Will Google penalize you for making a link wheel?

[Keep Trying]

Will Google penalize people in the future for the creation of link wheels? Are link wheels ethical?

[~kev~]

Take a look at this site, and scroll down towards the bottom

CNN.com - Breaking News, U.S., World, Weather, Entertainment & Video News

Do you see all of the categories going to different sites? I am willing to bet that the parent company of CNN has an interest in promoting those other sites. If interlinking sites is good enough for CNN, its good enough for me.

The thing with any link, whether its link exchanges or link wheels, you have to take the quality of the site in mind.

From the google webmaster guidelines

Link schemes - Webmaster Tools Help

some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites.

If you are going to build a link wheel, keep in mind the overall quality of the sites. If this is going to be 1 crappy site linking to another crappy site, linking to another crappy site, I suggest you do not interlink.

When in doubt, read the google webmaster guidelines.

[gmc193]

Originally Posted by Keep Trying

Will Google penalize people in the future for the creation of link wheels? Are link wheels ethical?

I have always avoided link wheels in the past, and that will be the case in the future.

If you absoultely must go down the route of link wheels, I would suggest that you make them as complicated as possible, and not to complete the circle (so in effect it's not really a wheel anyway!).

The more natural you can make your links look, the better you'll fair in the long run, IMO.

[Keep Trying]

Thank you.