SEO Deception- Link Wheels and Google SERP
74I am a dinosaur.
I started writing on the Web In 1991. There were no search engines. There was no Google. No click-through banner ads. No Adsense. No SEO.
Before all that stuff happened, I had a website. Think about that for a moment, if you will. I had a website. It carried no advertising and no search engines ever thumbed through its pages. It didn't exist in a vacuum, though. It had links to other sites on the Web and other sites linked to it.
Why did we have links? To help our readers. We linked to other sites so that our readers could find the other websites that might be useful to them. We didn't link for Google "juice", there was no Google or anything like it.
We didn't trade links. That nonsense came later. We put in links to help our readers.
We were not concerned about readers clicking ads; there were no ads to click. We were not concerned with RSS; it did not exist. We could not be mentioned on StumbleUpon, Digg, Twitter, Facebook or anything like that because they did not exist.
Again: we linked for the benefit of our readers. There is a quaint reminder of these bygone days in Google's advice about linking schemes, which closes with
Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page's visitors?
PageRank
Google's original idea for ranking web sites was based on two ideas: keywords in the content and inbound links. If your page had the keywords a searcher wanted, it would be on the list. The more inbound links pointed to that page, the higher on the list you would be. That is a simplified explanation, but that was the gist of the PageRank algorithm .
Web site owners wanted their pages at the top, of course. SEO stepped in. Early on, keywords were their favorite target. They stuffed keywords into meta tags. Google responded by ignoring those tags. They stuffed keywords into invisible text (white letters on a white background, for example). Google started looking for and ignoring invisible text. The SEO people moved on to buying and selling links; Google shut that down. You can look up Linkspam in Wikipedia to see more of what they did and still do, but the most common deception today is the Link Wheel.
What is a Link Wheel?
Here is a useful diagram of a fairly complex link wheel. Often, link wheels are much more simple, as shown in this diagram of a very basic link wheel. The concept is to make Google think that the pages linking to your page have done so naturally and organically - someone liked your page well enough to link to it.
Note that this assumes that we are still linking the way everyone linked back a the beginning. If many of us linked to a page, that had to be a good page. Today, with all the fake linking going on, that's not such a great assumption.
That fake linking is, by the way, one of the reasons Google has devalued PageRank. The position of results (Search Engine Result Position or SERP) is no longer affected as much by PageRank.
Why Use a Link Wheel
Why? Because it works.
A link wheel can be very difficult for Google to detect. If you haven't been careless, a link wheel can appear to be genuine organic links. It can increase the likelihood that Google and other search engines will send traffic to the target page.
Do understand that the page needs reasonably good content, too. A link wheel can't promote trash and get away with it for long.
From their own mouths
You will see this technique in use frequently. You will find it highly recommended and praised, but you might not understand that Google doesn't approve of this sort of gaming. You will find people who insist they are doing nothing wrong.
However, all you have to do to see the truth is to search for "link wheel footprint". Please do that.
You see, if done carelessly, a link wheel shows hints of its false origins. The SEO people call these footprints, and give advice on how to avoid having Google track down a link wheel scheme through these markers. That tells you that Google considers this deception even though some practitioners deny it fervently. If Google approved of this, there would be no reason to worry about footprints.
If you did the search I suggested, you found many SEO practitioners discussing how Google might learn that you have created a link wheel and devalue the links coming from it. Comments like "make it look natural" are common.
When you link within your site, you benefit visitors. If you tell people at your camera site that they can find your pages on camcorders at your other site, you are helping your visitors. When you make link wheels, you are only trying to fool Google.
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Justifications and Excuses
Let's see how those who practice and teach this deception defend it.
All advertising is deceptive
Basically, these folks seem to be claiming that link wheels are just advertising. Advertising to Google, of course, not humans. They say they are simply working within Google's rules and benefitting from how Google works.
This ignores the "footprint" evidence and Google's own advice that links should be beneficial to readers. Google doesn't want help in judging the value of a page; if they did they would have a direct way for us to tell them what keywords we want it to rank for.
Everybody does it
If "everybody" does it (and worse), then you need to fight fire with fire.
However, not "everybody" builds deceptive link wheels. I don't and never will. I am certainly not the only one.
It is a common practice. If you search the SEO forums or even just this site, you will find plenty of bragging about success from link wheels.
At other times, I have heard people shrug off all kinds of behavior with the same kind of argument. "Everybody cheats". I don't buy it.
I have mouths to feed
I include this ludicrous excuse only because it is so outrageous. It simply means that any behavior is acceptable if it helps your income.
What does Google think of Link Wheels?
