Long Term Experiment - The "Foolproof" Linkwheel

[TheBaZi]

First off, I would like to thank Micallef for starting up this thread and the information that you posted.

I'm very new to SEO, however recently I read a blog post about link magnet. So what you guys think about this strategy? Is it effective? If this strategy is effective, will it end up like linkwheel in future, since?

 

[Crixus]

>Just don't over think it...
Funny I just had the feeling of overthinking it. Makes a ton of sense to do it this way, of course takes time and work, just like most things that are worthwhile.

 

[Migueliscool]

Great thread here. I learned a little about link wheels a while back so I made one and I didn't get any results. It seems I have to start over with your plan. It seems time consuming but the results of it could be well worth it in the long run.

 

[jdn74]

I've been watching the discussion. Here are my thoughts:

Isn't the bottom line simply to make your backlinks and whatnot APPEAR as organic as possible to Google? I'm just curious... instead of spending a bunch of time doing all of this work yourself (or yourselves, judging by the number of thread viewers), wouldn't you be better off leveraging other people's time by creating a clever marketing strategy? Perhaps giving the multitudes a reason or incentive to link to your various pages?

I guess I'm thinking along the lines of giving "Group A" a reason to socially bookmark your pages while giving "Group B" a reason to link to you from YT, "Group C" from FB, "Group D" from Twitter, blogs, forums, etc... you get the idea. You could form a giant "linkwheel" from the masses in such a manner that would appear WAY more organic to Google, all while driving traffic to your site at the same time.

I'm just trying to think outside the box by taking "idea A" and mixing it with "idea B" - i.e. mashing the linkwheel idea up with marketing via various social platforms.

Also, as far as giving people an incentive goes, you could make the incentive be a "cause" (to make the world a better place, betterment of humanity, charity, etc...). That would be all the incentive one would need to link to you... to support your "cause" - whether legit or not (trying to speak to both blackhatters and white). People will do anything, for FREE (or even pay with time or money) if they think its for a "cause". Now, if you want to be legit, give X% of proceeds to X charity - or whatever. You could be very creative with this and still have a good conscious.

TRUE STORY: I've seen people on CL that had great success when their "cause" was nothing more than, "I got injured, can't work, but must feed my family". Then, when I did a little more research on them, because they used the same username everywhere online, found out they were gambling thousands of dollars on poker sites. I'm not suggesting you should do that, but rather pointing out the power of "causes" in the minds of the viewers.

I say leverage your time with OPT (other people's time) because I think you're breaching working harder solo rather than figuring out a way to outsource it for either free or next-to-nothing.

What do you think? Am I on to something? Or am I full of crap?

P.S.
All answers will be viewed as "You report, I decide!"

 

[MisterGemini]

I've been watching the discussion. Here are my thoughts:

Isn't the bottom line simply to make your backlinks and whatnot APPEAR as organic as possible to Google? I'm just curious... instead of spending a bunch of time doing all of this work yourself (or yourselves, judging by the number of thread viewers), wouldn't you be better off leveraging other people's time by creating a clever marketing strategy? Perhaps giving the multitudes a reason or incentive to link to your various pages?

I guess I'm thinking along the lines of giving "Group A" a reason to socially bookmark your pages while giving "Group B" a reason to link to you from YT, "Group C" from FB, "Group D" from Twitter, blogs, forums, etc... you get the idea. You could form a giant "linkwheel" from the masses in such a manner that would appear WAY more organic to Google, all while driving traffic to your site at the same time.

I'm just trying to think outside the box by taking "idea A" and mixing it with "idea B" - i.e. mashing the linkwheel idea up with marketing via various social platforms.

Also, as far as giving people an incentive goes, you could make the incentive be a "cause" (to make the world a better place, betterment of humanity, charity, etc...). That would be all the incentive one would need to link to you... to support your "cause" - whether legit or not (trying to speak to both blackhatters and white). People will do anything, for FREE (or even pay with time or money) if they think its for a "cause". Now, if you want to be legit, give X% of proceeds to X charity - or whatever. You could be very creative with this and still have a good conscious.

