A link wheel is where several similar themed websites get together and create a circle of links. For example, website A links to website B which links to website C and so on, until the last site then links back to website A. Adding ‘spokes’ to the wheel is where each site also has backlinks to the original source, i.e. website A.
The idea is to link with very popular sites or articles so that, by association, you must be worth ranking higher in search results.
Some unscrupulous webmasters try to establish links without the permission of the site they are linking to. One example is when you see comments on Blog pages or under YouTube videos, with a website link hidden within the comment.
In the past, link wheels were very effective and thus many webmasters starting researching best sites to link to, namely those with a high DA, which stands for Domain Authority. Domain Authority takes in a lot of factors, such as number of visitors per month, relevance of content, sharing of content and so on, but overall it needs to be a credible source that search engines readily find when people are looking for the type of content found on those sites. To learn more about Domain Authority, visit Domain Authority – Wikipedia.
You can still pay companies to establish link wheels for you, just go to fiverr.com and search for “link building”, to see what we mean, (see what we did there?).
However, most search engines now ignore reciprocal links, backlinks and one-way inbound links from other sites, regardless of how credible or popular they are, unless your site gets a lot of visitors in its own right and has regular and relevant content updates.
Digital Managed have a far more effective way of strengthening your online presence, involving a network of links to your own content, distributed across multiple platforms, all owned by you. Contact us to learn more.