"Earned-links are earned and given by choice" is a quote from Google's Matt Cutts that is frequently cited around the web. He was talking about paid links when he said it, but ask yourself if you think that links from a link wheel are "earned"?
As far as I know, Google hasn't addressed this directly yet. However, their guidelines are very clear about trading links, and really this is no different: the links are not real. If you trade links, someone is linking to you in payment for you linking to them. If you create your own fake links, they are no more "natural" than paid links.
The affect on SERP
Link wheels can skew the results of Google searches - obviously, that is what they are designed to do. Even a very aggressive wheel probably can't push out a solidly entrenched page, but it is easy to see that honest pages could lose ground to pages with link wheels.
If you are the owner of an "honest" page, you may feel a bit of anger toward the person using this method. On the other hand, that might just make you feel that you need to up the ante yourself and return fire.
If you are just a searcher, all this may leave you feeling mildly disgusted - it doesn't seem fair that dishonest (mildly dishonest, but still dishonest) people can affect your efforts to find content you need.
Not Black and White
One of the reasons a link wheel is hard to detect is that legitimate linking can take the same form. For example, let's say that my monolithic site about Unix was split into several different sites - one for Linux, one for BSD, one for SunOs, one for Solaris, one for SCO and so on. It could make sense for me to have a central site for things that are common to all Unix systems. I might use that site for articles about shell scripting, common Unix utilities and so on. It would be very natural for me to point all the outer sites to each other and to the central site.
Of course I wouldn't be trying to hide that. I'd have my name plastered all over every site and I'd run the same Adsense and Analytics code on each. They'd probably all be served by the same mailserver and for convenience I might even host them all on the same machine!
Nevertheless, you can see how Google could have some difficulty with this. My very legimate organization could look like a link wheel.
Of course most link wheels aren't created from related sites - they are Web 2.0 pages, social media sites and the like pointing at the target page. That's a little more obvious, but there still could be legitimate cases - it's not always easy!
Penalties?
Would Google punish you for doing this? Anything is possible, but a well hidden link wheel could not be traced back to its creator, so if Google were out to punish, a competitor could create an obvious spamming wheel pointing at your pages. Google isn't going to punish you for something someone else could do.
What does this site say about backlinks?
At A Guide to Backlinking here at the Learning Center section, Simone Smith talks about the various promotional efforts people make and warns:
There is an easy way to tell whether you’re sharing too many links: just ask yourself: “Am I doing this for backlinks?” If you are, STOP.
She ends with this:
In short, the best way to get backlinks is to write original, useful, high quality content. It’s that simple! You don’t have to do a thing. So take it easy!
That's a long way from most of the advice you'll get in the forums.
Get on the Wheel?
So there we are. A technique that can work, has little downside risk, and is considered not very immoral by many. Shouldn't you be doing this?
I still say no. It's not right. I can't get excessively crazy about people who choose otherwise - except perhaps when they insist that there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. It is wrong. It's just not in the heinous crime category or anything close.
I would feel guilty if I employed these tactics. If you don't feel that way, I suggest you follow some of the tutorials such as "The Ultimate Writers link wheel tutorial earning from your backlinks" or "How to Make a Link Wheel that Works". I'd rather you didn't, but if you are desperate to increase traffic and don't have any moral qualms, I know I am not going to stop you.
Before you make your final decision, pay attention to the things they tell you NOT to do and think about why they say that. Do you at least agree that Google doesn't want this sort of activity? Please read those and do the "link wheel footprint" search before taking the poll.
If there is anything you don't understand, feel free to ask in the comments or send me email.
How do you feel about link wheels?
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Well, the very first vote was with me, but my guess is that we will end up with more who think it is fine - and a few who remain confused :-)
Well, according to the experts here, I know nothing about SEO and give bad advice. Amazing that I know nothing after almost 20 years, but some of us just never learn.
Tony, you csn feel free to drop links to anything of yours you think would help people.
dammit! not $days, lol, it was 4 days. :) oops
Hi Pcunix I use a type of linking strategy with articles but still am writing all my own stuff most times I do use a writing service to get there faster but I I keep it good value content if it creates a wheel I just go with it.
I think the poll says it all! At the moment it's reading 100% in agreement with you (including my vote). Of course, all the link-wheelers got ticked off and bailed paragraphs ago.
Your comment on exchanging links has me thinking (a rarity). My furniture site has a link exchange area, I restrict my link exchanges to highly relevant sites (got a request just this morning from a Tanzinia Tour Company -- (GONG!) No way!) but if Google is looking at all exchanged links as paid links, maybe I'd be better off to just pull that down. I have a membership at CustomMade.com, and get some traffic from that, but if Google looks at that as a paid link, that too should get dumped. It's good for customers, but not so much for Google?
