DoFollow Links in a Big Circle?

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   Pandoras Boxposted 14 years ago

   I read somewhere before that what you do is create several different pages on the same topic on several different sites, linking them all in a big circle. Never made sense to me.
   
   But now I think I understand that the reason you do this is not so much to make visitors follow the circle, though it isn't a bad thing if they do, but the point is to get dofollow links, which increase your page ranking in search engines. Correct?
   
   And apparently when two pages link with each other directly, that's considered a nofollow link, and hurts or at least doesn't help your page ranking? Correct? Incorrect? Additional thoughts?

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      thisisoliposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Yes and no - a no follow link is one which has the code similar to rel="nofollow" in the link code. I have a hub called the truth about backlinks, which gives examples of both a dofollow and a nofollow link!
      
      A reciprocal link (Where both pages link back to each other) still has a value, but it is less than a normal backlink.
      
      Creating a web of links to interlink your websites helps to reduce the penalty against the value of reciprocal links, however Google can still sometimes detect these and value them accordingly.
      
      Please remember that all these links still have value, it is just a little less than that of a backlink which is not reciprocal.
      
      These are very unlikely to hurt your rankings, and in most cases will still be beneficial.
      
      The true value of interlinking sites in my opinion is the ability to send your visitors to the place they are most likely to buy, which is where a web of links, rather than a link wheel, truly grows in value.
      
      Hope this helps!

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         Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Okay I'll check out your hubs and the other site.
         
         It does help. I'm worried about outdated info., the rules keep changing -I have read- so it's nice to have someone live to confirm correct current practices.
         
         So a few connecting sites are good, but full wheels can be detrimental. Thank you much!

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   2. 57

      Mark Knowlesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      I am with Oli - I hate the term "web2.0" lol But I did write an article about creating link wheels. I prefer not to close it the way Dan does though. how to improve your search engine ranking
      
      I detail exactly how to build one and the costs involved in doing so automatically.

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         Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Mark good to see you again. Your system is very sophisticated.
         
         I think I'm just gonna share my hubs on facebook and leave it at that.
         
         JUST KIDDING, JUST KIDDING! I wouldn't impose on my f/b friends that way. This all just overwhelms me.
         
         I'm gonna have to start small and let some things sink in.

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            Dan Smithposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            Mark is correct, the common method today is not to completely close the link wheel.  If you don't connect 2 spokes with a one-way link, the wheel is not closed.  The idea is that will throw Google off track and make it hard for them to detect your wheel / backlink strategy.
            
            Some webmasters claim their closed linkwheels have gotten their main website de-listed.  I'm not sure how one would attribute de-listing to a closed link wheel as opposed to other reasons, but the concensus seems to say don't close them.

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               Peter Hogganposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               So why exactly wouldn’t you want your link wheel to be discovered?

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                  Dan Smithposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  Well, you do want the websites to be discovered, but the idea is that you do not want Google to uncover that you've linked all the spokes together.  The theory is Google can detect that and it raises red flags.

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                     Obscure Divineposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     If "content was the king," as is often proclaimed, we wouldn't have to worry about such things, now would we?

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                        Mark Knowlesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                        I think "content is King" about 20% of the time, and "assuming you have done some research and it is not too competitive" is more reasonable.
                        
                        Otherwise all my pages would be top of the search results all the time.

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                           Obscure Divineposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                           Sad, but true; I agree.  Sucks, doesn't it?  One must use other methods, unfortunately...   

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                     2. 67

                        Peter Hogganposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                        I too wish content would play a bigger part in the search algorithms.

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                           Mark Knowlesposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                           Me too. My best stuff never gets read.

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                  2. 67

                     Peter Hogganposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                     Yes, it’s called link spam. Seems to me this thread is promoting a technique that could cause more harm than good. But if you want to gamble with your online rankings and earnings link wheels are one way to go.

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                        Dan Smithposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                        Hey Pete, before you get on your spam soapbox, you've got hubs on article spinning.  I personally find article spinning much more spammy than linkwheels.  To clutter up the web with a bunch of generated content that all basically say the same thing seems way worse than using some social media websites for backlinks.

