Does link wheel really work?

How much trouble do you go to concealing your link wheels from G?

Do you use different IP's for all the sites in your wheel?

Are all the IP's on the same subnet or registered to the same orginization, or are they from multiple hosting companies and IP spaces?

Are you domains registered public or private?

If public are they all registered under the same name/address/phone/email?

These basic things should all be considered when building your wheel, as they could ultimately lead to the success or failure of the wheel itself.

ozzy283 said:

How much trouble do you go to concealing your link wheels from G?

Do you use different IP's for all the sites in your wheel?

Are all the IP's on the same subnet or registered to the same orginization, or are they from multiple hosting companies and IP spaces?

Are you domains registered public or private?

If public are they all registered under the same name/address/phone/email?

These basic things should all be considered when building your wheel, as they could ultimately lead to the success or failure of the wheel itself.

Click to expand...

There is no need to change IP in a linkwheel.

A separate email address should be used for each wheel.

No further safety measures are required.

The only thing that works is traffic so buy lots of it !

backlinks applied to one member of the linkwheel will get their link juice passed around the wheel strengthening all members plus the money site

Click to expand...

How much PR can a brand new site that you've just created give to another site in this link wheel? How can a new site which has basically 0 PR give anything next to it in a wheel?

I thought any site shares it's PR juice with it's outgoing links. If you have a site with one outgoing link, all it's link juice is pointing to your money site. If it has two links, one to your money site and another to the next site in the wheel, you're only getting half the link juice to yer money site.

And how can any of this be hidden from Google? Someone just has to follow back all links pointing to your money site. Then do a search for all links pointing to your satellite sites. I mean 'cmon...you could easily do this for any site out there if you were motivated enough.

I understand that you want high PR sites linking back to you, but how can artificially create this with brand new webpages with 0 PR all linking to each other?

biks said:

How much PR can a brand new site that you've just created give to another site in this link wheel? How can a new site which has basically 0 PR give anything next to it in a wheel?

I thought any site shares it's PR juice with it's outgoing links. If you have a site with one outgoing link, all it's link juice is pointing to your money site. If it has two links, one to your money site and another to the next site in the wheel, you're only getting half the link juice to yer money site.

And how can any of this be hidden from Google? Someone just has to follow back all links pointing to your money site. Then do a search for all links pointing to your satellite sites. I mean 'cmon...you could easily do this for any site out there if you were motivated enough.

I understand that you want high PR sites linking back to you, but how can artificially create this with brand new webpages with 0 PR all linking to each other?

Click to expand...

I am glad someone else has picked up on this. Web 2.0 sites are extremely inefficient at transferring PR juice in the standard way. In fact, some of them are so inefficient that only about 3% of the juice actually gets sent to your target site.

However, Linkwheels can work extremely well. I believe the reason for this is that Google is looking at other factors which cause them to score-up links from web 2.0 properties:

1) The link is in the main text body, as opposed to in the comments or in a footer.

2) The link is surrounded by relevant text, and the anchor fits Google's idea of what the site is about.

These factors encourage Google to trust the links you put into your linkwheel.

As for the detection issue you raised, I do not believe that it's a serious issue unless you only use the bog standard 6 spoke circular link system. If you mix up the link system and use larger wheels, it becomes computationally intensive for google to work out that something is amiss.

Whilst we're on the subject, how many times in the body of the article/blog post, should you link your target keyword (anchor text) to your money site?

Just once somewhere in the middle of the main text? I assume linking twice in the same body has no positive effect but many times could be seen as spam?

What are the best web 2.0 properties to write your articles in?

yes use only once i.e. one for your site and another one to link your next site to form a link wheel.

there are number of web 2.0 properties site. you can find it in BHW itself

shanmugasundaram said:

yes use only once i.e. one for your site and another one to link your next site to form a link wheel.

there are number of web 2.0 properties site. you can find it in BHW itself

Click to expand...

OK thanks for that. I'm slowly grasping all this. With regards to the 'link wheel' what's your thoughts on the tree analogy? Where as the trunk is the money site and the branches are the Web 2.0's? But they don't link to each other, they all just link to the money site, but then you work on getting lots of links to each 'branch'?

