I've decided to try out a link wheel for a few of my sites since I've heard good things about them working well. What I do is build little niche WP blogs centered around 1 particular keyword and try to get them ranked for that keyword alone or some slight variations. (Similar to the Google Sniper method if any of you are familiar with it). My question is: Should I only target 1 keyword/site per link wheel, or is it more efficient to target 2-3 keywords/sites for 1 complete link wheel? So for example if I have 3 sites that I want ranked: site1.com, site2.com, site3.com, and all of them are centered around a separate, but similar keyword (same niche, just different word I'm targeting), should I make 1 link wheel for each site, or can I include 2-3 different anchor text links in each spoke of my wheel and target all 3 sites at once?
that wil look odd to google and it is decides to ban you for spamming, all 3 sites are gone for that keyword.
Patterns are temporary. These methods of manipulation can be spammy as hell and clearly not a natural product of building links and site trust. Take a risk? Thank you Follow me on twitter - Anthonymseo
To everyone saying it's spammy, not natural, etc... then why do a lot of people use link wheels and have success with them? This topic has been covered numerous times here and in other IM forums and it's one of those subjects where everyone has their own opinion, just like with duplicate content and all that other stuff Google will "supposedly" ban your site for. I personally don't think they can track down my link wheel if I leave a spoke open so I am going to try it out. The question was about the best method, not if I should do it or not or if it's spam. Also, how can you say this is a spam technique (even though I'm writing my own articles and blogs and linking back to my own pages) but yet another link building method that people commonly use is commenting on a bunch of random blogs and forums linking back to their site? Even though they really might not have much interest in the blog, they still comment for the sake of getting a backlink. I guess that's OK though and not spammy one bit.... Anyway, I was just curious what someone that actually has experience with using link wheels would say is the best technique to use. Anyone that has used them with success could you please give me your opinion? Thanks.
Yes this method might work temporarily. But for the longterm health of a site as far as Google and other search engines are concerned it is too risky. I have seen this many times over sites use some crude link method ie Link wheel, Link pyramid to make there site cheat the serps for 6-8 weeks, Sometimes longer. But in the end these sites just get flagged ether by Google or McAfee or both. You see in there eyes they are sites that shouldnt be TRUSTED. I have worked with some of the biggest gambling sites around. Sites you see adverts on the telly for. I have tried everything and test all the time. But yes mate it works as long as you earn money! If you want some tips J1218 to attain decent rankings in the current search climate of 2010 not 2008/9 then pm me i will happily send you recommendations. Cheers
if your site isn't that hard to rank you better not take a risk there. google will easily notice what your planing
Ok but why do you say this is so risky? Without evidence, it seems like this is just another "Google scare tactic" like duplicate content that nobody can actually backup. Have you yourself tried a link wheel and had your site get black listed? Or are you going by what a few other people have said?
J1218, it seems like you know everything and I'm struggle to understand why you're asking the question. Back to your question, google and other search engines look for natural behaviour and as long as your links in the link wheel look natural and relevant you'll be fine. Just think what you would do if you found such links.
Hi! Seriously, I think you know a lot about the link wheels..But let me try and solve your questions here based on my knowledge. As far as I know, link wheels are most effective for long tail keyword optimization. Promoting only one keyword in 25-30 web properties would be foolishness for sure. it's better to target long tail keywords, for example your main keyword is herbal recipes. Then you should target keywords like how to make herbal recipes, herbal recipes for throat diseases, herbal recipes for weight loss and stuff like that. If you notice your main keyword "herbal recipes" is intact and should do the work for both as a long tail and little as a short keyword. P.s: When you are talking about link wheel, it will be better to do 20-30 web 2.0 property rather than just 4-5. It's better to do experiment for different keyword for different site. This will give you more areas to explore. Go one step at a time. Link wheels are not considered spams only when you use 100% unique content and 1-3 anchors in each article. Your main strategy should be aiming one anchor for the main page, other for a inner page and the third one connecting to the next blog. If you want to improve visibility of these link wheel using aggregates like RSS feed submission, article marketing, social bookmarking will be a great idea. It might be risky as the sites you will try on a very new, without any backlinks and much content indexed. It's better to make each mini sites of your with 5 articles each (100% unique), some backlinks from forum marketing, social bookmarking, article marketing, blog commenting etc. After 15-20 days, when your blogs get indexed and show some backlinks in yahoo site explorer then during that time it would be a better idea to work on links wheels. Although there is no harm in starting out at once but you will need to do even more hard work. Hope my answers have solved your queries, let me know if you some in your mind. Will help you out if I have the answers for them.