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                           Peter Hogganposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                           I don’t advocate the use of article spinners in fact I despise them. I rank on the front page of Google for many article spinning related terms and yet there isn’t a spun article supporting any of these rankings. Every article I have written on the subject is totally anti so I hope no one gets the impression from your comment that I endorse article spinning in any way.
                           
                           I really don’t understand how my stance against article spinning and the auto generated low quality crap that article spinners churn out has any bearing on this discussion. Enlighten me please?
                           
                           I have never said there was anything wrong with backlinks from social media sites!!!!

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                              Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                              Yeah. Article spinners upset me if I understand them correctly. The idea that people could come along, steal your writing, pop it into some program and automatically reinvent it for their own use really annoyed me.
                              
                              Then I figured -hoped- that it couldn't replicate one's style. But still, that wouldn't be much of a discouragement. Whoever was using it could just edit out anything that came out funky due to that.
                              
                              Guess it's just something you have to deal with. Still, what an awful invention. You could literally replicate an entire collection of articles and make someone else's website over again on your own.
                              
                              Very horrifying. I guess it makes it very easy to 'write' several hubs a week though, or even in a day for that matter.

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                        Obscure Divineposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                        "Black Hat Hogwash" that only works temporarily?  ...This much is true.
                        That's why old, established sites with genuine content usually, for the most part, prevail over the other in the long run.  Then again, I guess a so-called "spammer" better have loads of domains, auto-bots, article spinners, dedication, and crazed link campaigns...along with other misleading crap to prevail. I surmise that it depends on the person, if ya get what I mean...... 

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            2. 60

               Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               Since a closed wheel would seem unnecessary to reaping the benefits, what you say makes great sense.

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            3. 60

               Obscure Divineposted 14 years agoin reply to this

               Well, there is something called "black hat SEO" and there is something called "white hat SEO."  Go figure...   Hmm, black magic, white magic, fairy dust, it is all fun & games......

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                  Dan Smithposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                  You could argue that there is no such thing as white hat SEO.  A definition of a pure white hat website would be a website written for the human readers and not considering the search engines at all.  So, any optimization for search engines kinda gets a little gray.
                  
                  But point taken.  Any technique with the goal of manipulating search engines is potentially dangerous.  Even if the tactic is not penalized by Google today, it could very well be penalized tomorrow.

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2. 67

   Peter Hogganposted 14 years ago

   Link wheels used to be effective but no longer, probably for the better. When two pages or sites link to each other the links are seen as a reciprocal and have very little value.

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3. 69

   sunforgedposted 14 years ago

   I think you need to look at a picture.
   
   Ultimate Writers link Wheel
   
   I disagree with Peter or at least i would point out, that NOT using reciprocal links is exactly why we use link wheels, maybe the terminology has changed. You use link wheels w/o any reciprocal links - thats the point - so his response is irrelevant (but relating to  your title - "dofollow links in a big circle", then his response is completely relevant)
   
   Oli is giving you all factual info and he never said anything that should be translated as:
   
   
   
   Again - i think a pictorial representation of a link wheel is your best bet at understanding ots purpose

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   1. 67

      Peter Hogganposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      Link wheels did work and for a while and were very effective, the real purpose was to ensure that backlinks had backlinks from authoritative sites. There is little benefit in them these days, like reciprocals and run of site links the benefits are marginal at best.
      
      There are many quality signals inferred from links and believe me the PHDs at Google are smart enough to tweak there algo's in order to stop linking techniques so obviously aimed at gaming their rankings.
      
      I meant exactly what I said; link wheels and reciprocals give little benefit. A few reciprocals won’t hurt, in fact a link profile might look more natural if a few were included but there is no benefit to be gained.

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      Dan Smithposted 14 years agoin reply to this

      one-way link = a link pointing from website A to website B
      
      reciprocal link = a link pointing from website A to website B.  Website B then has a corresponding link pointing back to website A.
      
