What are Link Wheels & Do They Work?
July 12th, 2010 | 46 comments
Link Wheels are a linking scheme that have been around for a little while now and I don’t believe I’ve ever discussed them publicly, so this is as good of a time as ever. Let me start by saying I have never attempted a “link wheel” and probably won’t be in the future (I’ll explain why later in the post.) This is simply my “outsider” thoughts on the scheme as a whole from someone who has been doing SEO for about 6 years now.
From what I’ve found in my own research there seem to be many different opinions as to what exactly constitutes a link wheel… there are many different “types” of them. But the most common is what is shown in the image above.
You have one “money site” which is your content site that you want to rank better in Search Engines for the keywords it targets. So you start a link wheel to do so, which basically consists of leveraging multiple web 2.0 sites like Squidoo, EzineArticles, Blogger etc. by creating pages on each of them, linking them all together to build up authority then link each of them to your site. You can see a good illustration in the image above.
DO THEY WORK? That’s the million dollar question. From an SEO perspective I can definitely say they should and probably DO work. I say they should because it makes sense to me and I say they probably do because in my research ALOT of people have said they do.
So WHY do they work?
It’s pretty basic SEO really. Let’s say there are 4 web 2.0 sites (a, b, c and d) and your money site. To simplify things we’ll say there are only two links on the entire page of each of the web 2.0 sites and we’ll give each of the 4 web 2.0 sites 10 authority “points”. This isn’t realistic, but to prove my point it doesn’t really matter… the same basic principles apply.
So, site A links to the money page and site B. Since authority is split up between links on the page, both pages receive half of the authority. Since our web 2.0 pages each have 10 authority “points” that means site B and the money page each receive 5 authority points. So now site B has 15 authority points instead of 10. So now site B links to the money page giving it 12 1/2 points and site C giving it 17 1/2. Now site C links to the money page giving it 21 1/4 points and site D giving it 18 3/4. Site D links to the money page giving it a total of 30.62 total authority points, which is about three times more authority than it had in the first place.
BUT if you only link to the money page and not to the other web 2.0 sites, each one of them will retain half of the authority points since they aren’t leaking it into the next web 2.0 site, meaning the same amount of authority will flow into the money page in the end.
So do they work? Yes. But I don’t see any reason why a link wheel would be any more effective than if you just link a bunch of web 2.0 sites to your money page, since that authority would be retained and would flow through to the money page.
Link Wheels direct authority around a wheel then into a hub site. That authority would snowball, but it’s the same authority… You can’t create authority out of thin air.
Why I Will Not Be Using Link Wheels
Aside from the primary point I just made (it just doesn’t make sense,) there is one other reason why I will not be doing any link wheels in the future. They are against Google’s TOS, so any “money site” that is the recipient of the link wheel authority is at risk of being flagged by Google. You can read how Google feels about “link schemes” for yourself.
I’m sure some will argue that it’s not a scheme, although to me it’s the epitome of a link scheme… a perfect example. So while a link wheel may very well help you rank your site higher in the SE’s it is risky and to me kind of pointless. I prefer to invest my time, money and resources into more stable and reliable link building techniques.
What do you think? I would love to hear your thoughts on link wheels in the comment field below.
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12th July, 2010 at 10:58 pm
Josh, it is so convoluted I would not even know where to begin. But, let’s say I make a Hubpage and want to test a niche.
It ranks after I send it some other web 2.0 links or whatever.
Cool, I will now target the niche and use the Hub to send a link to my new niche site.
Linkwheel?
As far as I can tell, backlinking the backlinks in any way possible is going to make those links more “sticky” so why not.
The google terms make no sense. Am I not allowed to make a Hubpage and a squidoo lens and inform those interested that I also have other pages with more information or a site that covers the topic in really great detail?
I know that what I wrote is trying to look at it from a naive point of view and is not the reality (i.e writing content to manipulate the serps), but any content written by us and submitted to wherever is gaming the system in the same way.