I do know the basic concept behind a link wheel, my question was just about the most effective way to make one as far as targeting only one keyword phrase throughout each wheel or multiple keyword phrases in each wheel. For example, if my niche was make money online (it's not, but just for an example), should 1 link wheel be focused around just the keyword phrase "make money online" and link to my site makemoneyonline.com or should it target that and other variations such as "make money online by blogging", "make money online with affiliate marketing", etc. I wasn't sure which way would be the most effective and time efficient. I do plan to make it all look natural and with unique content in each spoke too. Thanks. This is the sort of response I was looking for. As far as the keywords, I should have worded it different in my original post. I am targeting long-tail keyword phrases for each of my sites, not single word keywords. The sites that I will be building the wheel around have been indexed for around a week now. So you think before I build the wheel, I should do some blog commenting and other link building methods first to get a few incoming links and then start on the wheel? Also, you said I should link to the main page, inner page, and the next spoke in the wheel. By inner page, you mean another post on my own blog right? Is this better than just sending all of the link juice to the main page? Thanks for your tips.
Yeah! It's better that way, but if you can start without it it's okay. Now, I am telling you to do that is because only linking to your main will result in a weak link wheel. The more knots you have the stronger will it be. By inner yes I mean by other page of your blog, importantly a affiliate.
My bet is if you created ten generated content sites and link them to your main site, it will have just as much effect as if you link them to each other as well (linkwheel). Just link to content, dont give Google an easy path to find all your spam links!
Generated content as in? Copied or unique or semi of both. If you want to get things going the white hat way, I think submitting unique article is the way to go. But you can always see for the variations like copied, 50 % unique, 85-90% unique and so on. You can't just bet around here while doing experiments.
I'll keep that in mind next time I'm spamming blogs with comments just for a link back to my site because that is apparently viewed as OK by people, but link wheels aren't? Here's what I don't get.... A link wheel is a series of sites with UNIQUE CONTENT written by ME that simply link to each other and back to my main site. I'm not using some software and finding a ton of blogs and leaving idiotic comments that don't make sense. I'm not going into forums and contributing for the sake of having my signature link back to my site, and I'm not shoving my content in front of people who don't care to see it. How on earth do all you "anti link wheel" people see this as such a problem or as spam or whatever you want to call it? Do you even know what a link wheel is or do you just scream spam because that's what you've heard a few others say? Learn your facts before you make a comment. Seriously, I would like to hear just ONE good reason why people say a link wheel is so bad but those same people screaming how bad link wheels are, probably think that "traditional" link building methods like blog commenting and forum posting are not spammy. Now you will probably say "if you're leaving a good comment or forum post with a link from your name or in your signature then it's not a big deal." Ok, but the truth is, almost everyone who uses blog commenting or forum posting as a means for link building use it for that only. You can't tell me that if you weren't getting a link back to your site you would be searching Google for relevant, high PR, do-follow blogs and forums because you feel like contributing a thoughtful comment. I comment on blogs with links back to my site too so I'm not against it or saying it's wrong or anything, but I do know damn well that if I wasn't getting that link back to my site, I wouldn't be leaving a comment. And I know 99% of people that build links this way also wouldn't be commenting everywhere just for the sake of commenting. Also, I've read somewhere that Google HATES blog commenting as a means to build links. You don't see people trolling forum threads that mention blog commenting though and screaming " don't comment on blogs! Google might ban your site!" For real, I am curious to know why some of you are so quick to knock down link wheels but accept other methods that in my opinion are more of spam.
Only problem with link wheel: More people have used it and is sort of getting saturated. But, the main problem is that people only do basic link wheels as they don't have the skill and understanding to do advanced link wheels. The seos' usually make basic linkwheels which are easier for google to interpret. Even if a link wheel does not look like link wheel doesn't mean that it is not a link wheel. So try something innovative and you will get some good results for sure. I have tried it on my sites and they have done some wonderful job. Coming to blog commenting, yes it's spamming but who says google hates it. I don't know but I feel to get heavy backlinks on high pr pages blog commenting is the best strategy. I can show you sites having PR4 with on;y 90-150 backlinks on high pr pages. If you overdo it, then yes things are not going to be normal for you. But few here and there always works. I have clients investing 1000s of$$ on blog commenting because they see results. It's not that they don't.
Yeah I know what you mean. I plan on doing a more advanced link wheel. It's basically 3 smaller link wheels each with one spoke missing that point back to my main site. I got the idea from this site here: http://www.linkwheeler.com/learnmore.php and I'm going to use a strategy similar to the one you see toward the bottom of that page. I feel that sort of link wheel will be more under the radar because it's 3 small ones as opposed to 1 huge wheel. Regarding the blog commenting, I forgot where I read it at, but I have seen it said that Google hates the idea of using blog comments as a means to build links to your site. I know it's a really good strategy and you can get some high PR links by doing it and all, but think of it from the perspective of Google: You're getting a good link that you didn't really "earn" and it's not exactly natural because you put it there yourself by just leaving a simple comment on someone's blog. Regardless, I do it anyway and I'm not saying I'm against blog commenting, I was just trying to make a point that if link wheels are somehow considered "spam" then how can a blog comment not be?