With Wordpress is it .com to sign up to, as I see they also have .org? Like I say, I'm a total noob to this and SEO in general, as always relied on Adwords for my business.

muchacho said:

OK thanks for that. I'm slowly grasping all this. With regards to the 'link wheel' what's your thoughts on the tree analogy? Where as the trunk is the money site and the branches are the Web 2.0's? But they don't link to each other, they all just link to the money site, but then you work on getting lots of links to each 'branch'?

With Wordpress is it .com to sign up to, as I see they also have .org? Like I say, I'm a total noob to this and SEO in general, as always relied on Adwords for my business.

Click to expand...

If the branches are not interlinked, then you are just creating backlinks. No interlinking = no linkwheel.

Deferred linking to the branches is an experiment on which I am currently working. When I have enough information I will publish my results. At this stage, it is looking increasingly likely to me that all these linking methods have the same effectiveness.

More specifically, what I mean is this. If you follow only deferred linking, you will have to build approximately 20 times more links in total because a) you have more branches to link to, and b) the branches do not efficiently transfer linkjuice to the money site because of juice leakage and evaporation.

All this adds so much to promotion times that you might as-well pummel your money site with spam and sit it out in the sandbox for 3 months.

I get what you're saying.

So one way would be to write 10 articles and make sure some of them can follow on from another... this way, for example, article 3 could link to article 6, such as 'the benefits of {widgets} is discussed here' - article 6 being an article discussing the benefits of {widgets}.

Article 3 also links to the money site too.

I guess there is no exact science to the structure of the link wheel, so perhaps it would be best to write the articles with the user/reader in mind. If linking from one article (branch/web 2.0) to another, wouldn't make any sense, don't do it.

Planning is therefore very important.

You could then try using these same articles for a different long tail keyword (same theme) and create another 'link wheel'.
Whether the articles would need spinning is another question.

muchacho said:

I get what you're saying.

So one way would be to write 10 articles and make sure some of them can follow on from another... this way, for example, article 3 could link to article 6, such as 'the benefits of {widgets} is discussed here' - article 6 being an article discussing the benefits of {widgets}.

Article 3 also links to the money site too.

I guess there is no exact science to the structure of the link wheel, so perhaps it would be best to write the articles with the user/reader in mind. If linking from one article (branch/web 2.0) to another, wouldn't make any sense, don't do it.

Planning is therefore very important.

You could then try using these same articles for a different long tail keyword (same theme) and create another 'link wheel'.
Whether the articles would need spinning is another question.

Click to expand...

You've covered a lot of concepts here. The first question you need to ask yourself is "what exactly do I want to achieve?"

Answering this question involves looking at how you plan to make money. For brevity I will distinguish 2 types of money making plan.

1) Target buying keywords - people who enter these keywords are already looking to spend some cash. They have decided they want something and are looking on Google for the best place to buy it.

Under this system, all you need is top 10 placement. People will see the product at number 1, 2 or 3, click and buy. Commission paid, job done. There is one keyword where I control 7 sites on page 1, and 6 further sites on page 2. They are interlinked, and the fact that Google has let this stand for 2 months makes me doubt their detection abilities.

Content is auto-spun junk which is keyword rich. The content is made for Google, not for humans. Duplicate content can succeed in the short run, but I always make my content unique through auto-spinning because I believe it helps to secure long term rankings.

2) Target problem solving / sales pitch keywords - people have a problem, like spots, and are reading your ezine article or wordpress.com blog, which will convince them that they need to go to your money site and buy your magic acne cream.

I do not go for this system personally but from what I read on this forum, it is a popular way of doing things. It's also much harder - you must write articles and content for humans, which needs to be high quality and convincing. This will double or triple production time / cost.


The same distinction applies for deferred linking / satellite web 2.0 properties and articles, which are not interlinked and therefore not a linkwheel. If you fall under category (1), use junk content. If (2), you have to write good articles.

Thanks for the reply, that's helpful.