TRUE STORY: I've seen people on CL that had great success when their "cause" was nothing more than, "I got injured, can't work, but must feed my family". Then, when I did a little more research on them, because they used the same username everywhere online, found out they were gambling thousands of dollars on poker sites. I'm not suggesting you should do that, but rather pointing out the power of "causes" in the minds of the viewers.

I say leverage your time with OPT (other people's time) because I think you're breaching working harder solo rather than figuring out a way to outsource it for either free or next-to-nothing.

What do you think? Am I on to something? Or am I full of crap?

P.S.
All answers will be viewed as "You report, I decide!"

I think what you are missing in regards to this method is one thing that both gives it the power and its usefulness that you cannot otherwise achieve through clever link bait tactics; control. Control over the content, the link text, and where and how these links appear.

I understand the appeal to use other peoples time instead of your own. The trade off in this though is giving up control of the very elements which wield their power to influence. Therefore, the idea to 'outsource' the work in a clever marketing manner doesn't really fit into the picture of linkroots in this format. I think it can definitely become a partial element to it, but by no means a replacement for the hard work that is done in the controlled properties, text, and links created by your own efforts.

Mister Gemini

PS: Unless you are paying me for this post, or I am your employee or consultant, your capacity to 'decide' on it's contents is null.

 

[Rose99]

I've been watching the discussion. Here are my thoughts:

Isn't the bottom line simply to make your backlinks and whatnot APPEAR as organic as possible to Google? I'm just curious... instead of spending a bunch of time doing all of this work yourself (or yourselves, judging by the number of thread viewers), wouldn't you be better off leveraging other people's time by creating a clever marketing strategy? Perhaps giving the multitudes a reason or incentive to link to your various pages?

I guess I'm thinking along the lines of giving "Group A" a reason to socially bookmark your pages while giving "Group B" a reason to link to you from YT, "Group C" from FB, "Group D" from Twitter, blogs, forums, etc... you get the idea. You could form a giant "linkwheel" from the masses in such a manner that would appear WAY more organic to Google, all while driving traffic to your site at the same time.

Ah, the "harnessing the masses" technique!

Back in the day (2006, I don't go further back than that, LOL), people did freely link to whatever they fancied or liked, but in turn you linked out to whatever you fancied too. It didn't involve much pondering either, it was pretty much, see something I like, knock up a quick post on my PR5 personal blog, and there's a link created.

Then no-follow came in, and this business of not "leaking" pagerank, and the spammers started absolutely hammering those blogs that remained do follow, which turned people right off.

Fast forward nearly five years later and hardly anyone spontaneously links to anyone outside the "social" niches, which are politics (where there is no online money to be made), and music.

The days when people ran personal blogs (because it was the fashion) and wrote spontaneous posts like "today I bought a blue widget from xyz and it was cheaper than Walmart, click here to check it out (with a nicely anchored "click here" link, LOL), are long gone.

The fashion for keeping these type of blogs collapsed once the spammers hammered them. I had one of those do follow personal blogs and remember the exact moment no follow came in (even though I didn't know what it meant at the time because I was literally just an ordinary personal blogger then), because it seemed like the entire p*** industry descended on my blog, whereas previously they had been spread across the net and the effect wasn't noticable (to me at least).

If you are in a commercial niche selling blue widgets, it's hard to get links unless you make them yourself. The "masses" have moved on, they are more cynical, less trusting and less giving. So reconcile yourself to the hard work, because that's all there is left.

 

[MisterGemini]

Ah, the "harnessing the masses" technique!

Back in the day (2006, I don't go further back than that, LOL), people did freely link to whatever they fancied or liked, but in turn you linked out to whatever you fancied too. It didn't involve much pondering either, it was pretty much, see something I like, knock up a quick post on my PR5 personal blog, and there's a link created.

Then no-follow came in, and this business of not "leaking" pagerank, and the spammers started absolutely hammering those blogs that remained do follow, which turned people right off.

Fast forward nearly five years later and hardly anyone spontaneously links to anyone outside the "social" niches, which are politics (where there is no online money to be made), and music.

The days when people ran personal blogs (because it was the fashion) and wrote spontaneous posts like "today I bought a blue widget from xyz and it was cheaper than Walmart, click here to check it out (with a nicely anchored "click here" link, LOL), are long gone.