It is just that a piece of online content that has backlinks is going to carry more weight for the links it gives out, so why not promote the web 2.0 piece, especially if you can make money from it in its own right.
As far as I can tell it is just about ranking content, money site, lens, whatever, it’s all the same.
The system is gamed, full stop. Send 100 backlink solutions spins to a hub and you are there. I don’t like it but there it is, it works.
Hopefully this is argument enough for some good banter. I kind of wish I was wrong (well, I actually do), but serps results speak for themselves.
13th July, 2010 at 12:56 am
Dave – Just remove the links on the web 2.0 sites that form the “wheel” leaving the links that point to the money site and you no longer have a linking scheme, yet you have the exact same amount of authority pointing to your money page.
13th July, 2010 at 2:52 am
hey Josh,
Steve
I think I have to agree with everything you said.
I have a hard time seeing the advantage to linking the different sites into a wheel. It just seems too clever to me.
I have to think that just linking the sites to your own site is the smartest thing to do (even if it is boring old-school thinking) and it isn’t risking a penalty for creating an obvious link scheme.
I say let someone else build wheels. I’ll just keep building legitimate, quality links!
13th July, 2010 at 1:45 pm
Josh, I tend to agree. Years ago reciprocal links were all the rage, and worked incredibly well. Then once they were abused their value decreased dramatically.
The same will happen with link wheels, and any other manufactured SEO process.
If you believe Google that the user experience is #1, then any manufactured SEO or link building will eventually be overused/abused and will lose value. Maybe not all value, but most.
So I spend my time on less obvious link building methods – which take time, but should last.
Of course, any type of link “building” is in some way manufactured, but you can’t build a business sitting back and not developing relationships (like in a brick and mortar business where you go to Chamber or Trade events, write advertorials in newspapers, etc).
13th July, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Do you really think Google would penalize a site based on incoming links alone? If this were the case, maybe I’ll build a link wheel for all of my competitors.
13th July, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I’ve discussed linkwheels before and the problem about potentially getting your money site flagged.
The way around this is to build a linkwheel pointing to another site, which then links to your site, thereby creating a buffer zone between the linkwheel and your money site.
13th July, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Josh what you say makes sense, I am still pretty new to all of this and am just in the process of writing my articles and creating Web 2.0 pages that provide more information and link back to my main website.
Will make sure not to link them all together.
Thanks.
13th July, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Link wheels of this type are easily identifiable by Google. The biggest no-no is in “closing” the wheel. That is an obvious sign to Google that it is a scheme, and yes, it is a scheme.
But wouldn’t ANY self manufactured link building be considered a scheme? Of course it is. Google wants natural link building and that means other sites linking to you because they like your site not because you want them to.
But of course we can not afford to wait around for other sites to link to us just because they like your site.
The way to build links with web 2 sites (which are powerful) is similar to the above with a very important distinction. The interlinking of the web 2 sites must be done at random. That is much more natural looking to Google than the wheel.
Corin
13th July, 2010 at 2:26 pm
@ Brent – Yes, they can and will. Will they for a little link wheel? Probably not, but why risk it when link wheels really make no sense anyway. Just link all of those web 2.0 sites to your money page and don’t link them together. You get the same amount of authority either way. Authority isn’t created out of thin air.
13th July, 2010 at 2:28 pm
The system you show Josh is the most rigid linkwheel system and probably a popular one.
it can be spotted way too easily by google who would not “penalize” you as one commenter had, it but would simply discount the links.
All the time you spend doing that just goes down the drain.
13th July, 2010 at 2:29 pm
I think you’re right about it being too convoluted and splitting the authority too much. However, I do think that using places like squidoo and hubpages for inbound links to your main site is a good thing, provided that it’s done in a non-spammy way that benefits those sites as well as your own. It’s part of being a good netizen, and if done in a good way I doubt very much that any harm will come to the linked site.
