SEO - Search Engine Optimization is a cumulative effect of different strategies and practices to rank on popular search engines. As the race to rank higher gets tougher, implementing other strategies can offer a different dimension to your strategy, which can be of added benefits to you.
Ranking organically is bliss, as it can help you navigate through high-competitive niches with ease. And link-building is integral to rank organically on search engines. For starters, this simply means that the search engine promotes content based on the user's search query and not on paid advertising. And this is the sole aim of SEO.
Ranking your website in 2023 on popular search engines like Google demands that you incorporate link-building into your overall efforts. Although link-building is vital in ranking, you must also pay attention to other factors like rankbrain and content quality as Google places much value on these metrics to get you on the top of SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages).
As with many parts of SEO, link-building has several dimensions to it. To create more in-roads to your website, tier 2 backlinking is a strategy that will profit you if you do it right. What should you know about tier-2 backlinking and how can you use it to get optimal results in your SEO efforts? You find the answers to these questions here.
This article is a guide on how to build high-quality tier 2 backlink campaigns. Whether you are an SEO professional, digital marketer, or business owners, it contains points to explore to help you rank in new and existing areas. Newbies are also not left behind as this article is developed from the ground up with basic terms.
For starters, let's discuss some key concepts like what tier backlinking is and how it works to understand the whole concept from scratch.
Content
Quick Video Explanation:
What is tier link-building?
At the heart of a successful SEO strategy lies a concrete backlink structure, which fuels ranking success in the long term. High-quality links – linking your website with high-quality content - ensures that your site ranks for exact keywords. For increasingly purposeful impact, a tiered backlinking or link pyramid strategy will prove to be effective.
The Role of Page Authority in Tiered link-building
Before delving into the main juice, understanding Page authority and the role it plays is crucial in knowing what tiered link-building is. PA – Page Authority – is a common metric employed by SEO professionals for insight into the potential of ranking a certain webpage on the search engine. Thanks to MOZ, this ranking metric is available to SEO enthusiasts from all over the world. It considers several factors, incorporating them on a scale of 0-100. Getting backlinks from authority pages that rank high increases trust in the content of your webpage, thereby increasing your PA. That said, understanding how PA works will aid your understanding of tiered link-building better.
Tier link-building strategy is an SEO tactic that employs existing backlinks to rank on search engines. Also known as link pyramid, this tactic involves building a backlink to a page already linking to your webpage. This basically supercharges the backlink.
Why should you do tiered link-building?
Tiered link-building is one of the ultimate link-building strategies to help you get high SERP rankings in a short while. But you might wonder why this strategy, which some view as black-hat, still has much coverage. Well, here are some of its benefits that worth's your consideration.
Risk management
A poor backlink structure can prove to be costly when some of such links have errors or are of low quality. Pointing to such links can affect your website adversely. Yet, the bigger struggle is managing these risks being posed. With tier linking, all you need to do is move up one tier and unlink the page to your website. This ensures that every other link going to that page – regardless of their issues and how many they are – disconnect from your webpage. It is a proven method to manage risks.
More exploration
Caution cannot be thrown to the wind when linking directly to your page. For one thing, you must always have Google guidelines in mind. Another thing is that the quality and rank of the linked page can have a direct impact on your webpage. This is not exactly so with tiered backlinking. Here, you can experiment and explore in greater ways as the linkages do not have a direct impact on your webpage since they do not link directly to it. Hence, affording you the platform to be more adventurous with your SEO exploits.
Less costly
As expected with anything that is in demand, getting backlinks of high quality is expensive. Apart from its cost, you are expected to devote a lot of time to get one. Let's say you want a guest post on a competitive blogsite, this might cost you a couple of dollars. Then you must spend time creating the content. Hence, putting a limit on the number of backlinks that are obtainable.
With tiered backlinking, you have a cheaper alternative to generate tangible results in your SEO campaign. Here, you can use cheaper content in your tiers to boost direct links to your website.
Self-Promotion
The practice of advertising oneself in online communities and forums is highly discouraged. This is noticeable even in guest posts as linking back to one's website is often limited. To circumvent this process, linking to your tiered pages will do. Although you aren't directly promoting your webpage, the attention of your audience is eventually driven to you through your tiered pages.
How tiered link-building works
Here, you get to understand the process of how to build tier links in your SEO campaign.
Building links in tiers provides almost instantaneous results when done the right way. This strategy works at different tier levels. In common terms, it is the building of backlinks to your existing links. It aims at giving authority to a webpage, allowing it to rank higher by using many-tiered links with the target webpage as the focal point.
