Funny, it was the "lots of internal linking" bit that felt wrong to me. Not that these low-quality sites don't do that, but I'm surprised to hear that the new algorithm rewards internal links. I'm certainly not a full-time SEO guy, but I happen to have or work with a few sites - some fairly established - that make extensive use of internal links for design/editorial reasons. As far as I can tell they are helpful for (a) user navigation and (b) getting search engines to discover/index the pages but I don't think I've seen any notable advantage in or even impact on ranking based on those internal links (whether in the body copy or in head/foot/side "navigation" areas).
Searching just now I do see some other sources making a similar claim, so maybe I'm just out of the loop. But in my cursory scan I haven't found much detail or real evidence beyond "google says they matter" either. I mean, that's not why those internal links were created in the first place, but it sure would be nice to get a ranking boost out of them too. I wonder what I'm doing wrong :)
Searching just now I do see some other sources making a similar claim, so maybe I'm just out of the loop. But in my cursory scan I haven't found much detail or real evidence beyond "google says they matter" either. I mean, that's not why those internal links were created in the first place, but it sure would be nice to get a ranking boost out of them too. I wonder what I'm doing wrong :)