It is a strategy for building backlinks to boost a site’s authority and search engine ranking. The idea is to create a network of interlinked websites or web properties that link to one central website, usually the leading site an individual or business wants to promote. The goal is to create a ‘wheel’ of links that are all empowered to push authority and relevance to the primary site, increasing its visibility in search results.
The components of a link wheel can be deconstructed as follows:
1. Central Site (Hub): This is the leading site or web page you want to rank higher in search engines. The goal of the link wheel strategy is to raise this website’s authority and relevance.
2. Satellite Sites (Spokes): The outer vertices of the wheel are these. They can be journals, social media profiles, or other web properties you manage. Each of these websites will have unique content that is related to the central site’s specialization. They are the supporting ensemble directing traffic and linking juice to the hub.
3. Interlinking: The link wheel strategy is the fundamental component. In addition to the central site, each satellite site is linked to one or more other satellite sites. The result is a wheel-shaped network of interconnected connections.
The biggest benefit of the link wheel technique is that it allows you to increase the link authority or link juice of each link.
Put more simply, the links within your link wheel have the power to spread more link juice or authority and more credibility to the websites around it, especially your main website.
In the long term, this results in the following advantages:
Indeed, as mentioned above, the presence of a large number of backlinks and referring domains positively affects rankings. As such, link wheels should improve your SERP rankings by increasing the total number of backlinks and the number of referring domains that link to your leading site and other sites.
The more you climb the search engine results pages (SERPs), the more visitors you will attract and the more exposure you will get. This is good for generating immediate traffic and conversions and building long-term brand value.
The higher your website is in the search engine results pages (SERPs), the more likely people will click on your website and visit your website. For example, the #10 result in search results gets only 2.4% of clicks, while the #1 result gets 32.5% of clicks.
In addition, the traffic you get will be more targeted and of higher quality because it is organic. Users who arrive at your websites through organic search actively seek the specific key phrases you target. That means they are interested in your product and may be ready to buy.
In some cases, using link wheels may be exceedingly costly. In other cases, however, they can be an extremely cost-effective link-building strategy. Once the initial expenses of designing and setting up different websites are paid, getting links virtually for free is possible. You can spend enough time developing high-quality content and naturally include hyperlinks to your other websites.
The other advantage is that you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. When you use link wheels, you increase the number of sources of traffic you can draw.
This is a significant advantage because SEO can be unpredictable even if you know what you’re doing. Link wheels do away with the need to rely on one website to get the traffic and get a high ranking. You can optimize all of your websites and set them up for success in the search engine results pages.
Finally, the ability to rank multiple websites at once allows you to generate revenue from each one. You can also use various websites to sell products or services that are different but related.
Having said that, it is essential to remember that the process of creating link wheels does present some obstacles:
Creating, maintaining and publishing content on many websites to rank one is one of the most labor-intensive methods of link building.
Regular maintenance is a must if you want all sites in your link wheel to help with your SEO efforts.
Each site in your link wheel must be optimized in order to have a beneficial effect on your primary website. This means you will probably have to spend more time and resources on this or hire more people.
Since 2012, Google has been killing fraudulent link building with their notorious Penguin update (now part of Google’s core algorithm).
Meanwhile, we have seen several more updates that are focused on deceptive links and low-quality content websites.
Lastly, beware of building link wheels, or shun constructing link wheels altogether and opt for an alternative link building approach.
Ask yourself whether you have the necessary resources and skills to implement this strategy. Instead, you can purchase high quality links from reputable providers and it is more advantageous, efficient and time saving.
The direction of link wheels depends on the procedures in place. If your processes are not well optimized, you will have a meager return on investment.
Think about how much time and money it takes to keep and optimize many websites versus one. Also, how many extra benefits you could get if you focused all your efforts on improving the SEO of your main website.
But there are substantial advantages to be had if the procedures are effective. However, one should note that the functionality discussed above usually calls for good expertise for project management as well as online search engine optimization.
As we’ve mentioned before, link wheels can be a cheap and effective way to build links. However, this is not likely. The cost of maintaining your link wheels is more likely to be substantial, especially when it comes to the continuous production of high-quality content for multiple websites.
Yet, there is a possible remedy you might want to consider. Instead of using only websites that you own, you can use websites that are owned by others or join existing link wheels.
In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), link wheel are a multi-faceted strategy to improve the search engine ranking of a website. Although there are hundreds of benefits, such as targeted traffic generation or increased domain authority, challenges are the same. The balance is essential, and we need to make sure that each part of the wheel, whether it is a self-created site, an external collaboration or a link from an authoritative platform, adds real value. Like any SEO project, the first goal should be to produce high-quality, authentic content that matches the user’s search intent. And when a game wheel is done just right, without precision and ethical considerations, it can be a game changer in the digital space.
