Secrets to Creating a 'Successful' Link Wheel

The term Link Wheel is a relatively new term however the concept has been around since the dawn of the internet. For those of you who can recall that far back, it is of course those ‘Mini Nets’ of yesteryear that actually pioneered the evolution of today’s modern equivalent, the Link Wheel. But what is it exactly and more importantly what can it do for your online business?

First of all, a link wheel is nothing more than an ‘intelligent’ link building method using a combination of strategically linked article directories and web 2.0 properties such as Squidoo and E-Zine Articles for example. Secondly, the advantage to your online business when using a Link Wheel over most other link building methods is that it’s fast to implement, it gets you results in weeks, not months, plus it’s cost effective to deploy.

Despite the many myths lurking around in some forums, the only way a Link Wheel won’t work for you is if you fail to set it up correctly at the start. This usually happens when trying to apply a very basic 'copy and paste' strategy to one of an abundance of out-dated resources on the subject that still seem to be floating around in the search results.

So how do you go about setting up a 'successful' link wheel and what exactly are you going to need?

Certainly there's more than one way to set-up a successful link wheel. How fast depends on how much you want to spend, and how it's structured depends entirely on you, but the essential ingredients to creating a successful LinkWheel are as follows;

• First, set-up free accounts with several article directorys and/or web 2.0 services such as Squidoo, Helium, E-zine Articles, Blogsome, Triond and Suite 101 for example. These sites are particuarly good to use because they're high PR, all links are do-follow and pages are created using a sub-directory and not a sub-domain. This is important because a sub-directory from a high PR site contains more ‘link juice’ than a sub domain, which Google generally ranks in the same way as a brand new website.

• Secondly, populate each of those new accounts with a 500 – 1000 word article, focussing no more than 1-4% of your overall content on your chosen keyword. You can do this yourself or for as little as $9 per article you can save time and use a service such as My Article Express for example.

• Within each article ensure your main article body or anchor text has two links. The first link will point to the second article and the second link will point towards your targeted landing page or money site. This then continues as per the diagram below. However you’ll note that site 6 is NOT connected back to site 1. This is called an open wheel and the reason for this is that if the Google algorithm picks up on your Link Wheel it will simply devalue those links. This is why we leave the wheel open creating instead either a linear or horseshoe effect.

• The final step in creating a successful Link Wheel is to then Bookmark each article with 25-50 do-follow social bookmarks. I’d also suggest RSS submitting each article to 25-50 RSS directories. Again you can spend the time and do all of this yourself or you can spend just a few dollars and employ someone else to do it for you.

Before diving in head first I've also enclosed in this post a few Do’s, Don’ts, Common myths and Resources. These are all worth bearing in mind because when done correctly, Link Wheels really can make an exponential difference to your online campaign.

Link Wheel Do's

• Do use only good quality and original articles. Anything less could result in Google failing to index a page thus reducing the overall link potency of all your hard work.

• Do randomise and re-word your anchor text links to include raw links plus ‘click here’ text. Whilst this is generally not very good SEO best practice, the fact remains that in reality this is what happens and so helps give all your links a more natural appearance when being indexed.

• Do create 'different' Web 2.0 or article directory accounts for each Link Wheel so as to minimise your link trail or footprint with Google.

Link Wheel Don'ts

• Don’t use 'spun' articles for your Link Wheel content. Use only good quality and original articles.

• Don’t use the same Link Wheel site arrangements twice. Instead ensure that you always randomise the connections/spokes between the inter connecting web 2.0 / Article sites and your money site.

• Don’t use web 2.0 sites with low PR. Failure to utilise the high PR sites will lower the link juice to your own site and the overall effectiveness of the Link Wheel.

Link Wheel Myths

• Contrary to popular belief, Link Wheels are not black hat. Instead Link Wheels are totally white hat plus if implemented correctly can make a substantial difference to any online campaign.

• Don't believe everything you read in the forums. Link Wheels do work. Whilst there are many people that claim they don’t, the main reason is usually because they haven’t been set-up correctly.

• Another common myth is that using a Link Wheel will get you banned from Google. This is not true. If Google detects your Link Wheel it will simply devalue those links to your website. You will not get a Google ban or slap for using a Link Wheel.

Resources 

• For a a comprehensive list of high PR web 2.0 Services this post courtesy of the Warrior Forum should really help you get familiar with what's out there.
• For quality article writing at an extremely low cost I use My Article Express.
• For Social Bookmarking Services at an incredible $10 for 125 links, I use Link Outsource. 
• Finally, for another great Link Wheel strategy you should also take a look at Jared Croslows Link Wheel Strategy fresh for 2011 right here.

To learn more about Link Wheels and other SEO traffic tactics, become a member today, it's free, requires only your name and email address plus you’ll receive our brand new top 21 traffic tactics report absolutely FREE.

Paul Graham

Marketer Trade Secrets.com

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