'legitimate' link wheels
-
I was wondering what SEOMoz' thoughts are on the mega legitimate link wheel sites that are out there.
TechMediaNet have been buying up massive news/media sites which arent really monetised (adsense) like http://www.space.com/ http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/ livescience.com and others and generating, admittedly good quality, curated content.
Then seeding them with content with backlinks to their money site, toptenreviews.com which in essence is a review site with thousands of pages loaded with affiliate links no better than any of the other site out there. e.g. http://www.livescience.com/9755-bing.html
due to the scale of what they're doing pretty much any keyword search i do with review in it (the last thing i wanted to purchase was a usb 3 hub) ends up with toptenreviews.com dominating the serps
presumably due to the high PR the viral nature of the media sites are working with.
Do you think Google will crack down on this, or do you think it's capitalism in action? TechMediaNet have invested millions in this project and just gotten another $33 million in funding recently.....
-
Great Post.
-
The link wheel only refers to the linking patterns - it has nothing to do with the quality of the links or the quality of the content. If you used crappy content and you didn't link properly, it's no wonder you had ranking instability (although that's normal when it comes to web2.0 link wheels, especially the poorly built ones, as some web2.0 properties get deleted, you lose the link and you lose the rank as well). HQ link wheels, like the ones mentioned by the OP, will never get you in trouble - but you'll need more time / resources to build them or they will be more expensive if you want to purchase such a service
-
This is proof that the link wheel still works. Like idimmu pointed out, all the huge media or news networks use it and if you look carefully, all the big bloggers out there use it. The link wheel is used constantly in one form or another, it's just that people using it don't call it by it's name. I mean, when you, as a big profile blogger / expert do 20 guest posts which all link to one of your websites and then link those guest posts to each other, how do you call that? Or when you own 10+ websites in the same niche (all with high authority and trust) and you link them all together via some blog posts promoting your latest product / service, how do you call that. You call that a link wheel.
And no matter how much people would tell you that link wheels don't work anymore, you have proof the they actually do. But all in moderation (just as with any other link building strategy). High quality stuff will always do good, no matter what changes google brings on. So if you're planning to build an seo link wheel, make sure you do it right - read this for more details on how to build a proper seo link wheel.
-
There is no such thing as a legitimate link wheel. I don't care how high the quality of a site is someone acquires. If they buy it then work on a large scale to back-fill links into old content, that is absolutely against Google's concept of legitimate efforts.
Any site that does this on a big enough scale if caught, will go down. Period. No question.
The question instead is - can they get away with it? Yeah probably. Up until a certain point. I've seen many go down over the past year and a half.
Just like every other shiny object hack, it all comes down to willingness to risk the entire operation.
-
I think it's likely that, for their "paying" site, they're not too bothered about rank - they're probably relying more on social sharing and linking. Otherwise yes, it would seem to be a bad idea. Odd one.
-
Which news story is that?
-
To be honest if you have a high quality site with great content and then you come in and fill it with ads it may not be the best strategy.
In regards to link wheels the strategy has developed over the years, where people have the money site and they build content hubs on say 40 different websites and all spam back links to the main site, it is probably not the best strategy and Google has been aware of it for a long while.
It depends on how high quality the site is if it is going to be hit or not, if the site is really high quality with a huge link profile it may be able to by pass a Google penalty.
In the end of the day Google can crack down at any time no matter how large the site is look at the BBC News story in the media today.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do I easily no-follow my affiliate links?
Hi, I am in the process of setting up an affiliate marketing campaign for my site. I have done a bit of research and understand that it is safest in terms of SEO to add no-follow to the links from the affiliate sites. What is the easiest and simplest way to implement this?
Affiliate Marketing | | whiteonlySEO2 -
How to flag inbound affiliate links to Search Engines
Afternoon Mozzers, I was chatting to our VP of marketing earlier about one of our sites with a somewhat unhealthy looking link profile. This is primarily caused by the sector its in and the fact that lots of low quality lead generators / affiliates operate there, sending traffic to us in return for payment on accepted leads. Now, he recalled that there is a way to mark these inbound links, through a URL parameter he thought, as being affiliates and therefore should be ignored as we don’t want them misinterpreted as an attempt to manipulate our rankings. I have been doing a spot of research but can't find a straight answer. heres a few articles i looked at: blogaid, Yoast, Webmaster world and the Moz Q&A.The problem is all these are from the perspective of a site linking out and acting as an affiliate, so all deal with that page not losing PR. The two methods i have derived from this boil down to: No follow the links Use an intermediary redirect page and script which you can block from robots.txt So, back to our case - Are there any ways we can signal to Search engines, as the destination site, that these links are from affiliates (such as this URL parameter our VP had vague recollections off) or should i just get in touch and ask the sites to make them Nofollow? Thanks, Tom.
Affiliate Marketing | | Sarbs0 -
New site started doing well, now it's tanking
Im confused by activity from a site I opened less than a month ago. I ranked in the top ten for the local version of my primary phrase. Within two weeks I was up to number two. I created a few new pages without content in order to build age. I also paid for a pair of clearly marked classified ads at trusted sites thatprovide traffic from potential clients. Next, I stated revamping my pages by revising and editing content. my site has dropped like a brick. My content is the best it's been and improving daily. Im not sure what to do. Should I start over? Do I keep improving my site and give it a few months? Would anyone be willing to review my site and provide a few tips? Fyi, I understand some of my pages need more content. my formatting is a mess with iOS 7 on iPad.
Affiliate Marketing | | youngmaster0 -
Sponsored Links on Amazon, help
So from what I can see CLickrive was discontinued by Amazon, replaced by a9. I have been asked by a client how they can get onto Sponsored Links near the bottom of a search query on an amazon page. Now I can see from the amazon associates site that you can put widgets, display ads, product search links etc but there is no mention of 'Sponsored Links' other than: SPONSORED LINKS Sponsored links are advertisements related to your recent product search query or content on the page. Sponsored links are always clearly labeled. When you click on a sponsored link, we get revenue. Generating additional revenue from sponsored links allows Amazon.com to offer lower prices to you - something we are dedicated to doing in every way we can. There is no mention on how to actually be a sponsored link... I have read on various blogs etc that it is delivered by a third party network... no mention as to whom... thought Google but no mention of this on any information I can find on Google blogs etc. Anyone have an idea? Thank you 🙂
Affiliate Marketing | | ChalkWard0 -
Affiliate code in urls? affiliate link landing pages?
Is it considered a good or bad practice to have the affiliate code present in your affiliate link url's ? (as opposed to disguising them with something like phpbay) Does the general public not scour the hover-over url's of links they click? Also, is there any way of keeping customers on site when they click affiliate links? (via frames or something more modern) Or is that frowned upon by advertisers?
Affiliate Marketing | | Mozzin0 -
Does an affiliate link bring the same SEO juice as a standard link?
I wonder if affiliate links, like the ones offered by Amazon Associates program bring the same SEO as would a link to the same page without this additional "ref=..."?
Affiliate Marketing | | maciek-0 -
Affilate links - Google Panda 2.1
With the recent update from Google Panda would links from affiliate Coupon Sites now have an negative impact in Organic Rankings or site value? A reason for this question is because many Coupon Sites usually have poor content and a poor quality score. Thanks
Affiliate Marketing | | Tonyd230