Good ole’ link wheels: Is your website’s SEO linked to a bad wheel?

Much like a car with a flat, if your SEO strategy consists of link wheels, you won’t go far or fast.

Using SEO link wheels as your primary SEO strategy was once the thing to do to increase search rankings and website traffic.

Not so much the case today as link wheels have become quite easy to detect with each search engine algorithm update.

In today’s post, I’ll shed some light on the pros and cons of using link wheels as your SEO strategy.

We’ll discuss why link wheels may or may not be the best link-building solution for your website.

Again, link wheels do work to increase total backlink count, but only when used in the proper manner, whereby links are achieved naturally.

Where did SEO link wheels come from?

Link wheels date back to around 2000 when SEO was becoming the talk of the town.

Before link wheels, many website owners used simple directories to increase link building and overall website traffic.

Before the complexities of search engines, it was quite easy to write articles based on a keyword that contained links to the website owner’s primary website.

Search engines would index these pages, and most pages would start ranking in less than hours in some cases, depending on the search engine.

What are SEO link wheels?

Link wheels are a common strategy website owners use to increase backlinks and website traffic.

Run a quick search on “link wheel SEO” or “SEO link wheel,” and you’ll discover how popular link wheels are.

Simply put, the link wheel SEO strategy consists of creating a pattern of links that link to together a chain of independent websites.

You create links between the website in hopes of leading visitors to your primary website to convert and become customers.

A great and simple example is using social media sites like Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Squidoo, Hubpages, Slideshare, etc.

When you share items on these networks, you’re doing so in hopes that the person clicking on your shared link will visit your website and become a customer or sign up for a newsletter or other marketing opportunity.

How do SEO link wheels work?

To understand the nature of SEO link wheels and how they work, you must understand how content and links transfer visitors across multiple websites.

In regards to linking, visitors click on hypertext or navigation links which navigate them to another related website.

This linking will continue until the visitor reaches the primary website, which is the goal for website owners using SEO link wheels.

This maze of what seems to be endless hyperlinking once helped website owners achieve increased search rankings in hopes of improving conversions and sales.

Another key component of SEO link wheels is content. As with any SEO effort, content is the major key, which holds well for link wheels.

Content should be well-researched and engaging, with moderate linking throughout.

Content should not be stuffed with keywords and should be topically relevant in nature.

If the content is relevant to the parent site and is educational and engaging, the visitor will want to know more and click links to find more information.

Are link wheels a good SEO strategy for your business?

As we’ll discuss in the advantages and disadvantages of link wheels next, link wheels can be created in many ways to increase website rankings and overall website traffic of a website owner’s primary website.

Over the years, as SEO has gained greater popularity to drive more website traffic to websites, link wheels have been used by everyone, for the good and bad.

If you’re considering using link wheels as your SEO strategy, consider the following points of interest before investing time, money, and effort.

As for bad link wheel usage, some people figured out ways to create their own websites or mini-sites using generic or keyword-rich domain names and linking back to their primary website.

This would artificially increase the number of links to the primary website and increase the website’s search engine rankings.

But with every good thing gone bad, taking such action today could get your website penalized or de-indexed by search engines.

As for good link wheel usage, link wheels have migrated from article directories to various other options like videos, blogs, social media, images, etc.

With the power of social media and the opportunity for your content to go viral, social media sites have become the certified link wheels for website owners to use as a part of their SEO strategy.

Link wheel success via social media depends on how engaging and informative your content is to those viewing it.

It is quite easy to increase website traffic using social media websites as link wheels.

Unlike traditional search marketing, the opportunity to game search engines using social media websites as link wheels still exist, although at a lesser percentage.

Again, the main objective of using link wheels should be to encourage and promote natural linking, not artificial linking.

After all, if you don’t have what the customer wants in terms of content, they will move on to the competition to have their needs met.

Final thoughts about SEO link wheels

SEO Link wheels are a good option to drive quality traffic to your website.

However, using link wheels takes a major investment in terms of time, money, effort, and knowledge to truly be effective.

There are no guarantees using SEO link wheels, as your efforts could be wasted.

There are many SEO alternatives for link wheels. One popular alternative is minisites.

Again, you must weigh and consider the ramifications of all options when using link wheels as your SEO strategy.

Consider the points we mentioned and start small if you feel compelled to use link wheels or mini-sites.

There are many rewards to be had when implemented and executed in a manner that adheres to search engine SEO policies.

We want to hear from you. Have you ever used link wheels or mini-sites in a search-friendly and – safe way to increase search rankings and website traffic?