Can tiered link building’s layered approach truly increase a website’s authority and search engine visibility? The answer is absolutely yes.
One of the various options to enhance the website’s performance within the SEO competition landscape is tiered link building.
In any case, you get more value from these high-authority backlinks by connecting them to other high-quality sources and then infusing them with additional layers that help increase the presence of other websites on those sites. This strategy increases traffic to your website, and at the same time enhances its reputation and visibility, it’s a game-changer in digital marketing for everyone who is serious about it.
In general, Link building is important for SEO. Linking to high-ranking sites or increasing the number of high-quality links on a page, you can improve the rank of your website.
According to Linkdoctor, a website with more backlinks can be considered as strongly believable and factual content which tends to higher ranking. By utilizing the advanced form of building links that is Tier link building, it becomes easy to strengthen important links by increasing their SEO power.
So, are you using tier link building methods to boost your current link building strategy? Let’s begin!
What is Tiered Link Building?
Tiered link building refers to an advanced strategy where backlinks are built on multiple levels to increase their effectiveness and boost overall SEO.
Tiered link building is like expanding your social circles: Consider the situation we all came across,
Your best friend introduces you to her close friends (Tier 2), who then introduce you to their friends (Tier 3). Each circle adds to your network, building trust and credibility across different groups.
Similarly, in SEO, Tier 1 links come directly from high-quality sources to your site. Tier 2 links point to Tier 1, and Tier 3 links boost Tier 2, creating a robust web of connections that strengthen your website’s authority and visibility online.
This is Tiered Link Building in a nutshell.
The Different Levels in Tiered Links
We’ll look at three different levels or tiers you can use in your tiered link-building strategy.
What Is Tiered Link Building Strategy?
By establishing a well-organized network of interconnected backlinks, tier-based link building strategically raises the authority of websites and their search engine rankings. Let us know the functions of these tires along with how these tiers get backlink.
What Is A Tier 1 Link?
A Tier 1 link is a high-quality backlink from an authoritative site, pointing directly to your website. First tier links are part of every content marketing strategy.
How to Get First Tier Links
To create first tier links, you need to start by creating unique content. The content you post should be relevant to your industry so that it provides value to everyone who reads it. Of course, that means you need to study your target audience and do comprehensive keyword research.
Once that’s done, it’s time to post the content on websites that are relevant to your niche and rank well on search results.
The best way to get first tier links is to find guest posting opportunities and collaborate with established websites within your industry. Find prospects who are interested in publishing your guest posts.
A good place to start is to search for trustworthy, popular, and credible sites with healthy SEO practices. With the help of automation tools, you can find websites that already link to your competitors but have not linked to yours yet. This highlights more opportunities where you can guest post.
Besides guest posting, you can also submit your blog post on Web 2.0 sites, such as wordpress.com and blogger.com. Again, remember that you want to deal with those that have high domain authority. More importantly, make sure the backlinks are indexed properly so that search engines notice them.
What is a Tier 2 Link?
Tier 2 Link acts as a backlink to Tier 1 to improvise authority. However, this means you still need to look at getting links from quality sites with good domain authority.
How to Get Second-Tier Links
You can get a second tier link whenever another source backlinks to your content, for example, your guest post. That could happen on social media, forums, bio profile links, or any other place with plenty of user-generated content.
So some easy ways you can generate second-tier links are as follows:
- Create guest posts consistently so that other high-domain authority websites want to share and backlink your content
- Share the guest posts on multiple social networks
- Ask friends and contacts to share content
- Reach out to other sites that might consider sharing your guest piece with their audience
What is a Tier 3 Link?
Tier 3 Link acts as a backlink to Tier 2 that indirectly strengthens the SEO efforts. This includes links in review sites, directories, blog post comments, Q&A sites, social bookmarks, etc. This is also known to be a chain effect.
Even though the third tier links are typically of low quality, they still can help add value to your backlink profile.
How to Get Third Tier Links
I’ll be honest. To get third tier links with the least amount of struggle, simply use automation tools such as SEO Autopilot and Xrumer. Different sources can provide tier 3 backlinks, such as social media platforms, forums, question-answer sites, and some other online resources for which you can get them. This aims to boost the SEO ranking indirectly.
Benefits of Tiered Link Building
Utilizing Link Juice
Link juice is the value or authority passed from one webpage to another through links. So, how can this increase ranking?
Tiered link building uses link juice to spread authority across different tiers, improving SEO rankings and increasing organic traffic. A strong link profile builds SEO resilience by enhancing credibility and trust for a company’s brand identity.
Boosted Authority
When dealing with multiple tiers of backlinks, you can boost your SEO strategies. Tier three influences tier two, which, in turn, drives results to tier one. So something down on level three can create an impressive impact on your SEO campaign.
Improved Rankings
Having tiered links will give more authority to your website and it also increases the chances of it ranking higher in search engines and being read by more people who may be interested in what you are offering.
Various Link Profile
Building links on various tiers leads to an assorted and natural link profile, which avoids search engine penalties and adds credibility to the website.
A Rise in Traffic
More humans click on your site, as it keeps rising in search engine results. In addition, links can receive referral traffic from various places.