In other words, if what you’re gonna do feels slimy, it probably is, and you shouldn’t be doing it.
Brent Crouch, you are EVIL, LOL!
13th July, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Excellent article Josh!…To me it makes sense to link directly to the money page, and not bother linking to other web 2.0 properties. Link Wheels sound ‘tricky’ and like they would be a benefit, but I’ve never seen it improve seo rank.
13th July, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Hi Josh,
Thanks for the clarification on the link wheel point. We first applied this technique using SEO Nuke but soon realised it was like announcing all your properties to search engines – Not cool
What we do now is have those external site links pointing directly to our money sites, then build links to those external sites’ pages that have our links.
In essence we try to increase the rank of the page on say Hub Pages by having other links pointing to that page. In turn this page links to our money sites.
But we dont link the external sites to each other to form the said wheel. Its not needed really.
My 2 cents
13th July, 2010 at 2:49 pm
I tend to agree that you should just link all of your web 2.0 sites to your money site without linking them together.
Good post Josh!
13th July, 2010 at 3:05 pm
If I build one web 2 site for the purpose of providing my money site with link juice, that is a linking scheme. I am artificially trying to boost my site’s authority to Google. It would be completely different if it were somone else that I didn’t even know building a web 2 site and linking to my site because they like it. That is what Google wants. Sites that are popular to other people.
If I go build several web 2 sites and link to my money site, that is also sending a red flag to Google. How likely is it that there will be 5 or 100 web 2 sites like to one site only?
If we are going to build web 2 sites to increase our site’s authority, we need to try as much as possible to do it in a way that looks like other people are doing it. This means linking not only to our money site, but also to other web 2 sites and other authority sites in our niche. Try to be diverse in your linking.
After all, we are building a linking scheme either way, even with one web 2 site, don’t kid yourself. So we want to look as natural as possible.
Oh and while you’re at it PLEASE provide good content on these web 2 sites you build. I cringe when I see some of the garbage that is put out there.
13th July, 2010 at 3:09 pm
I am no expert by any stretch of imagination, just a fast learning novice. I agree with Corin’s statements pertaining to Google’s unrealistic ideals. As I interpret Google’s stance on link schemes, even if I create single link articles on 2.0 properties such as HubPages, Squidoo, WordPress, and Blogger, pointing to my money site, Google will still turn its autocratic nose up at me. Google seems to totally disregard that hundreds of thousands of people use the Internet for their livelihoods, hard working people with no bad intent. Despite all the hoopla, it is not the easiest of environments in which to make a buck. Google’s first point states that a “bad” back link is one that intends to manipulate pagerank. Pagerank is definitely “one” of my considerations in linking my HubPage to my money site, so technically, according to God Google, I am engaging in a link scheme.
13th July, 2010 at 3:29 pm
@Corin Zander, good comment. This is the key to a successful linking scheme. Services like The Link Juicer and Synnd use that method. Other people link to your site using their accounts. Perfect link scheme cause not only are you getting links, Google is also thinking these people love your content. Just what google wants (I think).
13th July, 2010 at 3:44 pm
Very interesting – i think you’re dead right, too. I have tried link wheels before, with terrible results.
Google can detect them very easily – it is definitely
much better to have a more random link network, one that doesn’t follow such a ridiculously obvious pattern.
13th July, 2010 at 4:18 pm
Josh, I’m also very new to all this, but I do plan to stay with this for a long time, so I’d rather do things the right way and not with mirrors. Unless you are trying to make a quick buck, why try it? Websites take to much work for me right now to take any extra risks with them.
Bovic
13th July, 2010 at 4:44 pm
From the above comments, I can see the concensus is that link wheels are a bad idea…
That said (and I agree), I wonder if anyone has ever done a legit test of a link wheel set up versus a traditional set up (just the links pointing in, not side to side)…
Steve
13th July, 2010 at 5:20 pm
Hi Josh, thanks for laying it out like you did in your post. I had been contemplating using link wheels on a few of my sites, but now i think i will use my time and effort for other link building strategies.
