Link wheels are a great little link building tactic that are easy to implement but can make a real difference to your chances of ranking for a particular keyword. A while back they were very popular with SEO experts and link builders although they lost some of their appeal when some people claimed they weren't as effective anymore. This may or may not be true however I still find them to have a positive effect on my keyword rankings most of the time and they certainly won't have a negative effect.

It is well worth spending a bit of time setting up link wheels as they have the potential to be very powerful tools and I've found that if a keyword ranking has been stuck for a few weeks around a certain position then building a link wheel to target that keyword can help kick start the campaign and get the site moving up the rankings again.

Basically, a link wheel is a set of around 5 or 6 Web 2.0 properties that are linked together like a wheel around your site, the wheel hub. Each Web 2.0 property contains unique content that is related to the keyword you want to rank for. It also has 2 links in the content. One is to your money site that you want to get up the search engine rankings, the other is to the next Web 2.0 property so that it forms what looks like a wheel, as seen below.

When I talk about a Web 2.0 property I am talking about 3rd party hosting sites that Google considers very highly when evaluating links from these sites. You can see the examples above (Squidoo, Webs, Blogger, Viviti, LiveJournal) and I shall give you some more popular Web 2.0 properties at the end of this article. As I said, each property should contain unique content but it doesn't have to be a huge article, even 200-300 words will suffice in most cases. It is important to make sure that the anchor text for both links on each Web 2.0 property are the keyword that you are trying to rank for, and that the links to your site should all link to the same page on your site.

These link wheels work so well because Google sees these kinds of sites as high authority sites, and the fact that they are linked together only increases the authority of them. This is because it mimics the way that these authority networks or sub webs are created naturally in a niche. As a page on a certain website become important in that niche, the authority sites in that niche which will most likely be linking to each other will begin to link to this new important web page. This is what a link wheel emulates.

The reason that some people decided that link wheels were not working anymore is because they can possibly leave a footprint that Google can detect. It is true that the fact that your Web 2.0 properties link together in a wheel is a link pattern that Google could detect, I'm not so sure they are that worried about it and even if they do decide they don't like your link wheel, you won't get hurt from having it link to your site the worst that could happen is that the links from your link wheel might not count for much.

One way to get round this is to leave out the final link from the last Web 2.0 site to the first, thus not completing the wheel. This will avoid leaving a footprint but may not be as effective as an authority hub linking to your money site. It is best to try and track the results of your link wheel building by alternating between a closed wheel and an open wheel and seeing how effective they both are. If you are getting good results with your closed wheels I would just stick with them.

One other way to use link wheels to drive traffic and increase the authority of your site is to start creating link wheels around the Web 2.0 sites in your main link wheel. This has the effect of boosting the authority of the main link wheel which in turn passes it on to your money site.

One final word, I wouldn't use link wheels on new sites as that would look unnatural in Google's eyes. Only use after you have done at least a couple of months of normal link building or if you have set up your site on an aged domain.

Popular Web 2.0 properties

  • http://wordpress.com
  • http://blogger.com
  • http://livejournal.com
  • http://bloxster.net
  • http://freeblogit.com
  • http://insanejournal.com
  • http://journalfen.net
  • http://journalhub.com
  • http://mynewblog.com
  • http://netcipia.com
  • http://vox.com
  • http://blogsome.com
  • http://edublogs.org
  • http://diaryland.com
  • http://freeflux.net
  • http://opendiary.com
  • http://sosblog.com
  • http://tabulas.com
  • http://terapad.com
  • http://thoughts.com
  • http://upsaid.com
  • http://gather.com
  • http://hubpages.com
  • http://tblog.com
  • http://blogstudio.com
  • http://blogtext.org
  • http://20six.co.uk
  • http://bigadda.com
  • http://blog.ca
  • http://blogskinny.com
  • http://blogstream.com
  • http://blogwebsites.net
  • http://friendster.com
  • http://knol.google.com
  • http://squidoo.com
  • http://tumblr.com
  • http://weebly.com
  • http://webs.com
  • http://blog.co.uk
  • http://blurty.com
  • http://clearblogs.com
  • http://www.easyjournal.com
  • http://free-conversant.com
  • http://viviti.com
  • http://blogeasy.com
  • http://bloghi.com
  • http://bloghorn.com
  • http://blogigo.com
  • http://blogono.com
  • http://blogr.com
  • http://shoutpost.com
  • http://thediary.org
  • http://wikyblog.com