I see this exact issue a lot as well when consulting with customers. It isn't so much a startup problem as a website problem, when a site is over-designed and not built to sell.
41 karma · joined March 16, 2011
@Llambda - isn't the process of the interview also the process of finding a suitable candidate?
Also, one of the links in the article does show many of these echo'd. In some cases it is a lot of javascript, in other pure links.
As for proof, you are right, it is possible these guys are using unethical SEO firms instead, but I still think they should be monitoring and dealing with this issue. In some cases, there are thousands of backlinks which have similar footprints. I have trouble buying that they are blissfully unaware.