Link Wheels for search engine ranking improvement?

Abstract

The quality of webpage content has an effect on how search engine crawlers index it. Similarly, the degree of interlinking between websites with a similar focus plays a large role in how search engines perceive them. As a result, link building has become a popular technique in search engine optimisation as it provides a positive impetus to the value search engines attach to a website. Link wheels are identified as one method of significantly improving this ranking of commercial websites. However, some search engine optimisation practitioners maintain that link wheels should not be implemented, since the effort required to create them does not justify the rewards. Five similar test websites will be developed as the basis of the research. Two of them will be based on white hat and another two on black hat techniques. These websites will use either a link wheel or other industry related link building strategies or methodologies other than link wheel. The fifth website will be implemented as a control mechanism without link building or a link wheel structure, and its design will be based on white hat techniques. In parallel with this experimentation, interviews will be conducted to determine how practitioners incorporate link wheels as a link building strategy. It is expected that the link wheel-based website will yield better rankings and a fair comparison in terms of return on investment. The results will be relevant to and usable by academics, industry specialists and online marketers - to enhance the quality and quantity of commercial website links, hence achieving a higher search engine ranking.