Don’t forget about the comment contest.

What are 3-Way Links?

If you’re not familiar with 3-way link exchanges, they’re basically where three different sites all link to each other in a way where it creates a link wheel.

For example:

Site A links to Site B, site B links to site C, and site C links to site A. So, what you have is something that looks like the picture to the left. Notice that B doesn’t link back to A, C doesn’t link back B, and A doesn’t link back to C.

This eliminates what is generally called reciprocal linking, a common and out-dated form of linking in which two websites link to each other. This way of linking is ineffective and won’t do much good for either site, according to Google.

However, 3-way linking IS effective because the links appear as one-way links, which are highly valued by Google. As you market your website, it’s important that you get one-way links to your site to increase your rankings in search engines.

The Unforeseen “Benefit”

Knowing what I’ve just said, I’ve done several 3-way link exchanges with other webmasters. I tend to be picky with who I do link exchanges of any kind with, but depending on the circumstance and the websites involved, I’ll gladly do so.

That being said, I found out some pretty interesting news the other week. Apparently one of those 3-way link exchanges I did got my site some added and completely unforeseen attention.

Thanks to @amabaie for the heads-up on this.

If you’re familiar with Kevin Potts or follow the Cambridge Business Academy at all, they did a webinar back on May 12, which just happened to be my Birthday. During the live webinar, seen by thousands, my website was not only mentioned, but it was shown live on the screen!

But, it’s not for what you might think…

Rather than have me explain it, I think it’s better if you just see it for yourself. At exactly 6:48 into the webinar, they mention my site as my home page links back to the CBA site, all because of a 3-way link exchange that I did.

Here’s a link to the recorded webinar which can now be viewed on the CBA website: http://www.cambridgebusinessacademy.com/products/114/2/CBA/Succeed-2

Now, it goes to show that exchanging links in this manner is not only effective, but it’s being used by the top guys. Not to mention, you may even get some added exposure from it.

I thought it was cool and worth mentioning, even though I didn’t see my traffic increase or anything.

The main reason for writing this isn’t to make my head swell. Rather, it’s to get you to check out an awesome webinar and website like CBA, and to get involved in doing 3-way link exchanges. Your website and online business will thank you for it.

Have any questions or comments? Leave them below…

I promised another backlink building strategy if you read my post Proven Strategies to Increase Website Traffic and Generate Sales. If you were waiting in anticipation for it, the wait is now over… it’s here!

This strategy, if used correctly, can catapult your blog posts, web pages, homepage, etc. to the top of Google and other search engines. Once you’re sitting high and mighty at the top, the sales will follow (if you’re targeting the right keywords).

To get started, you’re going to need a blog post (home page will do just fine) that you want to get a lot of traffic to. This is especially if you’re promoting something big and want to earn commissions (affiliate marketing). For your home page, you’re probably promoting something, selling your own product or building your list. In any case, you obviously want traffic, so this will work just as well.

Assuming you’ve done all the on-page SEO stuff for your blog post or home page, you’re now ready to start building backlinks. But not just any backlinks will do here. While article marketing is still very effective (and I recommend using this method as well), there’s another link building strategy that works very well.

It’s called a Link Wheel.

You may have heard of it before…. or maybe not. It can actually be somewhat confusing to people, so I’m going to explain it the best way I can without confusing you.

If you’ve heard of this strategy before but just don’t quite GET IT yet, then pay close attention here. Better yet, the diagram above should do all the explaining that needs to be done. But, I’ll still do my best here to explain everything.

With the Link Wheel strategy, you’re capitalizing on free blogs/web 2.0/social sites. Take a look at the sites in the diagram, and you’ll notice one thing. They’re all free to use and post content to, and there’s a social aspect to them (this doesn’t really matter for the sake of this strategy). Simply put, Google and the other two major search engines love these sites.

So to get started, you need to write some articles. Anywhere from 6 to 8 articles will be sufficient.

There are some key requirements needed with these articles, though. They need to contain your keyword in the title and two or three times throughout the article body. If you haven’t done so already (you should have), your blog post should contain the same keyword in its title and content. This is very important!

The articles you write for these sites only need to be anywhere from 250 – 350 words long. You don’t need a novel here, just enough useful information to make the content relevant to the keyword you’re targeting.

If you don’t feel like writing the articles yourself, outsource it to someone else. I can get 10 articles written for $27 that do just fine. That’s actually very cheap, by the way.

Once you have your articles, you need to sign up for these free sites. Once you sign up with a site you won’t ever have to do it again. This is a one-time process.

Here are the sites I recommend. This isn’t an all-inclusive list, however. You can sign up for as many as you want. But for the sake of your link wheel you only need 6 to 8 sites.

1. Hubpages
2. Wetpaint
3. Blogger
4. WordPress.com
5. Gather
6. Xomba
7. Quizilla
8. Squidoo

There’s a couple I didn’t mention that are in the diagram. Like I said it really doesn’t matter which sites you sign up with. It’s completely up to you.

Here’s where it gets tricky…

Each article you post on a site should contain two links… one pointing to your blog post and the other pointing to the article on the next site.

BUT… those links need to contain the keyword being targeted.

For example, if I’m targeting the keyword “golf swing” then I have that in the title of both the blog post and all articles for each site as well as in the content. Also, the backlinks will contain the same keyword “golf swing.”

Follow? Just look at the diagram again and this should make sense.

Each article will do this until you’ve completed the rotation and placed one article on each site. You now have a complete Link Wheel.

Doing this correctly will boost your blog post or home page’s rankings in the search engines dramatically. Of course, you still want to perform other link building strategies I’ve mentioned in previous posts because this is not the only way I build backlinks to my posts and home page, just to clear up any confusion you may have.

Any questions about what I’ve shared regarding Link Wheels? Still don’t quite get it? Feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll do my best to answer you.