Thanks,
Paul
13th July, 2010 at 5:49 pm
To me, relying totally on Google is a dodgey proposition. I have heard horror stories of peoples businesses disappearing overnight from relying on Google traffic as Google made a change and that was it for them (they may have been using the loop-holes).
I can see Google’s side as to not want to ‘played’ to make someone rich from their loop-holes. They want to provide a service that is fair to everyone.
13th July, 2010 at 8:53 pm
I personally think link wheels are a waste of time. You spend time setting up think linking network when you could’ve spent your time more wisely and probably gotten more visitors and more ranking juice by submitting your content to article directories. I tried link wheels once and never saw any improvement, so I basically hung it up and stuck to what I know works. Additionally, if the Big G catches on, you can kiss your efforts goodbye and perhaps your money site too.
13th July, 2010 at 10:04 pm
Hey Josh,
Great post!
I’m thinking that just about any program or strategy designed to get you there faster is not going to please any search engine.
I’ve been doing this stuff since 1998 and I’ve discovered, after selling on ebay for 5 years and owning 10 websites and a blog, that some programs or strategies get you in trouble after time.
Any un-natural action usually gets you a very natural re-action. (ie: black listed, credibility problems…etc)
All in all I have no problem with time savors or short cuts that save time and money but we have to carefully balance that with schemes that are created to earn the owner money and the rest of us some pain.
Keep up the great work!
All the best,
Mad Guy
14th July, 2010 at 12:39 am
Good points about the link wheels. I have considered using them in the past – but so far have just used web 2 properties to link back to my site, not each other. Maybe it’s just as well. As others have mentioned above, even that could be looked upon as gaming the system. But everyone does it to help with their rankings and Google must have some idea it goes on.
14th July, 2010 at 1:11 am
Hm, very good point, Josh and I’m glad I read it on time. I was on course to make some sort of a link wheel without taking those factors into consideration.
Thanks for saving me the time and trouble, I’ll probably just link directly to my site now.
14th July, 2010 at 2:29 am
My thought:
The reason why they do linkwheel is to avoid ‘Sandbox’, and this is particularly true to newly built site. If you domain have gain seniority [1 year or above], you probably OK with wheel – but I wouldn’t know for sure which brings me to the point…
… NO One know for sure until we test!
I did not see any cold-hard-figure presented here other than ‘I think’, ‘I believe’, etc. [pardon me, but I've just watched Nathan Anderson Niche ATM presentation and read the comments for the 2nd time! It's the side effect...]
I was exposed to linkwheel last year after I bought ‘Backlink Bully’ course from WSO by Mark D.
I was a good course and like one commentator said, the SERP proves it. If I’m not mistaken he test it with ‘Bowtrol’ or something like that. Then he came out with the 2nd version which he added some extra ‘precaution’ for new site and what he suggested looks exactly like Josh diagram here.
But whatever! The best expert to verify what you’re doing is right is the one who stares back at you when you look into the mirror.
Plus it’s easier to blame him/her if anything goes wrong. Keep rolling up your sleeve folks!
14th July, 2010 at 4:29 am
I agree with Brent: let’s kill the competition making link wheels around them
A link wheel is a net, and Google loves networks: the spider has possibilities to run around.
Pointing all links back to your site is creating a black hole: the spider crashes repeatedly on the center: “your money page”.
14th July, 2010 at 5:34 am
I had the same thought as Brent and Stef. Someone’s probably already building an automatic link wheel builder to penalize their competition. Soon the best SEO will be zero incoming links on a stand-alone page – and set your competitors up for carnage with spammy link wheels etc to get them de-listed.
I hope I’m joking!
