SEO is an essential component of boosting web rankings. Nowadays, there are many SEO tactics offering numerous benefits to website owners. An excellent example of an SEO strategy is tiered link building, which involves building backlinks for your backlinks!
You might already have heard about a link-building practice that focuses on building high-quality one-way hyperlinks to relevant websites. Tiered link-building is a subset of link-building strategies aimed at promoting the existing backlinks of the site.
Does it sound confusing to you? No worries, in this blog post, we’ll guide you about tiered link-building strategies and how they can benefit website owners. So, let’s get started!
What Is Tiered Link Building?
As the name suggests, it is the process of using a tiered system to build more authority backlinks from numerous sources to your website. The purpose of using a tiered structure is to provide link equity to your website that’ll help increase the PageRank value for SEO. As your webpage is at the end of this chain, all the benefits of backlinks will get multiplied. Not to mention, it will also help in mitigating the risk of unnatural or stuffed backlinks.
Types of tiers and how to build them
For this strategy to work, you need to understand the three main tiers.
First-tier links
First-tier links point directly to your website. A general rule is that first-tier links should be flawless and editorially placed and fulfill the criteria for backlink quality. Ensure the links come from established and legitimate sources such as wordpress.com or blogger.com. A pro tip would be to use filters to remove low-authority websites from appearing on your list. You can take help from blogger outreach and high DR niche edits to promote links.
Second-tier links
You can afford to relax when building second-tier links, which will link back to your first-tier links. Anything not outright spam can qualify as a backlink as long as it provides some degree of relevance to the first-tier link. Acceptable sources of second-tier links include Low DR from guest posts, sample example DR 10 posts, and high-quality PBNs.
Third-tier links
Third-tier links are the low-ranking backlinks where generally everything is acceptable, as long as it is not too spammy. You can use social bookmarks for this purpose. You can throw caution to the wind as long as you don’t compromise your first-tier links and your main website.
White Hat Tactic Of Building Tiers
As Google keeps on updating its algorithm to provide high-quality and relevant content to users, it is critical to take the following points into consideration:
- For the first tier, use backlinks to higher-ranking websites pertinent to your own.
- Use forums and comments as a secondary layer to the content you have provided.
- Make profile links so people can find your website.
Benefits of tiered link building
For someone who isn’t tech-savvy, the first thought would be that tiered link-building is a silly endeavor and a waste of time. Tiered link building also seems pretty complicated due to the presence of second and third-tier links. Here are some of the benefits of tiered link building.
It saves you time and money
Legit backlinks require lots of time and money to create. If your pockets are not deep enough, there is a limit on how many backlinks you can comfortably afford. An excellent solution to this problem would be to build multiple backlinks that are affordable and take a fraction of the time to create.
Risk management
Primary backlinks strongly influence your main website and could cause problems if Google thinks it violates any of its guidelines. However, second and third-tier backlinks are a safer bet as your main website won’t be implicated immediately. These backlinks also allow experimentation since they don’t point directly to your main site. That’s why many beginners try this strategy to get their hands on link-building tactics.
Opportunities for self-promotion
Generally speaking, self-promotion is usually frowned upon in the online community. Fortunately, tiered link building allows you to link back to one of your tier 1 or tier 2 pages and send some traffic in your general direction.
Great Backlink Profile
Statistics show that nearly 41% of SEO practitioners believe building links is a challenging part of search engine optimization. However, once you get to know exactly what needs to be done and how you’ll be able to reap incredible benefits. The tiered structures allow practitioners to make their tactics as sophisticated as possible and create a healthy mix of do-follow, no-follow, and quality links.
Things To Take Into Consideration When Using Tiered Link Building
If you are a newbie, it would be wise to take into consideration the following factors when using tiered link building. It will ensure that your site avails of all the benefits stated above and also protect itself from any possible penalty.
High-quality Content
Providing high-quality content is not an option but a necessity for promoting your backlinks. Many website owners, especially newbies, often overlook the content part when formulating an effective strategy. Surely, it is a time-consuming process, but it also provides users with adequate information and helps them connect with your webpage. Additionally, website owners need to ensure that the content is not spun material.
Relevant Targeted Site
This is another crucial component of the campaign. The target sites should have clear and concise content, be linked to your website’s subject, and have a respectable Google rating. Connecting to websites just for the sake of getting links is no longer a successful strategy and must be avoided at all costs. Otherwise, it may lower your site’s ranking.
Once you’ve connected to your target sites, make sure to manage them routinely. Take any subpar or inferior websites out of your campaign; having a link to them won’t help you and might even hinder you.
Try Other Link-Building Tactics As Well
Combining other link-building tactics such as guest posting, niche edits, or broken link-building with a tiered structure will help you reap more benefits. It will also help ensure that you use high-quality content and connect with relevant websites. If your strategy succeeds, it may also help improve your site’s authority.
Nevertheless, niche edits can come to your rescue if you are still skeptical about using tiered link-building.
Niche edits
Niche edits, better known as link insertions, are another option to get high-quality backlinks. Here, the contextual links are strategically placed in the existing blog posts. As the links look natural, they provide the same benefits as tiered link-building.
The best part about niche edits is that this practice is safer and helps add more value to the existing content. Even though the links are placed afterward, they go with the content flow and appear natural. Thus, the likelihood of you facing any trouble from Google is zero to none.
Wrap up
Now that you know more about tiered link building, you are better positioned to determine whether this is a worthwhile venture or if you are better off sticking to legitimate backlinks. However, tiered link-building might be a good temporary approach, albeit the best options are white-hat link-building strategies.
