Part I Creating a Link Wheel

This is the first of two articles about link wheels. I have talked to you a lot about the importance of building back links. Link wheels are a great way to do just that, by using web 2.0 properties to market your website. Here is the concept of a link wheel: you use 6 independent web 2.0 platforms, all with a high Google page rank. By creating backlinks from pages on these platforms that are in the same niche as your site, you are creating one-way links that are dofollow, and provide maximum link juice.

In order to get the most out of this technique you have to make sure you follow a strict linking pattern. From each of the platforms you link to the page on your site you are promoting and to one of the neighboring platforms. You are creating a wheel. You can do this with any page on your website, each page focusing on a different keyword.

On each of the 6 sites on the outside wheel you add content, that is optimized for your keyword. Let’s say that your site is about weight loss. You add an article about weight loss to each of the 6 platforms. Each article contains two links. One to the page on your web site you are promoting and one to the next “poke”, being the next web 2.0 platform. It is critical that you do not link to any of the other web2.0 platforms directly.

You can use the same article for each platform, as long as you spin the text. However, this is not how I prefer to do it. I use another wheel to help me pick appropriate topics. I type my keyword in the Google search engine and when the results show up, I click on “show options” in the top left corner of the search results. I select “wonder wheel” and click on it. Google’s wonder wheel gives me the most relevant keywords that are related to my primary keyword.

Let say, my site is about weight loss. I create a wonder wheel with weight loss in the center. The following keywords are the most relevant according to Google: weight watchers, weight loss calculator, weight loss plans, weight loss tips, fast weight loss, weight loss pills, diets for quick weight loss and alli weight loss. So, I will pick 6 out of these 8 topics and write a quick article about each topic. I link all articles together as discussed above and my link wheel is in place.

Next week I will discuss ways to further expand this strategy to get the most traffic out of your link wheels (no pun intended).