By now, you’ve already known that not all backlinks are made equal and that’s because there are various different ways to make them. One is through a strategy called tiered link building. It can be a great addition to your campaigns, it can also be the worst. Understand what it brings to the table and whether or not it is the right one for you.
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The Concept of Tiered Link Building
Before everything else, the first step is understanding what tiered link building pertains to. The concept of backlinks is that you have sites mention your link on theirs. Those sites are called first tier links. In most cases, link builders settle with only that. However, you can progress it even more.
The idea of tiered link building is that you create links not just for your sites, but for the sites where you are being linked. So, those first-tier links? You find ways to create links for them. Those sites are then called second-tier links, and those who mention them are then called third tier links.
You end up having a tree of links wherein those on the bottom support the ones on the top. The idea is that it is hard to come up with first-tier links, ones that involve guest posting and other laborious but quality efforts. So, best case scenario, you can only get a handful of them. What you do instead is find lower quality but cheaper link building opportunities to support first-tier links to further grow their rank, in turn, growing the rank of your original backlink as well.
The Benefits of Tiered Link Building
By definition, tiered link building sounds complicated, and it is. Compared to the basic approach of link building, it requires a lot more steps. However, it is not all for nothing. Other than the benefit of growing your SEO rank, tiered link building brings several other things to the table as well.
Cheap Link Building Strategy
The reason why tiered link building is even a thing is because of financial constraints. Putting up guest posts on high-ranking sites can get expensive. One may not be a problem, but in link building, you need to have a lot in order to make an impact on your SEO rank. That’s when money becomes a problem.
While first-tier links are expensive, second- and third-tier ones are significantly cheaper. You can buy them a dime a dozen. Though, they may not have the same SEO effect that first-tier links have, they make it up with quantity.
Easily Cut Risks
Since most of your links are not directly connected to your site, it is easy to cut them off when those backlinks do go bad. For example, you don’t necessarily have to address links going bad one-by-one. Instead, you just have to go a tier up and cut every single one off.
What you gain out from this is that you can cut your losses as early as possible without compromising the rest of your links. You also save the time of having to go through every single one.
More Room for Error
You already know that black-hat links are strongly frowned upon by Google. Dubious efforts to grow links are immediately filtered and penalized. You can even get your main site deindexed for it.
With tiered link building, you no longer have to worry about that. Since most of your links are not connected to your main site, you don’t get to experience the full consequences of your experimentation and mistakes. So, you are able to take more risks, because who knows, that one leap of faith can bring you the SEO success you need.
Believable Backlink Profile
Links were factored in Google’s search engine algorithm because the logic makes sense. If a link is frequently mentioned then it just means that it is of high quality and reputation. Therefore, it should come out first when certain keywords are searched. Google had no intention for people to exploit this with link building strategies.
Generally, there is no approved way of link building. All types fall under the category of manipulation and Google doesn’t like that. Even those legitimate guest posts? Those are still not accepted. That’s why Google discretely specifies that link building strategies may negatively affect SEO rankings. Emphasis on the word “may”, because it’s just a matter of being caught.
Guest posting doesn’t get caught because it is hard to filter out which is link building and which ones aren’t. In the same context, tiered link building provides variation that makes it impossible for a search engine to find a discernable pattern that they can flag as manipulation. Therefore, your backlink becomes more believable and is able to hold more value.
Things to be Aware of with Tiered Link Building
It’s all good and great with tiered link building, up until now. Honestly, there is no perfectly great strategy. If there was, it would be significantly easier to create backlinks.
Instead, what you have are strategies that have their fair share of bad things, the same way that they have good features. It can be the best for you if you use them the right way, but also can be the worst if you don’t consider their disadvantages. So, here are what tiered link building delivers on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Marginal Improvements
The key points here is that you are not directly supporting your main site and that you are using cheaper forms of backlinks. Put those two things together and what you have is a strategy that doesn’t greatly contribute to your main backlinks.
This is not to say that tiered link building is useless, you just have to set your expectations. It only functions as an aid to further improve your rank when all else has been done. With that said, this doesn’t stand as a singular strategy that you can live with, but a final step to further magnify results, no matter how miniscule that may be. Because small improvements are better than no improvement at all.
Risk of Heavy Penalties
One of the key benefits of tiered link building is the ability to have more room for error so you can experiment better. However, that doesn’t mean that you should go all out without any regard for consequences. The functional word here is “more”, not entirely have all the room for error.
While the ability to experiment is there, you still need to practice it with caution. Don’t push tiered link building to its limits. Because, at the end of the day, there is still the potential of dubious link building activities to be traced back to your main site and that could cause you to get deindexed. The worst kind of penalty.
It Can Be Short-Lived
If you are not too careful, you might be finding yourself investing too much on cheap links. While you have the capacity to evade the potential consequences, you can’t escape losing all the progress you have made.
Remember that cheap and dubious link strategies don’t last forever. Their effects are mostly short-lived before they get caught and filtered out. So, going back, tiered link building is not a general link building strategy you can enforce by itself. Because at some point, the positive effects to your SEO rank are bound to reverse itself sooner or later.
What are Tier One Links?
The question now is, what counts as tier one links? When you are looking at creating tier one links, these are going to be ones that are directly connected to your site. As a result, they should have the most quality.
In general, these are your regular backlinks that deliver the most quality. The ones you get from guest posting, creating quality content, and the likes.
What are Tier Two Links?
It is in second-tiered links that link building gets more relaxed. You no longer have to capitalize on content or quality sites. Though, that doesn’t mean that you can use spam websites.
You still need to use high authority websites, but you no longer need to put the link alongside content. You can simply squeeze them in where ever they can fit, as long as it is not spammy in nature. Among the places you can put them includes article directories, profile links, and social bookmarks.
What are Tier Three Links?
Everything that doesn’t fall in either the first- or second-tiered links is categorized as a tier three link. It is the most relaxed as it doesn’t follow any form of quality or standard. To be frank, it is the lowest type of link and is mostly frowned upon by search engines. However, they are going to be the cheapest you can find. Again, buying them a dime a dozen.
Automatically generated blog comments, poor quality directories, and bookmark websites are just some examples of tier three links. They have the least impact and are likely going to be filtered our or not even be indexed, so they have to be by the thousands in order to be effective.
In Conclusion
Tiered link building is not something worth investing too much on, but it is also not something you can ignore. While it has its fair share of downsides, it also brings a lot to the table. So, at the end of the day, you need to completely understand how it can affect your needs and whether or not it is the right one for you.
In most cases, you are going to need tiered link building. Not so much as an overall link building strategy, but an additive to maximize the potential of your campaigns. Because no matter how little it may be, it can make all the difference in your link building success.
If you think that there is just too much to remember and learn, you don’t necessarily have to give up. What you need is the assistance of the best digital marketing agency to guide you from start to finish. So, contact us today for a free strategy consultation.
