What is a Link Wheel and should I build one?

A link wheel is snake oil SEO. Confusing hogwash that feigns to be the magic bullet.

A link wheel is, for example when you have 6 sites: A B C D E F. If A is your main site, then B, C, D, E, F link to A reciprocally. Then B links to C, C links to D, D links to E, E links to F, and F links to B completing the wheel. This is the basic variant.

A link wheel is not a killer SEO tactic, at least not anymore. Check the dates on the posts that mention it: 2006, 2005, 2007. SEO, or at least "killer" SEO tactics, are outdated fast. Proper SEO: 

Content is king

Make your content accessible

Get backlinks

never changed.

Nikss SEO Link Wheel

You can get as deluded in building link wheels as you want. Some might say a link wheel should be really complex, and they don't connect the spokes, to remain undetected. That is not much different from a few low-quality inorganic backlinks, but at least you get a nice graph to look at for your troubles.

Link wheels can be called black hat. I'd call them crap hat though. A natural web presence makes a natural link wheel, or link graph/web. Starting a bunch of free blogs and linking them back to your site, isn't effective for rank building. The content quality is too low, and if the content quality is high, you'd want it on your main site.

If you really start to graph a link wheel you are essentially building a manipulative linking scheme, if it works or not, you show intent to Google, that you want to manipulate your PR. This is never a good thing. At best your link wheel will get detected and discounted, at worse you will receive a penalty.

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