Improve The Trust & Domain Authority Of Your Website
Backlinks are viewed as votes of trust by Google and they matter so much for this search engine. The more websites that link to yours the more trustworthy and authoritative your site appears to Google and it consequently leads to better search results.
Index Your Page Quickly
By connecting your site to various sources through links in a network, Tiered link building streamlines the acceleration of indexing of pages by search engine spiders.
What are the Risks of Tiered Link Building?
Yes, tiered link building encroaches on gray hat SEO techniques. So there are a few risks involved. Here are a few common ones:
Risk of Incurring Google Penalty
If you break Google guidelines, you could get into trouble. Your website could get penalized or, worse, get de-indexed. And that isn’t something you want to deal with.
Results Aren’t 100% Guaranteed
Like everything in digital marketing, tiered link building takes time and effort. Often, tiered link building efforts only impact your rankings marginally. That means you’ve invested resources in something that hasn’t produced optimal results.
Expensive
It can be costly to obtain high-quality links, particularly for the first tier. When you take into account the resources required to create and maintain second and third-tier links, the total cost goes up.
Algorithm Modifications
Search engines make use of algorithms that are constantly changing. What works today may tomorrow no longer work and sometimes an update might devalue your linking structure.
Strange Link Profiles
Building links from sites that aren’t relevant to your niche can harm your goals with search engines because this would be an unnatural link profile, resulting in penalties or loss of rankings.
Is Tiered Link Building Black Hat?
While tiered link building comes with benefits and risks, some SEO experts claim that it’s a black hat practice, why?
For a couple of reasons.
Firstly, Google doesn’t appreciate it when businesses create links for their own website. Google prefers that they acquire links naturally. In fact, according to Webmaster Guidelines, two aspects of tiered link building have been highlighted as a possible violation of Google guidelines. These are:
- Low-quality directory links or website links
- Comments on forums that contain optimized links in the post or signature
Secondly, Google clearly states that businesses should avoid using automated link building tools and services to create links for their website.
So when considering these aspects of tiered link building, you could be infringing on black hat practices.
White Hat Alternatives
Even though some aspects of tiered backlinking go against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, you can still use it for white hat SEO.
Here are some tips you need to keep in mind:
- Create first tier links in guest posts or sponsored posts. Remember, a link to a relevant source can offer considerable value to your site.
- Practice link outreach to gather tier 1 links. If you have an article or blog that’s unique and is packed with insightful content, don’t be shy. Search for first tier links for your post.
- Help A Reporter Out (HARO) has a whole list of topics reporters need more information about. So if you happen to have in-depth industry insights, it’s a great way to answer questions and earn backlinks in the process. Now that’s what I call hitting two birds with one stone.
- When you are creating links to your site, make sure that you do not depend heavily on any one kind of link or website. You can diversify your backlinks’ sources to include many reputable online platforms and websites, so you are not entirely dependent on one particular link or web address.
Does Tiered Link Building Still Work?
There are tons of case studies where white hat tiered link building strategies have helped businesses excel. Take, for example, Muzigal’s case. Their link building strategy included posting relevant guest posts on relevant sites using optimized anchor texts to create high-quality backlinks.
But one thing is clear. A thorough white hat tiered link building approach is just as important as finding the right donor websites. They have the potential to become the platform for further backlinks. So a relevant site for a killer guest post will help you connect with the right target audience and synchronize your brand awareness efforts.
Top Tools Of Tiered Link Building 2024
Here are some of the top tools commonly used for tiered link building:
- Ahrefs provides comprehensive backlink analysis and keyword research
- SEMrush provides competitive analysis as well as backlink auditing.
- Majestic SEO offers detailed information on Trust Flow, Citation Flow and other backlink metrics.
- BuzzSumo helps you in finding content you can use to attract more people and people’s who might offer you help.
- Pitchbox pitches up for link-building campaigns. The person who wants to conduct link-building campaigns can use pitchbox instead of looking for sites by his/her own. Linkody provides real-time monitoring and analysis.
These tools are widely recognized for their capabilities in assisting SEO professionals and marketers in executing effective tiered link building strategies.
Over to You – Tiered Link Building
Building tiered links with the right techniques can boost your website’s visibility, SEO efforts, and search engine rank.
Of course, the goal is to use white hat tiered strategies to ensure you continue to remain on Google’s good side.
So without further delay, it’s time to optimize and empower your site. Create and implement well-thought-out tiered link strategies regularly.
Ready to get started?
FAQs
1. How to create Tier Backlinks?
Obtain high-quality links from well-known sites (Tier 1). Forge more links from diverse sources to prop Tier 1 up (Tier 2 and Tier 3) by guaranteeing SEO efficiency and natural expansion.
2. Is Link Building illegal?
Link building itself is not illegal. That said, if you use manipulative or spammy tactics to build these links, you may find yourself caught on the wrong side of search engine guidelines and penalized.
3. How long does Tiered Link Building take to work?
Normally it takes several months for tiered link building to have any noticeable SEO enhancements as a result of variables such as competition and link quality.
