Linkwheels - Post Your Successes and Failures Here!

As many here will know, a linkwheel is a network of web 2.0 properties which interlinks to itself in a wheel structure, and aims to raise the search engine rank of a central hub or money site. It's pretty much the in thing at the moment on the forum and I've been working on a variety of different interlink patterns myself.

My linkwheels:

In each of my wheels, all sites link to the hub and to usually 2 other wheel sites, but the link structure is modified in each wheel to spice things up a bit.

I have made 6 wheels for 6 keywords: 1 x (24 sites), 3 x (16 sites), 2 x (10 sites)

In every case bar one I have managed to create a considerable presence on the first page. The greatest success was with a 16 spoke wheel, which saw me take the number 1 spot and 7 other page 1 positions! The best thing about linkwheels, to my mind, is that I find myself dominating all sorts of other related keywords that I'd never even thought of before.

Post here about what's gone right - or wrong - with your linkwheels. If you've had success, how do you think you achieved it?

Haha, linkwheels...oh god. I tried a 6 spoke once, and I did find some results. I just posted the exact same article on 6 different sites linking to each other as well as the money page...and to my surprise, a few days later my hits were skyrocketing because the image I kept hotlinking was like #4 (on Page 1 for images) on a pretty hot keyword.
Nevertheless, I'm getting into White Hat now, so maybe I'll have more results to post later.

PS: Is there a linkwheel program? Where you create a spun article and it randomizes it all up and submits it to all the sites automatically?

Micallef,

I am interested in learning about your 16 spoke linkwheel. What are the best site to use etc. I understand the process, and the mindset. For each of your linkwheels do you add unique content etc.

Hi. this is a timely thread. likewise, i am deploying my first linkwheel, consisting of 6 spokes on a 10 day old site. at the moment, i link to center money page and to one other web 2.0 property. then bookmark and ping the properties / posts.

BTW, squidoo deleted my lens and banned my IP for have more links than recommended. hubpages also suspended my first hub and gave me the opportunity to make it less commercial in content, which i did and the hub was reinstated fast. squidoo on the other hand gave no warning or advice to amend my lens.

i can report that my money site is listed on page 6 of about 1.5 million broad match term and on page 1 for a few unintened keywords. so i am happy so far. i will do a little more linking and bookmarks to try to push the money site up the serps.

so far, i have not seen any of the other web 2.0 properties ranked or any of the articles. but maybe need a little more time.

in terms of traffic, nothing significant as yet, about 20 uniques per day.

so, i can certainly see the power of the linkwheel strategy for improving serp ranking. the linkwheel strategy is consistant with howie's methods also.

in my case, the product i am promoting is a cpa offer and out of 40 clicks to the merchants lander, only 1 conversion. i will give the site another 2 weeks of attention to see if the product starts to improve in conversions. if not, i will divert attention to new site / offer.

i am a n00b

dealhunter said:

Micallef,

I am interested in learning about your 16 spoke linkwheel. What are the best site to use etc. I understand the process, and the mindset. For each of your linkwheels do you add unique content etc.

Click to expand...

creating the web2.0 properties is fun. creating multiple bookmark accounts is bookmarking all properties is a pain. i use spun content for each property, seeded from 1 article. if i was to create linkwheels to promote each property in the first linkwheel, i would create unique seed article again and spin

Web 2.0
Properties

Squidoo.com
Hubpages.com
Quizilla.com
Zimbio.com
Wetpaint.com
Weebly.com
Wikidot.com
Twine.com
Docstoc.com
Knol.google.com
Slideshare.net
Scribd.com
Esnips.com
Blinkweb.com
Ehow.com

Blogging

Blogger.com
Wordpress.com
Livejournal.com
Vox.com
Tumblr.com
Clearblogs.com
Blog.com
Thoughts.com
Blogster.com

Video Sharing

Youtube.com
Dailymotion.com
Video.yahoo.com
Vids.myspace.com
Metacafe.com
Blip.tv
Veoh.com
Vimeo.com
Revver.com

Google Tools

Adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
Google.com/trends
Google.com/insights/search
Google.com/alerts
Google.com/products

Bookmarking

Digg.com
Delicious.com
Propeller.com
Reddit.com
Technorati.com
Diigo.com
Jumptags.com
Mylinkvault.com
Faves.com

That's one hell of a good list redim, some stuff on there I've not heard of.

