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I have worked with sites in the e-cig niche and I can tell you the sites definitely needs more authority (as Dave pointed out).

Also, you have about 1k links but all coming from 2 domains only - so that's like having 2 links that actually count - in such a competitive niche, a strong link profile is a must.

And finally, the e-cig niche is something that google doesn't really like / trust (same as with pharma / casino / gambling) - so what I noticed is that a new site will never rank fast (no matter how good is your content or how many links you have). Sites start ranking after 2-3 months.

Hope this helps,

Rick

The link wheel only refers to the linking patterns - it has nothing to do with the quality of the links or the quality of the content. If you used crappy content and you didn't link properly, it's no wonder you had ranking instability (although that's normal when it comes to web2.0 link wheels, especially the poorly built ones, as some web2.0 properties get deleted, you lose the link and you lose the rank as well). HQ link wheels, like the ones mentioned by the OP, will never get you in trouble - but you'll need more time / resources to build them or they will be more expensive if you want to purchase such a service

To answer your questions, YES, the link wheel still works, but only if you do it right, I mean, it all depends on the quality of your link wheels.

A properly built link wheel, will take more time (and/or money) to build but the results will be up there, you'll get increased keyword rankings and also indirect traffic from the link wheel sites, and contrary to popular belief, if you build it right, google will not be able to spot it and you'll be penalty free.

If you plan to build a link wheel, I would recommend you to read all the resources at linkwheel.pro before you start building one.

As with any link building strategy / method, it all depends on the quality of your link wheels.

A poorly built link wheel will provide no noticeable results and in the worst case, you'll end up with a penalty.

A properly built link wheel, will take more time (and/or money) to build but the results will be up there, you'll get increased keyword rankings and also indirect traffic from the link wheel sites, and contrary to popular belief, if you build it right, google will not be able to spot it and you'll be penalty free.

If you plan to build a link wheel, I would recommend you to read all the resources at linkwheel.pro before you start building one.

Not all websites will be hit instantly, it's a rolling update which means it will be implemented over time and sites will be affected over time. So if your site is not mobile friendly and you still rank well today, it doesn't mean you got away with it.

To answer your question, YES, it has high trust and high authority so a link from that site would definitely help in terms of SEO.

Dirk, you might be right, but then again why have 3 identical sites? Even if the hreflang tags are properly set up, the whole content is duplicated - even the currency across all 3 sites. If you had different currencies on each (as described in the video) it would be something. But right now, all the content is identical (not almost identical but fully identical).

Don't get me wrong, this is not a problem about spamming, it's just that with 3 identical pages, google is going to rank the one that it first saw, the one it considers to be the original - or the one that has the best ranking signals (links and what not).

If you really have the same site on 3 top level domains, that's duplicate content and it's probably one of the reasons why the other 2 don't show up in the searches. All 3 sites are indexed, I have checked. If you wanna have 3 sites, you should definitely use different content on them, or you can just keep the 3 domains and redirect 2 of them to the most important one.

Even if your site outranks the other site in Moz, it doesn't mean anything. Moz is not Google, they have different ranking signals (have a second read at what Bob said) and the most important thing, Moz doesn't show all the links websites have, it shows only the links it found. This being the case, Google is probably aware of more links (hidden ones as well), so that's why your website is outranked.

What do you mean you're only found for the .co.nz site?

And one thing I don't understand, do you have 3 different sites or just 3 different domains (and 2 of them redirect to the other one)?

I've done some marketing for the a few furniture sites (manufacturers and retailers) and the best kind of posts that work best (great engagement and lots of views) are lists like : 10 living room ideas, 15 kitchen designs for increased usability, 20 bedroom office designs for small spaces, etc. You don't need a lot of text for this, just images (which you can use with attribution rights). Check houzz.com for more details.

Do not rely only on tools, use your common sense as well. For example, moz's new spam rating - a blog comment link coming from a page with gibberish content, tons of ads and 2500 spammy unmoderated comments would seem like spam to me, but moz's spam rating is only 2.

By the way, which tools are you using?

I have worked with sites in the e-cig niche and I can tell you the sites definitely needs more authority (as Dave pointed out).

Also, you have about 1k links but all coming from 2 domains only - so that's like having 2 links that actually count - in such a competitive niche, a strong link profile is a must.

And finally, the e-cig niche is something that google doesn't really like / trust (same as with pharma / casino / gambling) - so what I noticed is that a new site will never rank fast (no matter how good is your content or how many links you have). Sites start ranking after 2-3 months.

Hope this helps,

Rick

Do a full 301 redirect and don't worry so much about DA/PA - they are not google metrics and the numbers themselves don't influence google rankings. But just as Monica said, you will see a drop in rankings but they should be back up in 2 weeks or so.

It's exactly how Christina put it:

• keyword in title (the more keywords in title the better)

• title needs to make sense (as a sentence, not just as an enumeration of keywords)

• keyword closer to the beginning of the title it's a common practice

• keep it up to 70 characters long (google will truncate longer titles)

• also use your brand / site name somewhere

The example Christina gave is great, but to include even more keywords (and if you company is a local one) I would do:

"Top Rated UK Web Design Company - DR Adept" - as this would include the keywords uk web design company, top rated web design company, etc (combinations of all the words in there, you get the drift) - it won't rank as well for all of them, but it will be there.

I haven't used monitorbacklinks but I have used cognitiveseo and I could say it's not very bad and not very good. If you can take a sample of 1000 links and then randomly check 10-20 of them manually, using your common sense, you'll see that CS is right about some and wrong about some.

For me, the only tool I can rely on is linkresearchtools (link detox) - which is right about links in about 80-90% of the cases. It's a bit expensive tho but I think they offer some sort of free trial.

If your site has enough authority and trust (site age is also a factor here), those 3k links won't hurt a bit, no matter how many links you have. I have done experiments and a domain with 50DA/50PA and less than 100 links did not move at all after getting hit with 250k spammy links (from spammy websites - using a spammy link profile). In fact the site increased in the serps for a few keywords after about 1 month and stayed there (currently in the top 3). We did the same experiment on a high DA domain with only 8 links - nothing bad happened, rankings increased in 2-3 months.

Just think about it this way, if negative seo would be that easy to pull off, all the shady Kumars out there would start doing this. Fortunately, it's not about the links, their number or quality. Unfortunately, neg seo exists and google can't do much about it (but average Kumars don't have access to neg seo that truly works).

So if you didn't see any drop in rankings, or message in GWT saying that you have a partial penalty, there's nothing to worry about.

To answer your question, YES, it has high trust and high authority so a link from that site would definitely help in terms of SEO.

What do you mean you're only found for the .co.nz site?

And one thing I don't understand, do you have 3 different sites or just 3 different domains (and 2 of them redirect to the other one)?

Nothing to worry about there Justin, your article will always rank above the copied one.