      From Google's point of view, a one-way link is better than reciprocal link.  This is because of the abuse of link exchange programs that flourished a few years back.  Websites would exchange links to gain backlinks.  Google now favors one-way links because those are obvisously not link exchanges.
      
      A link wheel does two things.  First it creates a one-way link from website A to website B.  Then, it provides a link that allows google to find other websites with one way links to website B.  for example...
      
      
      
      This way, everything is using one-way links.  Every site in the wheel benefits from at least one one-way link and the main site benefits from several of them.  If you use high quality web 2.0 sites as the "spokes", you get high quality  one-way links to your site.

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         thisisoliposted 14 years agoin reply to this

         Ergh, the phrase Web 2.0 really grates across my nerves, it is even used to describe websites over a decade old.
         
         Web 2.0 was actually the phrase coined for HTML5 until it was ripped for first XML and then social media communications.
         
         Ryan said he wanted more SEO discussions, and now we have one, with opposing thoughts on a pretty well known SEO technique he seems to be missing out!
         
         To be honest in recent months I have become weary of specific link building strategies and instead just use a rather old fashioned cascading link system.
         
         S -S -S
         ¦\ ¦ /¦
         ¦  S -S
         ¦  ¦\ ¦
         \-  S
         
         Kind of, but not exactly like that. Basically every new site links to a large number of previous related websites.  This is boosted mostly by my external sites and blogs linking at varying points in to the cascade.
         
         It's not high tech, and definately not the best linking system, but it works for now, I can improve it later!

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            Dan Smithposted 14 years agoin reply to this

            If you prefer to not use the term Web2.0, ok by me.  I used it because the term commonly means a website with social networking.
            
            The social networking sites I have used in link wheels are...
            
            squidoo.com
            hubpages.com (keep hubber score > 75 for dofollow links)
            ezinearticles.com
            goarticles.com
            
            ... and so on.

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4. 70

   thisisoliposted 14 years ago

   Yeah I don't think link wheels would be detrimental.
   
   A quick note though, I have heard the occasional mention of link wheels causing issues with infinate loops, which google picks up on.
   
   Again, that is only a rumour, I have only read it in a few locations, not actually seen any real evidence supporting it!

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5. 67

   Appletreedealsposted 14 years ago

   I'm inclined to agree with Peter about the impact of link wheels on Google search. Not from any deep knowledge, but from logic.
   
   1. for pure link weight to affect the serp order I think it would take thousands of links
   
   2. Google is smart - they have changed their algo before to negate serp gaming tactics (i.e. link farms)- seems like they would be adjusting for link wheel tactics also
   
   BUT .. there is always a but.
   
   I still think link wheels are helpful if you use authority sites to create them - as sunforged suggests - because it gives more opportunity for searchers to find you via the authority site serp results.
   
   for instance - a link wheel for a hub may not get the hub itself in the serp, but it may get several exposure listings from authority site's results that reference your hub.
   
   or at least that has been my experience. I frequently see Xomba and ezine results that give an indirect link to get the searcher to my hubs.
   
   GA

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6. 61

   katiem2posted 14 years ago

   Okay, gotta ask a dumb question. 
   
   BTW this is a very interesting topic.
   But  WOW I'm a wee bit confused. 
   
   So what is the best or should I say most affective method of marketing articles and or hubs?

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7. 61

   katiem2posted 14 years ago

   Thanks NOW i get the BIG picture and understand the language of just what I've been doing.  I really appreciate your help!  Thanks and Peace

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8. 70

   thisisoliposted 14 years ago

   *argh*, the formatting changed after i did the diagram!

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9. 61

   katiem2posted 14 years ago

   The words were good and explained it well...Thanks and Peace

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    Ohmaposted 14 years ago

    So if Hub A is my primary target then any link on hub A should not point to the site I am using to back link to Hub A?
    What if The back link site is linked to my profile page? does that affect the link to Hub A?

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       thisisoliposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       That would make it a reciprocal link yes, which is slightly lower in value!
       
       Dan - sorry, I often go off on rants about the term Web 2.0, I don't know why it gets on my tits so much, it just does!