I am sorry to hear your properties keep getting taken down. I am happy to report that not one of my 70 + web 2.0 sites has been taken down. Here's what I do:

I put my keyword into google. Then, I rip one paragraph of text from each site in the results, mixing up different paras from different sites, until I have 16 (or whatever number I'm going for) 3 paragraph articles. Then, I jack them through an automated spinner. Finally, I add my keyword 3 or 4 more times to each article. The content I use passes copyscape and is human readable, although if you were to read it fully, you wouldn't exactly be impressed.

Before I publish my spun articles to the web 2.0 properties, I always add a "decoy" post just a few sentences long. This is something along the lines of "hi, welcome to my blog, hope you like it" etc.. and I usually add a nice trustworthy looking picture of some old guy. It seems to work wonders.

Micallef said:

I put my keyword into google. Then, I rip one paragraph of text from each site in the results, mixing up different paras from different sites, until I have 16 (or whatever number I'm going for) 3 paragraph articles. Then, I jack them through an automated spinner. Finally, I add my keyword 3 or 4 more times to each article. The content I use passes copyscape and is human readable, although if you were to read it fully, you wouldn't exactly be impressed.

Before I publish my spun articles to the web 2.0 properties, I always add a "decoy" post just a few sentences long. This is something along the lines of "hi, welcome to my blog, hope you like it" etc.. and I usually add a nice trustworthy looking picture of some old guy. It seems to work wonders.

Click to expand...

I steal "ahem" I mean obtain my content pretty much the same way but I usually rewrite it myself.
It takes a helluva long time. Do you use a paid spinner or something thats free? Mind sharing?

Ive found that google loves hubpages and I use them as my focus hub and have been trying to get some sales on products I'm promoting before investing in a domain and hosting. No luck as of yet but keeping at it.

Was wondering if you could tell me a few of the other 2.0 properties that big G likes to rank. I got my wetpaint site up to page 2 so I figure they get some love. Any others that you could name?

Reason I ask is that I would rather put a bit better content and my affiliate link on these sites and put the spun crap on the others.

I tend to overthink and overdo things alot. Thats the reason Ive been rewriting this stuff myself. I guess I just need to think, then do!

Anyways thanks for this thread as I'm sure it will help me and alot of others using this system!

Sorry so long!.................J

Well I thought I'd let you know that I started a 12 spoke linkwheel just after I made this thread and now it's done, so that was about 6 hours total for everything (rip content, spin content, juggle keywords, new gmail, new web 2.0 accounts, publish, link-up)

Bloody hard work. But once you're in the mindset it's relatively easy to turn out these linkwheels on an industrial scale. Imagine the time you'd save if you outsourced. Of course, half the job is still to go - I'll need to ping all sites and build backlinks, which will add another few hours onto my time.

hey Mic, you mentioned you autospin the content, do you use a wplug for that or do you roll out a few versions with PAR ??

Why excactly do you use the linkwheel :
1) is it to get higher ranking
2) Is it to get traffic from the web 2 site

If it's just for high ranking , I can post spun crappy articles everywhere and do a link-wheel ; Which ones of the web 2 properties are reviewd by real humans ? ( that evaluate my content and decide to aprove it or to reject it )

By the way, thank you for the nice list Redim
are all those site Do-Follow ?

Hubpages and wetpaint are nofollow. Generally speaking, most web 2.0 properties and hosted blogs have some sort of human review process.

The purpose of a linkwheel is to dominate a keyword's first page. The linkwheel will direct both traffic and link juice to a central hub - the money site - which will generally take the top spot out of all the linkwheel's sites (although sometimes it doesn't)

I would not imagine that you would have much success if you posted material that was clearly garbage. Not only would it not make any conversions or direct any traffic, it would probably not get through human review in sufficient quanity to keep the linkwheel effective.

Micallef, what do you think of this link wheel design. It is my first. 5 wordpress properties and 2 blogger properties.



