Link wheel - Is it really that effective?

Creating high quality content is the best way to get traffic and people linking back to you with minimal investment. But how can you say link wheels are a waste of time? Have you even tried it on one of your websites?

On what grounds you are saying it? Please give us a explanation.

 

Sorry if am going offtopic and being foolish according to some
I want to know about what you said

3. You want links from relevant sites that compliment your content. Not from your competitors site. (big resounding WTF on that on actually).

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What are sites that compliment ?
E.g., if i have a lyrics website which site will compliment ?
Because any site outside lyrics will not be relevant for me.

Please Reply.

 

just remember a link is a link.

 

Alright, to address a few points:

Agreed. Relevancy and good content are the #1 and #2 things that will earn you natural search engine traffic. But if that's all you rely on, you're missing out. Most webmasters use a wide variety of techniques designed to boost their rankings... and why not?

Oddly enough, almost all the links provided in this post are designed to help a webmaster build backlinks. And this right after you finished saying "Being relevant is not accomplished by simply pointing a bunch of links at a site". So which is it?

Personally I don't find that your posts piss me off, but they do border on the pretentious side. And many of your posts are suspiciously followed up by "Dan's" point of view, which is oddly similar to yours in all cases.

Nothing wrong with doing it for both reasons, is there?

I agree with your general idea of article submission, and I'm one of those guys who likes to submit a unique article to each of many different sites. As long as you're rewriting (not spinning) the article and keeping it useful and informative, you're actually STILL creating relevancy to your site by gaining valuable clicks and backlinks from other websites. 2.0 or not.

Writing quality unique articles for your website is great. Writing quality unique articles for your website AND for other sites is even better.

Nigel, you do make some good points about getting backlinks from related sites. Many people are reluctant to send out emails like the one you described, I'm not sure if it's a fear of rejection or whether it's too much work to seek out legitimate sites and look for the contact info. I've done a lot of linkbuilding for some of my retail sites using a version of your method, and although you do get unanswered a lot of the time, you also do get some very quality links.

That being said, I'm still not with you on the whole calling linkwheels "poop" thing. No one's saying you should "base your link building campaign around it", but if you're already writing unique, quality content for Hubpages, Squidoo, etc... there's nothing wrong with linking your articles to each other for some additional juice, along with links back to your own website or landing page as a central hub. Learning about linkwheels was helpful to me, and I don't consider it to be "gaming the serps", snakeoil, or whatever other rotten tomatoes you and Dan are throwing its way.

Looking forward to reading this. While not every webmaster is going to agree with every other one's methods, it's always good to hear what else is out there.

 

The thing is, you can create a web 2.0 property, throw 20 blog comment links at it and get it to rank top 10 for a decent keyword. I know, because I've done it! The allintitle command shows 3000 competing sites as well. I must admit that my web 2.0 property has now slipped because I've not thrown any more backlinks at it, but the investment paid itself off within days and I suspect it would be quite easy to get it back on the first page (it's now on page two) with a few more blog comments.

People like Dan and Nigel will tell you that it's spam, that their method of link building is superior. I agree with them and also say "so what?" I aspire to getting merit-worthy links but at this point my site doesn't have enough merit-worthy content to deserve them. So in the meantime I'm going to employ another method to rank in the SERPs. What they don't take into account is the fact that many people on here don't have sites that will be naturally linked to by virtue of their marvellous content. So while I agree that the best method of building links is to network and get people to give you an editorial link to your site, this method is not relevant to a large proportion of the members of this forum, who simply want to promote their money making blog, their affiliate site or whatever it is. What's more, not everyone has the skill to write compelling content and targetted emails to webmasters with complimentary sites.

I actually haven't created a linkwheel, but based on one web 2.0 site I created, it seems like it could be a helpful way to give your site a boost. I'm sure that care needs to be taken to create unique and reasonable content and not to heavily interlink the sites, but I'm sure it can have a positive impact.

 

linkwheels are only effective if you can get a lot of links. The power is in the numbers.

 

Relevant doesn't mean exactly the same. If I were you, I'd be looking for links on sites that sold music downloads. Or perhaps entertainment sites that focuses on singers and bands. Or perhaps guitar lesson sites. Or guitar sales sites. All of these types of sites are relevant to you, yet they are not direct competitors.