14th July, 2010 at 9:09 am
Link wheels also seem like a lot of extra work with keeping track of all your links and where they are pointing to.
Everything I have read about building links says to make it random so it looks natural to Google. Link wheels definitely don’t look random so I’ll pass, especially if Google don’t like ‘em. I need Google to love my sites or I’m screwed.
14th July, 2010 at 9:26 am
All of this stems from Michael Campbell’s original ‘Revenge Of The MiniNet’ but that idea has always been a flawed way of you’re trying to game Google (which of course is exactly what a Linkwheel is trying to do).
PR does NOT flow unimpeded from one site to another – there is a ‘decay’ factor built in to stop closed loops, for example, building up infinite PR (think about it for a second and you’ll see why that is necessary).
However, what loops do successfully do is ensure that each page and link is actually indexed by Google, but the same can be achieved by just pinging those same URLs or bookmarking them.
The idea of transferring and building up PR in a loop is something of a myth anyway as any Web2.0 page always has masses of links running off it losing that same PR you’re trying to build up.
Taking everything together then Linkwheels ARE a waste of time IF you bookmark or ping your linking-in pages properly.
14th July, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Hi Josh
I used to use linkwheels on my main site but the danger is that it does indeed violate the Google ToS. However, paid text links also violate their ToS if they pass link juice yet there are many large corporations still using them, getting ranked highly without any apparent slap from Google. I wonder if there is still a case of one rule for the small guy and another for the big boys.
14th July, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Small link structures should be ok since it is only natural to interlink our own sites.
But if we follow a pattern that is part of a common linking scheme amongst popular domains then I would expect that to be coded into a bot algorithm that checks for this.
But even then, it may be flagged up for human revue and may be fine as long as it may still offer a good user experience between related content sites.
14th July, 2010 at 1:22 pm
Great discussion and timely for me – thanks everyone – I feel like the majority here, with all the time and effort we put into creating and building our business why take the risk, especially if you are looking long term. I’ll put my efforts into long term strategies
14th July, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Josh, I’m so glad you’re talking about this. I could never figure out why I would want to link my hub page to my squidoo page and so on. It wasn’t making sense and there was a reason for that.
14th July, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Having been approached by many clients about this topic, it’s great that you’ve started some dialogue about this publicly Josh. Trying to explain to someone that in the long term this will certainly be seen as a “scheme” is difficult especially as you said many are getting results from it.
It’s funny how as you stated, simply removing the links within the wheel will eliminate the scheme. If you’re manually going to do this then yes, it’s a simple solution but what most people don’t mention is that they are using automated tools. Having the option to rotate and choose which to interlink would greatly improve these tools results but for now, a huge footprint does exist and surely Google with their seemingly infinite resources will uncover this or most likely they have already
Creating great content and acquiring quality links..that’s all that’s needed. We should be honest and say that most of the things we do for SEO is a linking scheme in the eyes of the search engines like Google. We just need to do the best we can and in the end bring value to the internet as a whole.
Thanks for covering what’s important
Mark
ps. the above commenters rock btw!
14th July, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Great comments Mark!
We also need to remember that the web 2 sites by themselves are not enough. If your site has links from only these types of sites no matter how you set them up, that is a huge footprint.
Having a variety of types of links is a must. Using a blog network in conjunction with the web 2 sites is a terrific thing to do. You will have links from regular blogs in your niche across the internet.
But that is not all. Trying to acquire links from all types of sites will always give great results.
In reference to your comments about the automated tools, Using the automated tools in order to choose which properties to interlink is the exact opposite of what you want to do.
Humans have a natural tendancy to make patterns and even trying to not make a pattern in itself will cause a pattern. What you want is random interlinking that will more mimic the natural interlinking that will occur. So the use of automated tools (if you want to create networks of properties this way) is a good thing providing you use them to randomly interlink the web 2 sites.