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11. 60

    Pandoras Boxposted 14 years ago

    Thanks for all the info. I'm still a wee bit confused!
    
    But I reckon that as long as I have no reciprocal links, and as long as I do have several "quality" one-way links pointing back at my hub (backlinks), then it will all work out.
    
    Any tips on what quality entails? I mean like, are there any of these sites which one should not use? It's okay to have a bunch of links from bookmarking sites, blogging sites, other writer sites?
    
    Google doesn't look at that and see it as gaming?

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       Dan Smithposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       "high quality" simply means high Google page rank.  A website with a page rank of 6 gives more "link juice" to it's backlinks than a website with a 2 page rank.  The website is endorsing the dofollow link, and therefore conveying some of that page rank to the destination website.  A page rank 6 website simply has more page rank to convey.
       
       There are several places online that will allow you check the page of any website.  Simply google "page rank checker".

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          Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

          Okay thank you.

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       thisisoliposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       Make sure the sites are related to your content, and avoid spam filled websites!

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          Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

          Got it, thank you!

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    ryankettposted 14 years ago

    Oooooooo..... An SEO topic.
    
    Link wheels can be very effective, I use one a very simplified version of one which effectively backlinks my backlinks, it works a treat.

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    Ohmaposted 14 years ago

    Next question should I go back and remove the links I have on my profile that link to my Blog and Websites if they are primarily to promote my Hubs?

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    Obscure Divineposted 14 years ago

    I'm glad I got out of the biz a couple years ago (due to legal reasons), but it is nice to be refreshed on the subject, while realizing nothing worth mentioning, has changed in the SEO world...  Ha-ha!

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    sunforgedposted 14 years ago

    Perhaps the day humans can agree what "quality" means perhaps then a programmer can write an algorithm that will accurately find and reward such.
    
    I doubt either will ever happen.
    
    There are factors that G often claims and wishes are the defining factors, much is misinformation meant to dissuade those who work everyday to cater to their ranking factors.
    
    Its really, really hard to ever know the true reason for deindexing - some will say wow, I used this method and Ive lost ranking or Im deindexed - those same folks are rather often using many other gray or automated methods - not sure how often they have any idea what was the cause of their downfall.
    
    Right now - a systematic use of respected sites that have editorial or community oversight works very well, no question about it.
    
    it would take someone using a scientific method to really be able to legitimately have answers to most of these questions. If you want to open up your accounts, linking structures, history, ip addresses and affiliate partnerships to detailed scrutiny..then maybe one could have believable answers to these types of theories - but anyone who can comfortably sit at home and do this type of stuff keeping a roof over their head and food in dependent bellies never could
    
    there are no answers, only questions and methods that have worked for someone once before

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       Obscure Divineposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       Like most things in life, it has become complicated & stupid.  We just play the contaminated game, as that's all that it is anymore...  Fun-fun! 

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       Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       Yeah I like what you've said, it makes good sense.
       
       I'm just not going to be happy spending alot of time trying to run complicated traffic seeking programs.
       
       If I can network amongst a few sites and backlink to a few sites, and promote in other more organic ways, that I can handle at this point.
       
       This thread has been very informative to me, and has cleared up several of my questions. Thanks for all the help.

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          Dan Smithposted 14 years agoin reply to this

          Pandoras Box,
          
          Perhaps the best thing to do is write content for low competition keywords.  The idea here is that if you find a keyword within your topic that lots of people are searching for, but has few pages in the Google search results, then you should be able to create a page/article/content for that specific keyword and get the traffic.
          
          The way you do this is keyword research.
          
          (1) Go to the google keyword tool, and generate a keyword list for your topic.
          
          https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
          
          (2) looks for keywords with about anywhere between 2,000 and 5,000 monthly searches.  More than 5,000 monthly searches will have competition, while under 2,000 doesn't have enough traffic.
          
          (3) go to the google search engine, and find out how many results are returned for a phrase match on the keywords you selected.  This means wrapping each keyword phrase in doubles quotes and doing a search.  On the top right of the results, Google shows the number of competing pages.  You'd like under 10,000, but you can try for under 20,000.
          