 

It all depends on a few things.

The size of your linkwheel.

And the PR of the websites your using.

Also aged blogs will improve your ranking.

 

As far as I know, that link wheel is by no menas a blakhat SEO, but I really didn't get it how to do it well!

 

Thanks for replying.
Yeah i figured out my complimentary sites. Link building is really tough in my niche !

 

I know relevant links are always what everyone looks for. But you cannot find 100 sites on which you can comment, so people have to opt for other sites. And believe me the result are same. You will gain on SERP, Pr and traffic.
Just remember Content is king.

 

Link building schemes with "spam content" to manipulate search engines is one thing.

Building resourceful hubs on topics centered around your website and then contextually (and naturally) linking to it and other resources on the web is completely different ballgame.

Start small and if you feel another resource, especially yours is relevant, feel free to link to it your blogroll. Here's a start http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1507424

That's why I never mention the term l***wheel

 

...go ahead and say that while I go charge on past you with my crazy-go-nuts-wheels.

Wheels still work IF you have good content in each "spoke" of your wheel. Remember, Google is in the business of finding and directing people to GOOD content. If you've got stellar content in each spoke of your link wheel, Google will reward you with diamonds, vacations to the Caribbean islands, and little angels from heaven.

 

No only do they need to have good content, but the content needs to be unique, and relevant. And each hub of your wheel needs to accumulate qualtiy backlinks.

If you have all of that, then yes, I agree that link wheels can be effective.

 

Well yeah, I would actually agree a lot with you. I think this would be a perfect link wheel for me.

Select the top 5 Web 2.0 sites and then add like 1 unique and interesting article per week on each of them. The regularly build links, do some forum posting, SB'ing and do-follow blog commenting. In no time you will get 100+ backlinks. If you are lucky they would as well have some PR. This would give you site enough link juice to hit the top pages for long tail keywords.

The main thing about Link wheel service is that they only make them once and give them to you. The most important thing is to maintain it, update it and treat it as your own site.

I believe if you are successful in doing that you will definitely prosper and hit the pages of google. Only thing you need is hard work and dedication.

 

That being said, I don't see any real advantages of having a link wheel with these criteria over having similar type sties link to you.

In other words, say you have a 5 hub link wheel, each hub owned by you, each with unique, relevant content, each with backlinks, and say each has achieved a PR1, and each linking to you once.

I don't see any advantage in that over 5 websites, each NOT owned by you, each with unique, relevant content, each with backlinks, each with a PR1, and each linking to you once.

These two methods give identical results, IMO.

 

I am not saying that whether the pages are owned by you or not, But that, you have to update the pages often to get the maximum benefit out of it. This is where all the efforts goes. So, instead of just one time service, the providers should bring in more to their services, like updating your pages with 2 article a fortnight or something.

I hope I make my point clear here.

 

Yes, I understand you, but I think you missed my point.

My point was that a link wheel doesn't provide any additional benifit beyond what you would normally get from the same number of backlink from similar sites that are not in a wheel.

The 'wheel' formation by itself doesn't add any additional value.

 

I think that the benefit of the web 2.0 property is that of control. You control the keyword density, the number of outbound links (save any standard ones you have on a free site), the exact anchor text which of course will be placed in content throughout the page where you specify. You also control the message you are providing to visitors, which can lead to some traffic as well as a couple of highly targetted links back to your site.

 

Give this man some extra points! He just now described exactly what link wheels are SUPPOSED to include!

Link wheels are SUPPOSED to include backlinks. When they have these, link wheels work like two charms put together.

Newbies hear about this concept, and then they throw together "link wheels" that don't work BECAUSE that don't have enough (if any) backlinks to get the link juice pumping through the wheel.

Then they come to internet marketing forums like this and proclaim that "link wheels" don't work anymore, and that Google "musta caught on to how clever I was being."

Apparently, they don't realize that constructing the link wheel is ONLY the first step. The second step, the step of consistent link building, seems to elude them.

Before you say they don't work, put each of your spoked into a backlink checker and see how many backlinks you have (if you have any at all).

People seem to think link wheels are miracle structures that will automatically boost so high, it will be listed above the Google search box.

It will, but ONLY if you have the backlinks.