The fashion for keeping these type of blogs collapsed once the spammers hammered them. I had one of those do follow personal blogs and remember the exact moment no follow came in (even though I didn't know what it meant at the time because I was literally just an ordinary personal blogger then), because it seemed like the entire p*** industry descended on my blog, whereas previously they had been spread across the net and the effect wasn't noticable (to me at least).

If you are in a commercial niche selling blue widgets, it's hard to get links unless you make them yourself. The "masses" have moved on, they are more cynical, less trusting and less giving. So reconcile yourself to the hard work, because that's all there is left.

This is very true. Google screwed natural linking like a queen street hooker on a saturday night and gave it AIDS. Since then it's just been dying a slow an agonizing death.

However, around this time, the conversation started to sprout about what was often referred to as the Linkerati. The idea of the 'elite' who control the links. It's disturbing but true. If you want to break into this exclusive club, you got to really come across as something that is totally altruistic, and without any commercial motive. Much like what beatuplunchbox was talking about with regards to getting in good with the orgs in order to have free reigns once in. Gee.. that doesn't sound anything like our governments now does it.

It takes so much politicking and brown nosing places to get in good with people who you otherwise in many cases find repulsive with their arrogance and poor manners. The effort involved in this can make this hard work doing linkroots appear like nothing. Just think back to high school and trying to break in with the cool kids group if you were not already in. Did you make it? Odds are good not. You are dealing with the same moving target here, and its not fun. It doesn't hurt to try though... as long as you don't mind some personal (and it is) rejection.

 

[jdn74]

I think what you are missing in regards to this method is one thing that both gives it the power and its usefulness that you cannot otherwise achieve through clever link bait tactics; control. Control over the content, the link text, and where and how these links appear.

I understand the appeal to use other peoples time instead of your own. The trade off in this though is giving up control of the very elements which wield their power to influence.

Ahh - control! Couldn't you make it a no-brainer and provide other people the embed codes that contain the link text and other elements, kinda like YT does to embed a video?

Its not that I mind doing hard work to get a pay off in the end. But, I guess I'm more of a "Henry Ford" type thinker - always leveraging my resources - looking for ways to amplify what I'm doing.

Just throwing some ideas out there whilst following the thread, thats all.

P.S.
I know when I say "You report, I decide" that you're thinking the same thing about my posts! Just being light hearted!:icon16:

 

[MisterGemini]

Ahh - control! Couldn't you make it a no-brainer and provide other people the embed codes that contain the link text and other elements, kinda like YT does to embed a video?

Its not that I mind doing hard work to get a pay off in the end. But, I guess I'm more of a "Henry Ford" type thinker - always leveraging my resources - looking for ways to amplify what I'm doing.

Just throwing some ideas out there whilst following the thread, thats all.

P.S.
I know when I say "You report, I decide" that you're thinking the same thing about my posts! Just being light hearted!:icon16:

I know exactly what you are talking about. Google has learned to discount links like this once they are identified. A few years ago I can remember a trend like this where little apps that provided something like .. joke of the day.. or how much is your blog worth sprouted up all with the intent of getting a one way backlink to their site. It worked.. for a little while. Google started catching on to the scheme and simply devalued the links to nada.

As far as rankings are concerned, it won't help, but for traffic.. it might... depending how good your app is.

The only alternative to this... might be to have a generator embedding that is unique for every single install. This of course goes way beyond what the general populace is willing to go through just for a link. Pretty much any code you come up with will be javascript though, and then you have to consider what will work on various hosted properties (fb, blogger, myspace, wpmus etc). Needs to be something that is stupid easy and stupid funny or stupid useful. You made reference to youtube.. I don't know who you connect with, but people I know who don't have their own website (like majority of people) if they link anything from youtube.. they are just copy pasting what is in their browser address bar to me. They are not looking to pull up and embed code and then place it on some site.

Control over the target link is necessary also, which also ads complexity. There are many who have attempted to build a free link network etc.. they often fizzle out.

I can appreciate trying to think outside the box. What you are talking about though requires extensive programming resources, and more importantly, a solid marketing plan. If you want to do something like this though.. I think the place to start would be to think about what can be done at the browser level... then you are in adware territory... which has also been done.