          (4) Also do an intitle and inanchor search in Google.  This is what you type in the search engine...
          
          intitle:"keyword phrase" inanchor:"keyword phrase"
          
          and again, look for the competing pages.  Look for keywords with this number under 20.
          
          (5) Keywords with good traffic and low competing pages are good keywords to write about.

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             Obscure Divineposted 14 years agoin reply to this

             Robotic writing sucks; what if she wants to write about "high competition" subject(s)?  She may also have a unique approach towards the popular topics in which the readers may benefit...along with the eventual search rank that perhaps, may come along with it, no?  Hmm, we have enough crap on the web without the promotion of mechanical speech due to SEO jargon.  Just my opinion... 

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                Dan Smithposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                Nothing wrong with a high competition topic, but I would look for low competition keywords within that topic to write about.  There's nothing robotic or black hat about doing due diligence on a subject.  I never met anyone adverse to keyword research before.

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                   Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

                   Right. I agree. Whatever one wants to write about, it only makes sense that they try to optimize its exposure.
                   
                   Though I recognize that a person's prefered topics may not be money makers, even if they optimize the heck out of them. That's a choice each person has to make. Well, not all people, just dumb-butts like me who write about dumb-butt stuff that nobody buys, lol, often literally and figuratively.
                   
                   On the other hand I agree with Obscure, but that's not going to make me any money.

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             Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

             Okay, right. We want to use keywords that are searched for alot, but which do not have alot of search results. Got ya, and the way you put it brought something to my attention I was definitely missing before.
             
             It may be a topic well enough written on, if you use high demand keywords or keyword phrases which those others haven't caught on to yet.
             
             One question on number 3. I was trying this in google and I'm not sure what you meant by double quotes. So I did it with single double quotes ("...") and with double double quotes (""..."") and with double single quotes (''...''). They all gave me the same results. Same results again using no quotes at all.
             
             So I'm not sure I understood what you meant by that.
             
             Thank you!

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    thisisoliposted 14 years ago

    Yeah article spinning is a bad route to take!

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17. 67

    Peter Hogganposted 14 years ago

    Pandoras Box,
    
    First of all no matter what keyphrase you target and write about there will always be competitors. However, the numbers of pages returned for a given search has nothing to do with how competitive a keyphrase is.  Wrapping a search query in quotes will reduce the number of pages returned because you are looking for an exact match, again the number of pages returned tells you nothing about how well optimized any of these pages are.
    
    Similarly, The intitle:”…” inanchor:”…” search mentioned earlier works by creating a subset of pages that contain an exact match to a search query in the page title and the anchor text of links that point to them. Those links could be internal navigation rather than links from external resources and only one link would be enough for a page to qualify.  This search does get rid of a lot of the noise but again the number of pages returned has nothing to do with the level of SEO, only that some SEO is present.
    
    Also keep in mind the level of competition used in Google’s keyword tool refers to the number of ads competing for a term not how well organic results might be optimized for that term.
    
    There is nothing wrong with using these techniques and each gives us a feel for what we might be up against. But the cold hard facts are this, no matter how you slice or dice it there are only 20 or so pages truly competing for any search term, those are the pages that get returned on the first few pages of the search results. Everything else is an also ran. 
    
    So if you want to rank amongst these pages you need to be able to analyze them and figure out exactly how they have achieved their rankings. How many links and what sites they come from, how many pages on the site, how old is the site etc.  This is the stuff that really matters.

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       Pandoras Boxposted 14 years agoin reply to this

       Thank you. This post does help clarify. It's late, so I'll read it again tomorrow.
       
       Regarding my earlier question about #3 on Dan's post, nevermind. I dunno what I was doing wrong earlier, but I just tried it again and it worked.
       
       Also for other newbies like myself who may read this thread, not sure he mentioned it, but don't use any spaces after the inanchor: or intitle: commands.
       
       inanchor:"keyphrase"
       
       Thanks everybody!

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