6 months ago, I wrote the article “The Benefit Of Building A Link Wheel Is Bogus“. Since writing the article, I have had significant search engine traffic for the term “link wheel” without any other self-created content pointing back to it. Over the past month, it is the third most popular page on this blog behind the home page and the first and possibly only Smoking Hot Board Game Deal.
Also since then, I have had a lot of time to think about this strategy for increasing rankings in search engines. If you boil the idea down to its essentials, then it is not an inherently bad idea. It is however still a waste of time as I will show you.
The Essentials
Search engine rankings significantly improve with incoming links from trustworthy sources. Additionally, for any infrequently used phrase there will be few if any trustworthy sources. So, what a linkwheel does is create trustworthy sources which can then link to your target page. Example:
We have 6 wheel spokes and 5 referring sites per spoke. The 5 referring sites on the spoke point to each other in a circle (so each has one incoming and one outgoing link) and all have links that point to the spoke. The 6 wheel spokes operate in the same manner, pointing to each other in a circle (one incoming and one outgoing link) and also point to the target page.
The result is that some unlikely search phrase like “win free board games email signup” now has 6 trustworthy referring sources. Additionally, those 6 trustworthy referring sources are point at page XYZ. Therefore, when somebody search in Google for “win free board games email signup” they will be shown the target page. Beautiful!
Still A Waste Of Time
The problem relies in all of the effort required. First, you need to do keyword research to make sure you have a search phrase that is not currently well covered and that you have a search phrase that has sufficient searches. Second, you need to create the target page. Third, you need to create the wheel spoke pages. Fourth, you need to create the referring authority pages for the spokes. Wow! I wonder how long all of that effort would actually take. Certainly it would take at least 3 hours to do right, possibly longer.
Instead of wasting 3 hours on creating a link wheel, I could make at least one, possibly 2 really good guest blog posts. These guest blog posts could be used by a related blog containing multiple links back to your content. Instead of what you did, you get instant authority for an unlikely search phrase coupled with real human interest from the readers of the blog. Additionally you get to build up a relationship with a blogger in a related field which may begin reading your blog and occasionally linking back to your content.
Conclusion
Don’t waste your time with link wheels. It pollutes the Internet with trash throw away content in an effort to get additional search traffic. Instead concentrate on what you can do to build a lasting presence and build a business that is looking to a future with its customers. Would it make sense to pay somebody to make a link wheel? Once again, I say it is a waste of time and small business owners cannot be spending money on time wasting projects. That needs to wait until you are running a large bureaucratic corporation.
Related posts:
- The Benefit Of Building A Link Wheel Is Bogus
- Attracting And Developing An Audience – Part 3
- The 5 Most Important Things I Learned About Google PageRank
- Top 5 Benefits Of A Superior Online Brand For Your Blog
- One Week Twitter Traffic Experiment Results
- 5 Reasons To Consistently Create Unique Content
- Building Trust – Easy As 1-2-3
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Simply put… anytime you try to game the system by “faking” out the search engine in a way that isn’t true content… those search engines will eventually get smarter and overcome the game. Even worse… they may penalize you once you realize that you tried to do this.
Writing valuable content is the best way to get attention! Interacting with others (commenting creates linkbacks) is valuable if there is content in your comment!
Agreed. Gaming the system takes significant effort, whereas redirecting that significant effort into creation will bring better long-term results.
Previous Comments:
Kevin E. Schlabach January 27, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Simply put… anytime you try to game the system by “faking” out the search engine in a way that isn’t true content… those search engines will eventually get smarter and overcome the game. Even worse… they may penalize you once you realize that you tried to do this.
Writing valuable content is the best way to get attention! Interacting with others (commenting creates linkbacks) is valuable if there is content in your comment!
Michael January 27, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Agreed. Gaming the system takes significant effort, whereas redirecting that significant effort into creation will bring better long-term results.
I had a gentleman call me today with an idea for a membership site. One of the training videos he planned to put on the membership site was how to build a “link wheel.” He said he'd had good success using it to get a high ranking in Google. We didn't get into the keywords he was ranking for or whether the sites were making money. I didn't really care, because as soon as he said he used virtually the same article over and over again for the link wheel sites, I lost interest. I didn't want my name connected with tactics that I don't personally believe in. As others have said, there's enough trash on the Internet! I prefer creating unique, useful content, preserving my good name online and teaching my clients how to build real authority sites, rather than encouraging them to spread garbage around. I have no problem with getting quality backlinks as part of a person's SEO strategy, but it's very time-consuming. For me, putting the same effort into creating additional unique and useful content yields better results… with much less effort.
As you can tell from my article, I am in full agreement. I am glad to know of more of us out there. There as so many people stepping over dollars to chase after nickels, and in the process adding to the unhelpful nature of much of the Internet.
Hello, this king of search engine is very useful specially those who happened to work in article writing or publishing. You can easily access n this site. Thanks for sharing your ideas to us.
Well almost every one here seem to be angry about link-wheel. But I would like to bring my point to be in notice.
# For a small business to be a large business, they should not think of spending 3 hours or more on research and creation. They should at least give it a try so that they'll learn in the process as well as building back-links meanwhile for their site.
just remember two things and no link-wheel will be a waste of time ever:
1) make each property/page unique (no cheating pls)
2) do remember to manage your “class c subnet” IP. (search on interent for this term and you will know what I mean)
The main Idea is to do something and not just say this is wrong or right.
hope m right
Well almost every one here seem to be angry about link-wheel. But I would like to bring my point to be in notice. nn# For a small business to be a large business, they should not think of spending 3 hours or more on research and creation. They should at least give it a try so that they’ll learn in the process as well as building back-links meanwhile for their site.nnjust remember two things and no link-wheel will be a waste of time ever:nn1) make each property/page unique (no cheating pls)n2) do remember to manage your “class c subnet” IP. (search on interent for this term and you will know what I mean)nnThe main Idea is to do something and not just say this is wrong or right. nnhope m right