When you read about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) you will eventually read about link wheels, and how great they are for building backlinks to your site. A link wheel is actually a network made up of pages you create on different Web 2.0 sites to help promote and build links to your main web site. These networks are called link “wheels” because when properly set up they resemble a bicycle wheel.

Web 2.0 sites are used in the wheel because they normally have high Google page rank, and the links that are generated from these sites carry that same high rank. Google ranks your web site based on their own proprietary algorithm, and no one knows exactly what makes up the parts of the algorithm, but it is known that the number and value of your backlinks is very important.

All links are good, but links from sites with high page rank will boost your site’s ranking more than links from low or non-ranked sites. So more backlinks from high ranking sites means your site gains a higher rank. And when it gains rank, it moves closer to the top of the results page that is returned for a search. And that means you will get more free traffic from search engines.

If you are having trouble picturing a link wheel, take a pen and a piece of paper and draw a very simple bicycle wheel with a center hub (a circle), and then draw six or eight spokes (lines) that radiate out from the center hub in a circle. At the end of each spoke draw a small box. Now connect each box using an arrow that points to the box to the right of it. You could also connect each box to the one to the left, the direction is not important as long as all the arrows flow in the same direction. Clockwise or counter-clockwise, it doesn’t matter. These arrows form the wheel.

So in a link wheel, the center hub is your main web site, the site you want to build backlinks to. The small box at the end of each spoke is a Web 2.0 site. So when you build your wheel, each box will be a different Web 2.0 site. Each box will contain two links (the arrows), one to your central web site and one to another Web 2.0 box in the network. And you can have as many Web 2.0 feeder sites in your link wheel as you want.

Building backlinks is normally a slow, tedious job. Building a link wheel can be a slow, tedious job, too, but once the wheel is in place and working, it will keep producing high-quality backlinks for a long time. And backlinks build traffic. Give it a try.

Backlinks is a term that you see over and over in Internet Marketing circles. Everyone says you need lots of backlinks from high page rank sites – what does this mean? Why do you need any backlinks at all?

First, let’s agree on exactly what the term means. A “backlink” is actually a clickable link (a hyperlink) on website “A” that when clicked leads to website “B.” Very simple. Since a backlink is also a link, you will often see the terms used to describe the same thing. Now why would you care if other people linked to your site?

The biggest reason by far is Google. Each of the three major search engines (Bing, Google and Yahoo!) have proprietary algorithms that are used to rank websites. Bing and Yahoo! do use the number of backlinks going to a site in their calculations, but Google, the largest search engine, puts a huge amount of emphasis on the number and quality of backlinks when ranking sites.

So if you want to rank on the first page of Google for your keywords, you had better have a lot of high quality links going to your site. And since Google still carries at least 75% of today’s search traffic, it actually is very important for your site to rank well in the results from a Google search.

Of course backlinks are not the only factor that determines a site’s rank, the quality and amount of original content is important, and so is the on-page SEO that is done to the site. But, the fact is, the number and quality of your backlinks will pretty much determine where you rank on Google. And if one site is as good as another regarding content and on-page SEO, then the site with the most high-quality backlinks will win the ranking war.

What determines if a link is high quality? Web sites are given a “page rank” rating by Google based on several factors, including the age of the site, the amount of high quality information on the site, the authority of the site, and others. A link from a high page rank site is given more weight than a link from a site with low or no page rank. There are also certain types of sites (sites that end in .edu and .gov are the best known) whose links are automatically very highly ranked by Google. Generally speaking, it is more difficult to get backlinks from .edu and .gov sites, and these links are very desirable.

How is the best way to get backlinks? There are a lot of different methods that will work. You can buy backlinks for a monthly or yearly fee, but as you can imagine, this can backfire if Google decides to crack down on sites that sell links. You can subscribe to services that give you a list of sites to go to monthly to make your own links. There are also people who will create links for you for a monthly or per link fee. And you can subscribe to forums and blogs in your niche and join in and make comments and posts and create your own backlinks.

A lot of people find backlink creation to be a very tedious and time-consuming job, which is why there are services to help with this task. Other people enjoy spending time socializing on forums and blogs. The main thing to remember is, it is very important to continuously work on building backlinks to your site. How you decide to build the links is up to you.

Do the terms Traffic and Backlinks sound like two totally different subjects to you? Then you might be surprised to know that they work together to help you build a successful web site. That is right, in order to get traffic you need backlinks, and the more traffic you get the more free links (backlinks you did not have to create) you will get.

Ask any web site owner what he or she wants most, and they will tell you traffic. Because if you want to sell any product or service online, you have to get people to your site to look at your offer or your product. When you are selling online, everything comes down to traffic. No traffic, no sales, it is as simple as that. And most people desperately want search engine traffic – because search engine traffic is free.

If you want free search engine traffic, your site needs to be somewhere on the first two pages of the results that are returned when someone searches for your main keywords. Page two will give you a trickle of traffic, but page one is really where you want to be, the closer to the top of the page the better.

Well, how do you get your site to the top of page one on any of the major search engines (Bing, Yahoo! or Google)? First you build a good site that is full of useful, original content. Then you do as much to optimize the on-page SEO as you can. Now what?

Now you start building backlinks. The way to get to the top of page one of the search results (especially for Google search results) is to build lots of incoming links. How many links will you need? Quite possibly hundreds, and maybe even thousands, depending on how competitive your niche is, how competitive your keywords are, and the number of links the sites you are competing with have built. Great content is important, SEO is important, but building backlinks is what will push your site to the top.