Corin
14th July, 2010 at 6:03 pm
Hmmm. I find the whole attempt to rationalize what constitutes a “link scheme” more than a bit ridiculous. By the “strictest” definition, if *you* create a site that links to your money site – without adding any value to the “conversation” – you are engaging in a link scheme. If you add a link (unpaid of course) to someone else’s site, you are creating what Google would consider a “natural” link and adding value to the internet. Again, this is by the strictest definition as presented numerous times by Google.
So, why worry about the distinction between linkwheels vs. just plain old web2.0 marketing? Just because one is traceable and the other is not? That also suggests something underhanded…
Just food for thought. (I just engaged in another “link scheme”
)
14th July, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Josh, I appreciate your post and the opportunity you have given us to give our thoughts on this subject.
I find myself being drawn into this conversation but I want to avoid getting to far out of the scope of it.
Walt, I am not trying to rationalize a link scheme in any way. My first comment here was that building even one of these sites is a link scheme.
A link scheme is not unethical.
It is merely against Google’s TOS. But this does not make it unethical.
There are some things happening on the internet that are very unethical. Drawing people into a cpa offer by telling them they can download a copywrited movie only to give them absolutey nothing in return or installling adware on their computer is very unethical. These things are being taught by popular marketers right now. They are making thousand of dollars doing this. I am never going to stoop to that. That kind of thing is going to give us all a bad name and could ruin many of the avenues of opportunity we enjoy right now.
If I create quality blogs with quality content and link to my site to help boost it’s ranking, I not only consider that not unethical but very beneficial to the internet’s growing content. This is most definitely not underhanded in any way.
To reiterate a statement I made previously – Please provide good content wherever it is you put it.
Corin
14th July, 2010 at 6:44 pm
@ Corin Zander,
I like where you say, “Humans have a natural tendency to make patterns and even trying to not make a pattern in itself will cause a pattern.”
I think you are saying that the only way to create a truly NATURAL link profile is… to create a truly natural link profile!
And something tells me one shouldn’t underestimate the importance of said natural link profile.
In the end, I think one needs to develop a site that other people will naturally and randomly link to. Steve
14th July, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Some of these schemes ‘work’ but for how long? BANS ‘worked’ once upon a time too.
I’m sticking with what you teach in the Ultimate Link Building report.
16th July, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Link wheels sound like self-sustaining link farms. And the last time I checked those didn’t work either.
Erick
17th July, 2010 at 3:21 am
nothing works better than taking action with fresh regular content tied back to your site with a variety of keywords and also raw URL links. Slow and steady wins the race. Linking strategies are for short term projects.
24th July, 2010 at 1:16 pm
This is my experience of authority link wheels is very mixed. The first one which I created drove a huge amount of traffic to my site and certainly helped that particular website and register well in Google. However, I have used the same technique on a number of occasions and sometimes had very little response which I could measure at all.
What I have found works however is that the more spokes you have to your wheel the better, and what you can do under the circumstances is to link some of the spoke sites to some of the others and in this way are they promote each other, which in turn promote your main site. You can also create a second authority will which has the objective of promoting and in a Page of your main site, and this in turn really does start to move things along far more quickly. I hope this makes sense?
Nice article, thank you…
5th August, 2010 at 2:54 pm
I think that in order to look natural to the SE’s, the linking must look like it’s randomly done. So, when you draw out the link wheel, it looks perfect and symmetrical. If you were to link all your web 2.0 sites to your money site, but randomly link some of the web 2.0 sites to each other, then when you draw out this “map” of linking sites, it should look messy, not neat and perfect. Make sense?
Peggy
4th September, 2010 at 6:28 am
Its a nightmare frankly. Linking should not be required to get good quality sites to rank. Sadly however it is. There are a couple of good tools to create natural linking diagrams, probably the best of these is SerpAssist which is why I am an affiliate for it.
Still there we go, until something drastically changes and I don’t see how it can linking, backlinking and linkwheel set ups are going to be needed.