentioning the brand name could help their rankings.)
Bottom line, Good offsite SEO today is a more polished version of this...
Step 1: Create Linkable, shareable, emotionally charged content.
Step 2: distribute your content socially.
Step 3: Do outreach to bloggers and journalists to get exposure to their audience, and perhaps attract links...
That being said, aside from the overly optimized anchor text, this is legitimate link acquisition and its what all SEOs do today... They create content and try to get distribution far and wide.
These links and posts could just as easily be traffic generation strategies, not SEO strategies.