 

[Micallef]

What's being discussed here is just not tenable for 95% of commercial niches. It's an interesting read but this is the here and now, and we need authoritative links.

On a related note, despite following all of the rules I listed in the original post, some of my blogs have been taken down. As a proportion of all the blogs I've made, it's less than 5%. Still, it is annoying, especially when resources and time have gone into link building.

I think users have reported the blogs in most cases - this makes it all the more annoying since the frustration is coming from sad, lonely people who have nothing better to do than rat you out.

Anyway, I'll keep and publish a list of the platforms that have given me a bit of trouble. Not many so far but, doubtless, the list will grow over time.

- Unstable Platforms - I advise that you still use these platforms, but don't make them the focus of your backlinking efforts:

Edublogs.org (1 month)
Blog.co.uk (1 week)
Blog.de (3 days)
Homeschoolblogger.com (2 days)

 

[MisterGemini]

What's being discussed here is just not tenable for 95% of commercial niches. It's an interesting read but this is the here and now, and we need authoritative links.

On a related note, despite following all of the rules I listed in the original post, some of my blogs have been taken down. As a proportion of all the blogs I've made, it's less than 5%. Still, it is annoying, especially when resources and time have gone into link building.

I think users have reported the blogs in most cases - this makes it all the more annoying since the frustration is coming from sad, lonely people who have nothing better to do than rat you out.

Anyway, I'll keep and publish a list of the platforms that have given me a bit of trouble. Not many so far but, doubtless, the list will grow over time.

- Unstable Platforms - I advise that you still use these platforms, but don't make them the focus of your backlinking efforts:

Edublogs.org (1 month)
Blog.co.uk (1 week)
Blog.de (3 days)
Homeschoolblogger.com (2 days)

Thanks for sharing that with us. It seems that the problem stems from using barely legible crap content that is designed only to pass by google filters and not by people. I am familiar with some of the platforms you listed above, and yes, they would indeed report your blog in a heartbeat if they thought it was made by a spammer.

I think for your 2.0 attempt, you need to start using better content in your sites. It might also be a good idea to not be so keyword focused on each site setup. This also is the tell-tail of a spammer/seo at work.

Sorry it got blown up like that though. I know how frustrating it must be to do all that work and have it crushed like roadkill by an 18 wheeler. At least a small portion survived.

I am curious though how they all got removed so quickly.. do you think you left a footprint? Perhaps using the same keyword in your creations.. you did.. blog.com/your-keyword. The admin that found you on his site then just did a google of inurl:your-keyword and blamo .. with just a few more clicks on report buttons wiped you out.

 

[Micallef]

Thanks for sharing that with us. It seems that the problem stems from using barely legible crap content that is designed only to pass by google filters and not by people. I am familiar with some of the platforms you listed above, and yes, they would indeed report your blog in a heartbeat if they thought it was made by a spammer.

I think for your 2.0 attempt, you need to start using better content in your sites. It might also be a good idea to not be so keyword focused on each site setup. This also is the tell-tail of a spammer/seo at work.

Sorry it got blown up like that though. I know how frustrating it must be to do all that work and have it crushed like roadkill by an 18 wheeler. At least a small portion survived.

I am curious though how they all got removed so quickly.. do you think you left a footprint? Perhaps using the same keyword in your creations.. you did.. blog.com/your-keyword. The admin that found you on his site then just did a google of inurl:your-keyword and blamo .. with just a few more clicks on report buttons wiped you out.

Thanks for the kind words.

I'd like to stress, however, that my content was pretty good.

It was about as good as it can be short of actually making a real blog - a possibility which has been conveniently discussed in the preceding few posts.

All my original rules were followed - no links except to authority pages, and the articles were general, not product centered. All human readable and grammatically correct, nice pictures, videos etc - you'd have to look hard before you saw something was amiss. Articles were usually presented in the format of "3 tips to find the best....." or something like that.

The sites I mentioned actually got removed quite far apart in time, I don't think there was a footprint involved.

Because nothing short of a real blog is "foolproof", it looks like there will always be the possibility of losing time & work.

