Linkwheel Tips - How to Make a Link Wheel that Works

Lots has been written about "the Link Wheel" recently, and it is not within the scope of this article to go into lots of depth about the construction and design of Link Wheels, but instead to cover the basic do's and don'ts and then move onto various observed effects regarding their implementation on various websites as an internet promotion tool.

The article assumes the reader has a basic understanding of the principle but in case you don't know the concept here is a quick summary.

A Linkwheel is a group of promotional mini-sites with articles about aspects of our business niche that all link to your main site, and usually link to each other.

The concept is not new and used to be known as a "Mini Net" (see http://revenge.s3.amazonaws.com/revengeofthemininet.pdf for details)

The idea has not changed over time but the availability of free website hosting (often on high pagerank and trust main domains) now means that it is both more economical and practical to use "Web 2.0" sites, free blog platforms etc, to build your mini-network on.

The simple answer is yes, the principle does, and when implemented correctly, they can and do improve rankings. The caveat to this is "when done correctly" and there are many things that you can do that will render your efforts ineffective at best, and entirely useless at worst. Many people actually think it's possible to harm rankings by a poor linkwheel implementation, i.e. Google labels it "spam" and this damages your websites standings in Google.

From studying several test sites, and lots of research into poorly built examples belonging to others found on the internet there appears to be no convincing evidence that a poor implementation can actually hurt your rankings, and this is also Google's stated position (otherwise it would be very easy for competitor A to damage competitor B's rankings by simply buying them a poorly built linkwheel) so it makes sense that Google would simply ignore the linkwheel, rather than apply negative factors to your site.

..Good question.

Here is a list of things you definitely should do, and things you definitely shouldn't do if you want a linkwheel to help your website rankings.

Linkwheels - things to definitely do

1. Build it slowly. Aim to put one "web 2.0 property" (mini site with article) live no sooner than every 2 days.
2. Use unique content for each property**
3. Use the main keywords in the name of the mini-site i.e. keyword1-keyword2.freesite.com
4. Use the main keywords in the Titles of the property.
5. Link from each property to your main site, only once.
6. Link from one property to the next, using "one way" links
   
7. Ensure that 9 out of every 10 properties you use do not use "nofollow" on external links
   
8. Ensure that 1 out of every 10 properties do use "nofollow"
9. Ping your properties
10. Submit your properties RSS feeds to feed aggregators
11. Update your properties over time with new content.
    

Link Wheels - things to definitely not do

1. Do not build your properties all at once and put them all live over an hour or two.
2. Do NOT use the same content in each one. This is the kiss of death to your efforts
3. Do not use exactly the same sub-domain name on each, vary them using singular, plural and "modifiers" ie buy-keyword1-keyword2s.com
   
4. Do not use identical Page Titles, vary them in similar fashion to the urls.
5. Do not link all the properties to each other.
6. Do not use 2 way links between properties (ie each links to the other)
7. Do not use all identical anchor text in the links to your main site, use min. 2 or 3 variations
8. Do not close the ring of links into a full circle. The 1/10 nofollow sites should protect from this but it's better if you do it by design.
9. Do NOT ping all your properties at once, do it randomly and spread out over a matter of days and weeks
10. Do not submit all your properties RSS feeds at once, or through the same feed aggregator
11. Do not "publish and forget" the properties, as they will fade out of the main Google index and into the supplemental index and gradually become less and less value to you.
    

With the advent of Google's new Caffeine infrastructure, designed to allow them to index much more information, and faster, to be able to cope with the demands of the real-time web, they also seem to have implemented more quality control on what they are willing to index in any meaningful manner.

Because of this, it is essential that you use unique (or lets say ****Google unique) content, because it is getting harder and harder to get Link Wheel properties indexed, and it would appear the uniqueness of the content is a major factor in whether Google will include a one-post website into their main index.

****Google unique content - doesnt have to be entirely unique, you can use the body of another article in quotations, but you must have different urls, different pagetitles and an absolutely unique 30-50 word introduction before the quoted text.

It is also entirely normal to see improved rankings in the SERP but no sign of the links in your linkwheel at all, inside your Google Webmaster Tools panel. Many now speculate that Google is now only listing links from their main index inside WMT, and hence many linkwheel properties are not visible, however the rankings effect still is.

Nobody really understands the whats and whys except Google themselves, but it would seem that the new ranking algorithm is looking at other social media factors, possibly citations, and especially RSS feeds.

What is certain is that Google get better at fighting "spam" daily, so if you are going to have any success with your Link Wheel you have to ensure that Google doesnt immediately mark you as spam,and the best way to do that is to follow all the guidelines above.

If you feel that this is too much work or beyond your capabilities you will be much wiser to employ a linkwheel supplier to do the job correctly for you rather than be tempted to cut corners and end up wasting your time, because after all time is money.

One such supplier who build using exactly these principles is Superior Link Wheel but there are plenty more out there, just be sure to confirm that they work by these rules above and all will be well. Or if this all sounds a bit too much you might want to consider a white hat link wheel.

Good luck and a prosperous small business internet marketing career to you all.