Google Guidelines on Linkwheels?

[pjsweeting]

Have been doing a TON of research on this site the past two weeks, almost too much. Very addicting!

I am confident in the direction that I am going to go to start IMing and as a result have been doing a bit of research on linkwheels. From what I can gather they are a great way to go and provide a lot of traffic if set up correctly...

but why do I also read that they are "b.l.a.c.k.hat" (which I'm not really sure of the meaning yet but figure it's the opposite of whitehat, and also not sure why WF automatically changed that to bluefart) and frowned upon by Google? What does Google have against IMers strategically linking 2.0 sites together? And how exactly do they "punish" you if they stumble upon your linkwheel...?

Any other Google guidelines I should know about before I begin my journey?

[JohnMcCabe]

Let's take the easy one first...

Black hat gets changed to 'bluefart' because we had a rash of people promoting that type of strategy. If you know it's black hat and understand the risks, that's one thing. If you promote that to newbies who could get accounts closed, etc., that's not cool.

So the forum owner installed a filter which changes black-hat to 'bluefart' and gu-ru to 'goober'.

Google doesn't care much one way or the other about "IMers". What they don't like is people trying to manipulate their search results, and linkwheels are one method of doing exactly that. In their way of thinking, building linkwheels for the sole purpose of boosting search ranking is in the same boat as keyword stuffing and using invisible text were in the olden days.

They can, and sometimes do, "punish" you by simply removing your pages from their index. It's not personal.

[JohnMcCabe]

The biggest guideline seems to be to do things in a natural way. Avoid mechanical patterns, like putting up a page and then having a complete linkwheel or a thousand links show up a few hours later. Your link text should be a mixture of your url, 'click here' and a variety of related keywords. Having a thousand links, all with the anchor text 'bluefart goobers' is not natural.

[pjsweeting]

Thanks John, for your reply.

So there is a correct & ethical way to build linkwheels and an unethical way? If I'm understanding you correctly, as long as I build it correctly, so as not to 'manipulate' the search engines.. i should be in the clear?

I hope so.. because I like the strategy (although what we believe is always easy to justify )

[searchnology]

I agree, it is just too easy for Google to sniff out a linkwheel that is "too perfect".

The younger the site the more "imperfect" and careful you must be.

If your site is 3 years old or older and has been establishing backlinks all the while, you can usually get a away with more. I built a link wheel in a day with no consequences. (or improvement for that matter)

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

The biggest guideline seems to be to do things in a natural way. Avoid mechanical patterns, like putting up a page and then having a complete linkwheel or a thousand links show up a few hours later. Your link text should be a mixture of your url, 'click here' and a variety of related keywords. Having a thousand links, all with the anchor text 'bluefart goobers' is not natural.

[JohnMcCabe]

I guess the best way I can say this is to build your content (on whatever site) for the people who read it, not the search spiders. As long as you are adding value for the users, rather than trying to manipulate rankings, you should be fine.

It might take you some time to build your wheels, but if you provide good stuff, people will syndicate it (republish it on their own sites), link to it, talk about it, and the web will grow organically.

Here's another example...

A few years ago, you could make pretty decent Adsense money by being a content aggregator. You'd build a site on a niche topic, fill it with quality, targeted content from sites like EzineArticles and add your Adsense code. Because the sites had relevant content, they ranked well, and people clicked on relevant ads.

Then some smart cookie figured out how to automate the site building process, only they had to leave out human discretion on content quality. Their programs would go out and scrape the content from whole sites and build thousands of pages in minutes. When people objected, the programmers changed tactics. They started filling these massive sites with any garbage they could scrape, as long as it had the right keywords in it. It was actually better for them, because they could build sites with pages where the only way out was to click an ad.

The people paying for all those garbage clicks were not happy, and they showed it by lowering bids and stopping ad campaigns. Google started delisting these Made For Adsense sites as fast as they got put up.

What did the MFA boys in was the fact that their automated software left tracks - a footprint - that Google and others could point to and say "it looks like the other MFA sites we delisted and banned".

Done mechanically, following the same pattern over and over, linkwheels leave the same kind of footprint. Build your wheels with different properties, different numbers of pages in the wheel, leave some of them open, and build wheels that look more like the inside of a mechanical watch (gears nested within gears) rather than a hub and spokes. Add content that other people want to link to, and you should be okay.

[pjsweeting]

Hm, interesting history lesson for sure. Thanks for the clarification!

[Michael Kohler]

I like the idea of a link wheel. Nuke was going to make it easy to create one, but Google seems to know the pattern and now it needs to be randomized. There was a diagram out on how to do the new structure, but it is so complicated that I think the best way is to create little mini-wheels and interconnect those.

[linkwheeler]

This is a very simple yet effective form of the link wheel, which has had tremendous successes for our clients.



Regards, David Pagotto

[TargetedTrafficSolutions]

It works if done manually but you must be very methodical...
-separate c-class ip blocks
- linking should be well over 40 deep without interlinking
- research natural linking patterns with the serps for each niche, if your pattern is far off the existing link graph you are asking for serious problems.
- If your new to this start with some non important sites of yours first to get your feet wet, if you are found out watch out.... It can often be as bad a penalty of offering paid links, etc

[jazbo]

linkwheels, schminkwheels
c-class IP's, schmee-classed by pee's.

[lokodomain]

why not just create the links to your website direct....... the amount of time it takes to build a linkwheel can't you just build more natural individual backlinks..?