However, as I stated above, less than 5% of the blogs I have made are affected.

 

[MisterGemini]

Thanks for the kind words.

I'd like to stress, however, that my content was pretty good.

It was about as good as it can be short of actually making a real blog - a possibility which has been conveniently discussed in the preceding few posts.

All my original rules were followed - no links except to authority pages, and the articles were general, not product centered. All human readable and grammatically correct, nice pictures, videos etc - you'd have to look hard before you saw something was amiss. Articles were usually presented in the format of "3 tips to find the best....." or something like that.

The sites I mentioned actually got removed quite far apart in time, I don't think there was a footprint involved.

Because nothing short of a real blog is "foolproof", it looks like there will always be the possibility of losing time & work.

However, as I stated above, less than 5% of the blogs I have made are affected.

Have you considered attempting to contact the admins of the site? It might help quite a bit for your future efforts, and ours. A nasty email from someone who spent a lot of time working on a blog only to suddenly have it deleted.. its the good kick in the teeth they need to get their attention.. and keep them thinking twice or three times before they decide to remove someone elses, or even the others you create in the future.

Sorry I forgot about the content. I seemed to recall that you used crappy content in some aspect of the setup. That was the only element of your plan I thought was not a good idea... so I thought that might be why you are seeing them start to disappear.

 

[Crixus]

I seemed to recall that you used crappy content in some aspect of the setup. That was the only element of your plan I thought was not a good idea... so I thought that might be why you are seeing them start to disappear.

Yeah, I thought the content was dragon-speak from the newspaper? (Also thought the plan was great except for this.)

The stuff that got removed wasn't voice-capped from the news? You had actual good content nuked?

 

[Rose99]

Platforms that struggle to stay indexed:

infobarrel

They seem to stay in the index for five minutes and then drop out. I guess you could make them stick if you sent a ton of links to them, but there are easier web 2.0s to work with.

 

[Micallef]

Yeah, I thought the content was dragon-speak from the newspaper? (Also thought the plan was great except for this.)

The stuff that got removed wasn't voice-capped from the news? You had actual good content nuked?

I'll give an example.

"..blue widgets have recently been under investigation after a survey in June which called their quality into question. The survey, performed by MIT (link to MIT), aimed to settle the issue once and for all, and the results were announced publicly in July.."

It's just made up stuff, but it's perfectly presented.

I think it's the closest you can get to an actual blog without having to make an actual blog.

 

[confuzion]

i currently have two hundred micro sites with unique content and dominate every keyword for my client never used a proxy at all ,but have not used adsense at all. either,Just all on different hosting accounts. a management nightmare

 

[johnybh]

I like your approach, and yes, some of my networks will be bigger too. I view the creation of these networks as continuing indefinitely.

Most critically, you have hinted on the importance of building powerful backlinks to your properties. This is truly essential, and actually comprises a lot of the total workload.

Micallef,
Do you do use other link building tactics besides high pr blog commenting on powerful domains for your 2.0 properties? I f so can you pleas elaborate.

I have gotten into a rut of doing almost nothing but manual blog commenting on high pr **************** blog pages for my money sites with a few forum profiles mixed in which seems to be what you described in your op as your main source of backlinks.

High pr blog commenting is very addicting when you see your money site shoot up to the first page of the serp rather quickly, but as you have also witnessed, this method is like building a house on quicksand as you fall back pretty quick if you do not keep up with your commenting do to the fact that some of the links become no ****, get deleted or the juice on the page gets split between to many links over time which makes them less valuable.

Have you ever considered buying a few strong links to solidify your money sites with ?

Also, would you use the same tactics (holding off adding your money link for a month) in your op if you were just going to use the 2.0 sites as a back link source (micro site) that does not include interlinking a network (linkwheel)?

 

[deadbeatdude]

smash and burn is a lot faster and a lot less work. i'll take making 50k in 6 months on a site that i'm gonna lose to taking all that time trying to be methodical and play a game that i don't even know is real or not.

edit: fyi, great thread. lot's of good info here. thanks.

 

[gtree]

I have bookmarked this thread more informative about linkwheel....thanks for giving this wounderful Foolproof