Could this be a negative SEO attempt?

[getcooking]

I use a couple different services to monitor when my brand/website is mentioned online. I got an alert yesterday that has me a little puzzled.

Someone has written an article and linked to my site in it. The article isn't overly spammy but it also clearly isn't written by a native English speaker so it doesn't read very well. My site (homepage) is the only one linked in the article.

The article is mildly relevant to my site. Let's say the article is about Asian widgets and my site is just about widgets in general, with a teeny, tiny, itty bitty Asian widget section among thousands of other more popular sections.

It just seems odd that they'd link to my site when there are definitely more relevant sites for their topic (the link says something along the lines of "visit http://example.com for other widgets"

If it was just a post on a blog I'd probably have ignored it but they seem to be submitting this article to a bunch of sites (so far I've found four instances of it in the last 24 hours).

Does this seem odd? I mean, I assume that if it was really an all out attempt to harm my site they'd probably be doing it en masse with multiple articles, not just one. But it really has me wondering what they are up to. Oh, and the author's name is never really revealed. It's different usernames on the different sites.

If they are trying to harm us then the joke is on them. Panda took care of that.

[topr8]

i'd say it was just an old school technique where you link out to a good page from your page to help your own ranking ... they are not trying to neg you, they are trying to boost themselves.

[getcooking]

But how is it a benefit to them if a) my site is the only one linked (or even mentioned for that matter), and b) the article isn't on one particular site (it's on multiple article sites like scribd)?

Like I said, I just can't quite figure out the purpose of it.

[topr8]

it's a case of a little knowledge i'd think.

most seo companies from what i can see, pick up a few bits of information here and there (whether they be true or false) ... make rules out of this info for their workers to follow ... these workers then blindly obey the rules without giving it a second thought.

in this case, maybe the rule is when you write an article, link out to a high ranking site which is connected in some way to the theme of the article, so they do this.

... these people don't think, they follow rules.

[viral]

Linking to relevant sites can help with SEO. Why do you think so many people seem to link wikipedia from their articles?

For some reason this person has picked your site as an authoritative site to link to in their niche.

If they are doing neg seo then it is a really poor attempt. For $5 they could go to fiverr and blast you with 75000 or more spammy comments!