What is a Link Wheel?

What is a link wheel?

If you spent any time learning about SEO techniques and backlinking strategies, chances are you came across the term “link wheel”. If you are new to the SEO game, you may not be familiar with what a link wheel is. In this article, we will discuss what exactly a link wheel is and the power behind it.

A link wheel is a single tier backlinking strategy that pushes link juice to the money site and the other backlinks within the same tier. This, in turn, strengthens the quality of those backlinks. Here we have a diagram of what the link wheel structure looks like.

As you can see, the tier 1 links all point to the money site and one another tier 1 link. The next backlink then points to the money site and a 3^rd backlink. This is repeated until all of he backlinks are connected with each other to form a “wheel”.

With the backlinks pointing to each other, they push page rank and link juice through the chain which strengthens each link. This strategy is great at maximizing the benefits that you get with each tier 1 backlink.

Sounds great, right? It was in 2002. Since then, Google and the other search engines have caught on to this blackhat strategy. Google will now penalize your site heavily if they find a link wheel that is linking to your money site. They even have algorithms which specifically seek out link wheel and link wheel patterns.

The way to avoid Googles detection is by unlinking the chain. Instead of a complete circle, there should be a beginning and end of the chain; more link a link line than a link wheel. In other words, the first backlink should have no tier 1 links pointing towards it and the last backlink should not point towards any other tier 1 backlink.

This is a good way to avoid detection; however, in a post Panda/Penguin world, these link lines can sometimes incur penalties as well. Long chains of links like these seem very unnatural. They are more difficult to find and are penalized less, but we can get safer.

In order to stay off of Googles radar completely, you should break up the wheel of backlinks in several places. It is okay to have 3-4 links in the straight line format,but going any further could put your backlinking profile at risk.

What kind of links should I put in my link wheel?

You will want these links to be of high quality. Web 2.0’s are great to use in our pseudo link wheel. WordPress.om,Blogger, Tumblr etc.… High PR blog inks is also good to use in a link wheel. What ever they may be, try to keep them of the highest quality as you can.

Can I backink my linkwheel?

Yes. It is always a good idea to backlink your quality backlinks. The reasons for backlinking your link wheel links are a bit different, though. You are not looking to add strength to the backlinks within your link wheel in this case. You are not aiming for that because it would be largely ineffective use of your resources. That type of strategy is better reserved for a more traditional pyramid strategy. The main goal of backlinking your link wheel backlinks is for indexing purposes.

That about wraps up our intro to link wheels. When you create a link wheel, use high quality Web 2.0 blogs and never connect the entire chain together. As long as you follow these simple guidelines,you should be safe from any Google penalties, at least until the next animal inspires update, hat is.