Also, I intend it use this wheel and re-use it later. Will it defeat the purpouse of a wheel to have, lets say, an article about an rss tool on each blog, and then maybe a week later place an article about twitter on each blog? and ever now and again ciruclate a new layer of articles onto the wheel.

As far as staying on track with the topic. I have run one layer of promotional articles through the wheel, but I am not sure how long it will take to see a result.

Some of my properties were indexed almost immediately. I was notified through google alerts (tracking the keyword there)

Micallef, I've got a question for you. Do you target different niches and then make link wheels or are you focusing all these link wheels all at one hub?

adbox, that's essentially the way I make linkwheels except:

1) I generally use more sites than 7. Google is fickle and there's a lot about link juice transfer that you can't anticipate. Sometimes blogger ranks top, sometimes its hubpages, on one keyword it was even Jimdo. But there are always a few properties that don't quite seem to make it to page 1 or 2. To prepare for this seeming eventuality, I sure up the numbers.

2) I usually insert one or more irregularities into a wheel, for reasons of staying under the radar, as well as just to see what works. For example, you might have 1, 2 and 3 linking to 4, but then only 1 link out of 4.

Regarding your idea about re-using the wheel to rank for different articles on different topics at different times, I'm not so sure. This is because:

1) A large part of why a linkwheel ranks for a keyword is that its url and backlink anchors are keyword targetted. You cannot change these elements when you put up your new material.

2) You cannot rely on the full wheel coming into effect in a set timeframe. There are commonly delays in indexing. There are vast differences in indexing speed from site to site that seem to apply at random. For example, just earlier today I made a xanga page and it was indexed within 15 minutes. Had you asked me before that about how good xanga is for linkwheels, I would have said "not very - it takes forever to get indexed".

But I'd say the underlying concept is fine and if you've chosen the right keyword niche, there's a good chance that you'll have a good page 1 presence. If a week passes and you don't, then build some backlinks.

@ Albert - Each linkwheel is for a new keyword. I tend to aim for low competition keywords, but I have been lucky enough to rank on page 1 for three related highly competitive 1-word product name keywords that I was not even targetting. This is just down to luck.

adbox, that's essentially the way I make linkwheels except:

1) I generally use more sites than 7. Google is fickle and there's a lot about link juice transfer that you can't anticipate. Sometimes blogger ranks top, sometimes its hubpages, on one keyword it was even Jimdo. But there are always a few properties that don't quite seem to make it to page 1 or 2. To prepare for this seeming eventuality, I sure up the numbers.

Click to expand...

I bet this is because one 2.0 hub has more already posted material on that subject in their family network than the other. You could research the keyword to see which network was fatter in results, and build your wheel accordingly.. : D maybe..

Some of my ideas:

There are many concepts of linkwheel, and I think the king is still content of your articles. Don't spin only article and submit your spun ones. Do write up 6 original articles for the same keyword and make a linkwheel for these articles.

Then, submit RSS, do social bookmarking for each and every article, url, profiles ...

just my 2 cents

When i did spin my articles it took me like 3-4 days to get indexed. When i did spin them all (about 30%) uniqueness they got indexed in about 12 hrs. I backlink them and book mark them and ping them but they arent showing up on 1st or 2nd pages of google. But i have seen my main website rise up in the serps. Im not sure if this is linkwheels i have made or just the major backlinking ive been doing.

I use onlywire to book mark my stuff....do i have to make seperate accounts if i bookmark different niches?

Is there any linkwheels outsource service here ? How about using Senuke ? Which one is better n cheaper ?
Thanks

right after reading this thread.I started working on 2 linkwheels,just for fun:
one with eight properties.
and one with 100 properties,ya right hundred(offcourse it has some pages on same properties),just doing it for fun.
all linking to my lander.
pinged everything in my first linkwheel and for second my employee is working on it.
the keyword i am trying to dominate has 45k competition in quotes.
lets see what happens.
btw what is the best indexing method in addition to pinging and bookmarking(though i will bookmark on only 2 or 3 properties)

I do about 100 properties as well. I do not use squidoo and hubpages since they tend to ban often and also the fact that some properties carry heavy advertising ads on the published properties which causes a dilution in a clickthrough rate to my money page. Every property carries a ONE way link to the money page.