{"id":1428,"date":"2009-10-13T11:06:17","date_gmt":"2009-10-13T18:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pdxtc.com\/wpblog\/?p=1428"},"modified":"2014-12-04T13:21:05","modified_gmt":"2014-12-04T20:21:05","slug":"link-wheels-authority-hubs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pdxtc.com\/wpblog\/seo\/link-wheels-authority-hubs\/","title":{"rendered":"Link Wheels | Authority Hubs"},"content":{"rendered":"

AS OF MID\u00a02011 THIS IS OUTDATED AND DANGEROUS – DO NOT DO IT!<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Simply put, a Link Wheel is a group of pages on different hosts, that are about a specific product, subject or service, which all link to each other, and also link to a particular URL, or “money site”.<\/p>\n

Some call them “link wheels”, some call them “authority hubs”, and some, I’m sure, use names I haven’t even heard of.<\/p>\n

One of the first advanced search marketing books I read was called Revenge of the MiniNet<\/a>, by Michael Campbell<\/a>. In a nutshell, this is the strategy it talked about:<\/p>\n

Using multiple domains, build multiple niche websites that are very tightly focused about a specific aspect of your business.<\/p>\n

In turn each of those websites would link to each other, and each of those websites would link back to your core URL<\/p>\n

You might build multiple websites, one for each model of Sunbeam Toasters, and each of those websites would link to each other, and each of those websites would link back to your primary Sunbeam product page, or toaster page, or main domain, etc.<\/p>\n

In doing this, you create relevant content rich mini-sites, that link to other mini sites, and to a central hub, which gets authority from the links within those domains.<\/p>\n

The Problem?<\/strong>
\nThe problem with that, was that besides being an awful lot of work, it was relatively transparent, and your new domains had no authority at all, so it took a long time before you might see the benefit.<\/p>\n

Also, people were regularly going to great pains to register the domains under different name, host the domains at different IP addresses with multiple hosting accounts, and basically spent a ton of money trying to hide the fact that they were building their own web of links.<\/p>\n

A Better Strategy<\/strong>
\nJumping ahead to today, many people are doing the same process using some of the Web 2.0 content sites that are out there, which automatically removes most of those transparency factors by having all of the sites hosted on quality domains with lots of trust.<\/p>\n

With all<\/a> the talk about the importance<\/a> of domain authority<\/a> and trust<\/a>, you must know that some domains carry an awful lot of extra weight. I’ve seen this linking strategy be quite effective over the past year, and I know people that have been doing it a lot longer than we have.<\/p>\n

For Example:<\/strong>
\nFor example, let’s say the goal is to increase rankings for “blue widgets”, to this URL – http:\/\/yourdomain.com\/bluewidgets.html<\/p>\n