So, let's say in reply to the "what exactly do I want to achieve?", it's to sell golf clubs as an affiliate. I want people to come to my Golf Blog to read reviews on different golf clubs, before purchasing from a Golf Merchant. This I assume is 'Target problem solving' - number 2 above, as the audience are looking for golf clubs but unsure which one to get.

My website domain.com/golf-blog/ is using Wordpress (I hear, there are plugins to make it act well as a review blog) and what I want is to give people information about golf clubs in a way to pre-sell the golf clubs through my aff link.

So I write 10 unique articles about a certain Driver, let's say Callaway Driver (using 10 Web 2.0 Properties), which will have an ideal keyword density to hopefully rank near the top of Google for 10 separate long tailed keywords. These articles will just write about the product, such as it's history, the golfers who play with it etc. It won't be reviews from people who have actually bought it - this will be my main website which does this.

These 10 articles then all link to the blog post on domain.com/golf-blog/ which reviews the driver and then points visitors to the Golf Merchant to purchase - deal done. The 10 articles may interlink on several occasions.

The articles using the page 2.0 properties gives information about the product - my hosted blog, gives a bit of information about the product but more so reviews from people who have used the product and a link of where to purchase it. This way I get that extra bit of trust along the way.

Do you think this is a long way of going about things, or the correct way?
Sorry to go on a bit, but I appreciate any help to confirm my thoughts

What you are proposing sounds like a solid plan on the whole. You need to ask yourself:

Will people who read my web 2.0 general article then go on to click the link and visit my money site, and then go on to purchase?

If you think they will, no problem. In my experience, though, people behave like robots. They're lazy, most of them dont want to read around. The fewer clicks between the first view and the aff-link, the better.

You need to get a sales platform as high up on Google page 1 as you can. A sales platform can be your money site, or it can be a web 2.0 property. Here's how I'd do it:

1. Make a large, 12 spoke linkwheel focusing on your money site. To save time, use spun content which is keyword rich.

2. Build backlinks to to the spokes.

3. Wait for 2 to 4 weeks while Google works our the rank of your properties and your main site.

4. Turn all the pages you have in the top 10 into sales platforms, with a different review and an affiliate link.

By waiting to see which ones rank and then applying your hard-written content, you are saving considerable time and effort. Those properties that have junk content will still help the other properties, and your money site, to tank well in google due to relevancy scores.

Micallef said:

4. Turn all the pages you have in the top 10 into sales platforms, with a different review and an affiliate link.

Click to expand...

Won't Google come back and notice the content change, so their algorithm might totally re-rank the page in question?

That can happen mucacho, sometimes Google will re-rank. But quite often they will leave the content alone. I am not sure why this is. But I have tried it myself enough times to know that changing content on a ranked site / page doesn't necessary affect its SERP position.

So long as you keep the new content in the same context / theme as the previous content, there's a very good chance that there won't be an issue.

trafficator said:

give it some time.. it sure will work

Click to expand...

Give it at least a month

As advised further up by Micallef I'll give it 2-4 weeks and see what happens.

Micallef said:

How can you possibly know that?

I have had plenty of wheels which have failed completely, even after promotion. For unknown reasons, Google simply said no.

However, I later used exactly the same type of wheel on another keyword and had spectacular results.

People might try 3 linkwheels and fail, and then conclude that Google is "on to them". This is entirely false. You just have to keep trying new keywords.

Click to expand...

If I had one keyword domain. If the main keyword linkwheel is not success, can I make a new linkwheel but still promoting same anchor text keyword?

What are youoin - simple ple as that oh dea!!!

Micallef said:

Here's how I'd do it:

1. Make a large, 12 spoke linkwheel focusing on your money site. To save time, use spun content which is keyword rich.

2. Build backlinks to to the spokes.

3. Wait for 2 to 4 weeks while Google works our the rank of your properties and your main site.

4. Turn all the pages you have in the top 10 into sales platforms, with a different review and an affiliate link.

By waiting to see which ones rank and then applying your hard-written content, you are saving considerable time and effort. Those properties that have junk content will still help the other properties, and your money site, to tank well in google due to relevancy scores.

Click to expand...

I really don't understand, if link wheel asks for so much work, why not choose traditional backlink building method? Is there any difference between linkwheel and traditional link buiding method?