What should I do about my "link wheel" that works?

[livemusic]

I have read many say that link wheels don't work, that Google will sniff you out and penalize you. All I can say is that with my rudimentary knowledge of SEO, it sure worked for me. I have a network of sites that feed links here and there to one another. Maybe a couple dozens sites. I did it over the past three years, but I had good results very quickly three years ago. I have very few links outside of my link wheel. Yet, I have done well. I dominate the SERPs for many of my keywords. Granted, this is low traffic stuff, but the profit/sale is high, so, it works.

Mind you, 98% of my domains are bought in my own name and I do not have privacy. It should be a snap for Google to see that these sites belong to me! That is, if Google snoops the WHOIS.

But, people say you need to have your sites on different IP's. I have them scattered, but the majority are on two shared hosting plans!

People say you need to register each domain under a different person. How do you do that, recruit a bunch of friends or pay people to put it under their names? In lieu, of that, someone mentioned that you could buy it under your own name, yes, but buy the Privacy feature, where your identity/address/phone is not shown.

So, Google cannot see the "real" WHOIS info? Do you think this "solves" the issue of, supposedly, needing to buy domains in different names? I want to buy another domain right now.

And also, I wonder about "converting" the others to Private and even putting them each on a different IP. But, wonder if Google already "knows" that these domains are mine.

[thebitbotdotcom]

Personally, I have found that Google bots don't really catch all that much.

Manual review is where problems for webmasters happen.

[livemusic]

Originally Posted by thebitbotdotcom

Personally, I have found that Google bots don't really catch all that much.

Manual review is where problems for webmasters happen.

I didn't know that manual review existed anymore. How can that be, with a bazillion websites?

[dburk]

Hi livemusic,

It sounds as if you may have bought into some common SEO myths.

Google doesn't care if you interlink your pages, in fact they recommend you do this where it makes since and adds value to users. As long as your pages contain useful content that adds value then you can feel safe linking away where it adds value to your users.

Google doesn't care if your pages are all on the same site, span multiple websites, nor whether you, or someone else, owns the domains, nor whether the pages are all on the same, or different IPs. Why would they?

The PageRank algorithm has always valued backlinks from any source using the same algorithm. It is based on the Random Surfer Model which estimates the likeliness of a web surfer navigating to your page from any other page.

Don't buy into the Cargo Cult science that so many SEO ignorant webmasters constantly repeat on this forum and other places. It doesn't matter if a backlink is from one of your own pages, nor which domain, nor which IP. What matters is the diversity of traffic sources. That is how you accumulate PageRank and PageRank weights the value of your backlinks.