Ahhh... I need more coffee!
They say "excessive reciprocal linking" but don't define "excessive". Most likely that is because SOME reciprocal linking will occur naturally.
I would not engage in any such formal activity.
As to the poll: not that many visitors yet - under 50 as I write this comment.
I think Allan has hit it on the button. The SEO guru's bailed out cos they know they don't have a real argument.
Argument, no, but choice, yes. Building a link wheel isn't drowning kittens and when facing dirty competition, I can see people choosing this.
Thanks for introducing me to the SEO link wheel concept. I spent a bit of time this morning looking at the link wheel examples you gave and reading the text of the sites that published them. And I came up with a thought I can't seem to get rid of...how is this "link wheeling" different from the practices and tools promoted here on HP, practices like interlinking one's own Hubs and building links back to HP from social networking sites, and tools like the Suggest Links tool?
I'm no expert by any means about either link wheels or HubPages, but I couldn't help but see a similarity. I think the thread that made me see a connection between the two is the purpose you quoted above, "Before making any single decision, you should ask yourself the question: Is this going to be beneficial for my page's visitors?" It's easy to misuse the Suggest Link tool because the presssure is on to use it to increase the HubKarma score which in turn impacts your profile score, yet it takes valuable time to assess the Hubs it highlights to see if they would be "beneficial for my page's visitors." Also, a commonly accepted practice here is to join sites like shetoldme.com and others for the specific purpose of creating links back to a Hub page or profile.
If I've come to a wrong conclusion, could you clarify how HP's tools and processes are not doing something much like link wheels do?
Nope, I think you understand exactly. If it doesn't help readers, you shouldn't do it. But remember that introducing people to content is beneficial. So if wherever.com has real readers who want to know about you, that is a valid link.
Interlinking your related hubs here helps readers find related content, so that is certainly beneficial, right?
The 'suggest link' tool can be beneficial or not - it depends on how you use it.
But remember too - you aren't drowning kittens either way!
I thought it was a pile of dead kittens, Pcunix, but anyway...umm, I have absolutely no clue about this stuff-yet. The more I read, the more this old brain of mine seems to take in.
Okay, a question...are those phrases in your hub that are blue links? How do you make them blue? I mean do you have to convince someone to link to your site? How do you do such a thing-beat on your chest and yell, "I'm the shit!!?"
Well, I am a pretty good student, so hopefully one day I'll get ya, okay? ;)
Those blue things are outgoing links. Making them a link is what turns them blue (though on my own site I can make them any color I like). So no, those are not someone linking here, that is me linking to someone else.
When making a hub here, if you select text in Edit mode and click in the thing that looks like a chain, you can select a link to one if your own hubs or type in a link to somewhere else. The "Suggest Links" tool will also add links for you.
I sort of feel the same way, Pcunix! But like many other newcomers to the world of internet business, I hear so many different strategies and opinions I don't really know what to think!
I don't write to make my living but I do enjoy the increasing page views and monthly payouts on both Adsense and Amazon. I spend no time on back linking other than clicking the Facebook share button or an occasional Shetoldme link.
But I do try hard to give the reader what they are looking for in my hubs and many have commented they were indeed helpful. Like you, I feel creating quality content is the best way to get good long lasting traffic.
Besides, doing all of that back linking would take all of the enjoyment out of writing for me. I'll leave all that stuff to the other guys, it bores the hell out of me! LOL! Enjoyed!
In the past a lot of 'SEO gurus' raved about building linkwheels, but now, it is not as widely promoted, I did try to build 'closed' linkwheels myself in the past, with little result, or benefit, maybe I went about it wrong. I was concerned that it 'was', easy for google to see a footprint, and whether it was really a benefit to me or my readers, which implies that I didn't really feel right about doing it in the first place, and that it would probably cause more damage than good, so I have decided after reading this really good advise of yours, that I probably will not pursue this in the future.
Thanks pcunix.
Link wheels are promoted strongly here - the latest 60 day challenge, for example, and the hubs of several of the popular money earners here promiote these.
From Sunforge's hub:
"I take advantage of all these sites and create wheels of interlinked related content. Its much better to write 30 properly interlinked articles across 3 unique domains than it would be to write 30 at one site - (like Hubpages)"
In spite of your remarks to me on the forum, I still cannot see what should be wrong about this method. The way I read this quote, Sunforged is talking about articles written by himself.