Building backlinks is not sexy or fun or even interesting. In fact, most people find it to be really boring, time-consuming work that they do not like to do. That is why there are so many individuals and small companies that will contract to build links for you for a fee – because most Internet Marketers want to spend their time building sites and selling, not building links.

It’s not difficult to build links, it just takes quite a bit of time. But, ask any successful Internet Marketer and they will tell you that they have some sort of system in place that constantly builds new links to their sites. Backlinks build rank and keep you at the top of the search results, and that brings free, targeted traffic. In some cases, massive amounts of traffic. Backlinks equal Traffic, and Traffic is good.

When the Internet was younger people would boost the importance of their web site by spending a lot of time trying to get other sites to agree to exchange links with them. This is called “reciprocal linking” and it worked like this — you would write to the owner of site “A” and offer to put a link from your site “B” to his site “A” if he would link from his site “A” back to your site “B”. Doing this would boost the importance of both sites. This was one of the normal ways people used to build links, and it is not done much today. Why? Because Google frowns on reciprocal links.

While there are three major search engines today (Bing, Google and Yahoo!) and many smaller search engines, most Internet Marketers pay very close attention to Google and follow Google’s rules. This is because Google carries almost 75% of all search traffic. If your web site ranks highly on the Google search results page for a particular searched term, you will get lots of free search engine traffic. So, it makes sense for you, the web site owner, to make Google happy.

All search engines have their own algorithm that is used to rank sites, and the components of these algorithms are highly proprietary trade secrets. We know that Bing and Yahoo! do count backlinks towards ranking, but both focus more on other things like on-page factors and SEO. We also know that Google counts the number and quality of backlinks as the most important part of a site’s rank, even though they do look at other factors, too.

Well, you know that Google puts a lot of weight on number and quality of backlinks. What are you going to do to improve your site’s rank? You are going to build backlinks. What kind of links is a good question, some people will tell you that links need to be from high page rank sites, other people will say that all links are good and it looks more natural to have links from all different types of sites.

One thing everyone agrees on is that a link from a site that ends in .edu (sites in the education field) or a site that ends in .gov (all types of government sites) will give your site a big boost. These sites (.edu and .gov) automatically carry a lot of weight with Google.

There are a lot of ways to build backlinks. You can find people who will build the links for you for a per link fee, there are people who sell monthly linking packets where they show you where to go, and you follow the instructions and build your own links. And of course you can sign up with blogs and forums in your niche and make posts and comments and build links that way. How you build the links is not that important. The main thing to do is to build these links consistently, be sure to make backlinking a part of your weekly business routine. It really is that important.

Link wheels are networks of Web 2.0 sites that are linked together to build backlinks to other web sites. Most Web 2.0 sites (think Hubpages, Squidoo, YouTube, Facebook, FriendFeed and others) have very high Google page rank. When a web site has backlinks from sites with high page rank, the web site gains ranking and authority in Google’s eyes.

If your site has a lot of high-quality backlinks, it will gain rank, which means it will appear higher on a search results page. And the higher on the search results page, the more free search engine traffic your site will receive. Link wheels can quickly build high-quality links for your site.

How do you build a simple link wheel? It’s important to understand how a link wheel flows – first picture a bicycle wheel. There is a main hub in the center and spokes radiate out from this hub. The center hub is your main web site, the site you want to build backlinks to – and the spokes each end at a small box that is actually a Web 2.0 site that feeds links to your main site. Each box will have two links, one that connect to the main site (the center hub) and one that connect to another box (Web 2.0 site).

If this is confusing, draw a simple diagram. Put a circle in the middle and label it with your main site name (mysite.com for example). Now draw six lines or spokes radiating out from the center circle. At the top of each spoke put an arrowhead that points to the main site. At the bottom end of each spoke, draw a little box. Now start at one box and draw an arrow pointing to the next box, all going in one direction around the circle. Clockwise, counter-clockwise, it doesn’t matter as long as all the arrows flow in the same direction and form the wheel. Now label each box with one of the following site names:

Hubpages

Squidoo

Facebook

Blogger.com

WordPress.com

Wetpaint

Each of the above sites is the name of a Web 2.0 site – this is because most Web 2.0 sites have high page rank, and links from high page rank sites give you more “link juice” than links from lower ranking or non-ranked sites. There are many more sites that you can use, these were picked as examples that most people will be familiar with. (A note here, link wheels can be made using hundreds of sites, we are using six for simplicity.)

Next, sign up and build a Hubpages Hub, a Squidoo Lens, make a Facebook page, build a small blog on Blogger.com and WordPress.com, and sign up for a Wetpaint page. Put some good, original content on each site.

Now put a link on each site that points to your main site (in the center). Okay, now you need to link each box on the ends of your spokes to ONE other spoke site. For instance, you could link Hubpages to Facebook, Facebook to WordPress, WordPress to Squidoo, Squidoo to Blogger, Blogger to Wetpaint. This will create what is known as an “open wheel” where you could easily plug in more sites.

The main thing to remember is that your main site, the site you want to build backlinks to, goes in the center and is linked to by all the Web 2.0 sites. Then each Web 2.0 site links to ONLY ONE other Web 2.0 site. Once this is all in place, you will normally see quite a few new backlinks in thirty days or less.

You have just built a simple Link Wheel that will generate a lot of backlinks for your main site. And each of the spoke sites will gain some “link juice” too. Congratulations, you are now one step closer to being an SEO expert!