Hi Gang
Just a quick follow up on the email I sent out recently about the terrific Link Wheel we had had constructed for a client recently and a few of you had raised a couple of issues that I thought might be of interest to more of you.
First of all let me bring you up to date with the particular client exercise that brought this about (within reason) the results of an SEO exercise we are carrying out for a client at the moment (without getting into too much detail for reasons of client confidentiality - though will check as I am sure they won't mind but...).
We started off with 22 terms in the Health and Fitness Niche of which we were on Page 1 or 2 for all 22 so the summary of the position at the outset on May 28th was as follows:
Nos in those positions
Positions May 28th June 4th
Top 20 6 0
Top 10 4 5
Top 5 4 5
Top 3 2 3
Top 2 4 7
No 1 2 2
So the initial story is that the current round of promotion had taken the various key phrases and concentrated them now quite firmly into Page 1 for every keyword / phrase we were targeting and in most cases now quite firmly towards the upper half of Page 1
Now an analysis of the results threw up the following bits of information as well.
1. We had increased our profile of places where we had consecutive places i.e. 2&3 etc by more than double and in fact out of the 22 terms we now had 12 double positions.
2. The rise in SERPS appeared to be across the board with a rise in places for terms that we had scheduled to really get behind book marking wise later this week so the Link Wheels additional effect appears to be increasing the weight behind the entire site and not just specific terms.
All of this before we really could add any additional SEO behind the Link Wheel i.e. it is too early to count in the effects of additional RSS work or increased book marking of the pages, which of course we will do.
Once I get clearance from the client then I will post more details and information about this exercise into the members' area so you can get a clearer idea of what we are talking about. As I mentioned it's in the Health and Fitness Equipment Niche and though fairly small there are about 10 to 20 companies "taking chunks out of each other" at the top of this niche and it is fiercely competitive.
Now some of the other issues raised by members were as follows:
1. Is this type of Link Wheel a traditional one or is it random and how much use are they? Well an analysis of the structure makes it look fairly random to us and as to the continued efficiency of these as promotional tools I can only point to the results above achieved so far and they will get better once we swing the full force of the entire SLS Network behind each Link Spoke i.e. each Blog.
2. How effective are they for sites at various stages in their development and what about too many links? My take on this is as follows. As the great economist, John Maynard Keynes said "In the long term we are all dead". The old concept of too many links is an old wives tail. If it wasn't then you would crucify your site every time you released a successful Press Release that got picked up all over the place. Life too short. If folks want to wait for "forever and a day" attracting 2-3 links per day whilst the rest of the world flies by then fine but I think life is about a little more than this. You need results if not now, certainly by the end of the week. It is that important.
3. Is it possible to have more than one Link Wheel active at any one time and how can we maximise the return? Can you have too many links coming from any one URL towards the same URL? Not really it's called deep linking and anything that helps Googlebot find your internal pages is fine in my book.
The thing is that once you have this set up you have total access via username and password to each site so my advice would be to start adding spun content at random to the various sites and then bookmark these pages as and when you add them so you have a fairly organic growing "Link Mountain". Wow, forget about Wheels, Pyramids, Clouds etc we are building a Link Mountain!! These entire buzz phrases get a bit silly after a while, still I'm sure someone will use it one day. The other thing is that the cost of getting this whole thing up and running quickly (takes 6 days) is so cost effective that the best thing to do is getthe basic structure in place and then enhance it gradually.
4. After you receive your report, how many links is ideal behind each spoke? I would hit it with the lot - read point 2...seriously why not? Hit it with your full allocation, your library pass, any pots and pans that come to hand and if necessary the neighbours cat!
5. After the report arrives what RSS promotion should be done and how to develop links further? I would hit it with all the resources you have at your disposal. The thing about Google is that yes it finally gets round to recognising things with indexing etc but folks get too paranoid about Google. There are millions of web users and site owners out there with new sites coming on stream every day. It would be totally paranoid of me to assume that Google have a department set aside with my picture on the wall and every time I do something a buzzer goes off deep in the heart of the Googleplex with teams of "apparatchiks" all streaming out with "get Steve Morgan" emblazoned on their foreheads!
I hope this goes some way to clarifying any potential queries some of you might have had over this but as usual, any further questions then fire away and keep them coming in.