A link wheel IS articles you write yourself.
What is it you don't understand? These things are designed to make Google think that other people think your article is wonderful. You are voting for yourself in Google's elections!
You really can't see that?
It is not that I don't understand, it is that I don't agree. We are talking about "interlinked related content." I link to my own related hubs all the time. If I choose to establish my own website and one blog, linking them to one another, that gives the reader a meaningful experience. Again, I am only referring to Sunforge's quote, as I have no other knowledge to use as a point of reference. Seems that maybe you didn't explain yourself as well out there as you could have.
This is so incredibly difficult.
OF COURSE YOU LINK TO RELATED CONTENT. You are SUPPOSED to link to related content!
What you are NOT supposed to do is try to make Google think it is other people linking to your content.
Again, Google for "link wheel footprint" as I advised above. Do you see that they worry about Google noticing their lies?
Did you see Sunforged's paragraph about Adsense code and how that could tip off Google?
If you are worrying about tipping off Google, doesn't that alone show you are up to no good?
It would never cross my mind to make Google see it that way. Sunforges' text that I was quoting made no reference to any such tactics either, and that was what I was commenting on - a strategy such as he described in that paragraph. To me, it makes good sense to use three domains rather than just one, as this may attract readers from different audiences. There may me much more to this issue, but I have not commented upon that, as I will leave it to you experts to settle those issues amongst yourselves. Have a good day.
Again, if you are doing it for your readers, you are doing nothing wrong. That is not what this is all about. This is about deception.
Pcunix-- I am beginning to understand (sort of) the concept of link wheels, but then I am a big promoter of content, so in my mind if relevant sites want to link to my hubs or blogs, this would be based upon content, except it seems linking is end all and be all. Still again, as you've read my hubs, I think linking is a must, but not insane linking, which is the same idea as link wheels. For some reason link wheels do not strike me as honest. I suppose they will make you money, but if you'd lose in teh end.... what good is that?
Ayup. That's the point. But according to the almighty heroes who pass as experts here, I'm a naive idiot for even suggesting that.
no you aren't if I think it's not so great... hmm smells like a hub ta me!
I was interested to read http://learningcenter.hubpages.com/a-guide-to-back this morning.
There is a fine line between what rebecca says and link wheels - I dont even want to go down that road after getting my fingers burned!
I would disagree that linkwheels are going undetected - I think Google has got cleverer and has inbuilt a supersensitivity to this. I think they have gone that stage further and adopted a zero tolerance to this. If the automated system picks up a sniff of bad internet behaviour - even if in the smallest way - I think it goes back to a series of moderators. We are all being monitored for bad internet behaviour and I think you are going to see a lot of weeding going on in the near future! This could be through self moderation, like Hubpages do to appease Google, to sudden bouts of automation of rss feeds.
I wish I could agree that Google will always detect this. In fact, for the most professional cases, they cannot, not even with human moderators.
However, that level requires a fair amount of work - so much so that it may not even matter.
It's been an interesting day of reading. It has also made me reconsider what I'm doing and how I'm doing things on my websites. I'm not sure I've come up with the answers but obviously the old saying "Content is King" ultimately holds true. Of course I want as much traffic as possible to my website and hope and pray to actually make some money. It's obvious though too that even if you get the visitors in to your site, if all you're providing them is junk you can't be surprised if it doesn't meet your goals. I'm with you, it all makes sense to me and my head is totally spinning right now. Time for a break. Thanks again for another good read.
You'll find there are two kinds of people here - those that don't bother with SEO and those who insist that you have to do it.
Man it is amazing to look back all those years ago and see how fast things have grown with the internet. I remember when Yahoo was the only search engine I knew about and was able to find only a few specific things that I couldn't really use. And now with all 3 search engines live it is amazing the things you can find and the amazing information. Time sure does change things.
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Tony Flanigan Level 2 Commenter 21 months ago
Mr PC Linux sir! Thank you. Ok, we haven't been around as long as you have, so I (we) will bow to your superior knowledge.
Jokes aside, I've been reading so much web design and SEO cr@p this evening that I actually felt like logging out of HP and not bothering to come back.
Our approach to SEO for our clients is possibly old-fashioned, meta tags, alt tags, good sound content, advising about suitable links and link backs etc, and it does seem to be working for them. I could cite several instances, and we have the stats etc to back it up, of how SEO guru's with their wand waving and incantations couldn't get sites to perform. And then our little laid back system gets pulled out of the box behind the door, is dusted off and put to work. $ days later we have a page 1 rank.
I could go into this in greater detail, but this is your Hub, and once again, thank you!