The first-tier
To picture it better, let's say you want to rank PageX on your website. With tiered link-building in mind, all you need to do is create few links from pages of high quality that rank better on the search engine (PageA, PageB, PageC) to PageX. This is basically what the first tier linking involves. Its primary target is earning high-quality links from trusted sources like Web 2.0 blogs, PBN, Resource Page, Outreach, and directories. You must ensure that all your sources for these links are legitimate.
What is tier-2 backlinking?
Tier-2 linking simply involves the creation of backlinks to your tier 1 links. From the description above describing how you want to rank PageX, to build a second tier of links, all you have to do is build links to each tier-1 link webpage (PageA, PageB, PageC). The central idea is to increase the authority of your tier-1 links.
Unlike tier-1 links that place much emphasis on high-quality content and pages with high Authority, tier-2 or the second-tier links focus more on the volume. Still, it does not consent to linking non-readable content.
After tier-2 comes tier-3, which links to tier-2. The tier-3 linking is predominantly about quantity to drive more links to tier-2. In this case, automated tools are often employed to generate as many links as possible. That said, how can you build high-quality tier 2 backlink campaign in a sustainable way? Here is how to do it and get the right results.
How to build high-quality tier 2 backlink campaigns
Web 2.0
Think about blogging for free and Web 2.0 comes to mind. These include web blogging sites like Blogger and WordPress, Wikipedia, Social networking sites like Facebook, Image-sharing sites like Flickr, and Video-sharing Sites like YouTube. Here you can build the authority of your page fast. And as such, boost the authority of your primary link. By following Web 2.0 best practices, you can generate relevant, authoritative, and trusted backlinks pointing to your tier-1 links.
here are the top Web 2.0 blogs that you can use - Top Web 2.0 blog list
Quick tips - Be sure to create a theme blog or niche blog to the targeted site you're building links. If you're niche is about marketing agency, then create a web 2.0 about marketing expert, marketing agency etc.. and only publish content about your niche only! Diversify your URL subdomains to a brand name or personal name.
Guest Outreach
One of the methods to carry out tier 2 backlinking is through guest outreach. This involves sharing content about your website, brand, or any relevant topic about your niche on other websites in a similar niche. Guest posting exposes you to a wider audience, thereby creating engagement to boost the primary link page that the tier 2-page links to. Through extensive research, and reaching out to relevant blog sites, you can maximize your tier-2 linking result. There are guest post strategy that you can use and that depends on your budget.
You can use guest post or PBN post which either both of them are working fine and the only difference between them is that guest post has valuable traffic coming in while PBN has no traffic, but still depends because some of the PBN has traffic as well. You can easily identify a PBN and a real Guest post if you know how to audit a site. Anyway, since you will be using as tier 2, you can use the PBN if you don't have much budget for it and probably mix it with guest post later on once you have a budget. So, this is how it works below of diagram.
Let's say you have guest post tier 1 links and you wanted to boost it up the post, so in this structure you are giving a lot of power into your tier 1 links if you can mix it up with PBN & Guest Post. The ratio is 1: 10, meaning you will build 10 PBN links to your 1 tier links and 10 guest post as well if you have more budget. Be sure to look for a niche specific in order to fully power it up.
Blog Comment
No matter how outdated it may seem, blog commenting remains a useful way for tier 2 SEO link-building. Firstly, it fosters relationships with those in your sector. Regardless of how far technological advancements have gone in this digital age, real relationships remain necessary. Most times, getting in touch with the right persons is the border between a successful business and a failed one! With blog commenting, you can build a relationship with the blog owner and share a connection with the audience of the blog you are reaching out to.
Also, blog commenting draws attention to your site. Leaving a comment on a site is not a one-time thing, rather, your comment stays on the site. Therefore, by leaving a comment on a blog, your business stands a chance of being exposed to newer audiences. This can only yield results when done strategically. To gain leads through blog commenting, you should do well to drop a link to your site alongside your comment to redirect potential traffic to your site. Be careful not to paste links of no relevance to the conversation you would like to comment on.
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking websites are channels to point your tier 2 links. Social bookmarking sites organize topics in threads or rooms and are a starting point for knowledge-sharing and discussions. Social bookmarks allow for collaboration, networking, and back-linking. It accelerates website growth when used the right way. Being spammy and not conforming to the rules of the social bookmarking platform should be avoided to leverage the high-quality tier 2 backlinks that are available here.
Social Sharing
Social media provides the right platform to share content like your guest blog. Also, you can easily ask acquaintances to share your content on their pages and sites from your social media account. It is easy to engage others to share your guest post as it has more appeal, and sharing a direct link to your site might seem invasive. When their audience clicks on the guest post to read about it, they often look beyond the article and move onto the website to check what it is all about. Hence, the need to create quality content to retain their attention.
For maximum results, know the best time and days to share posts via social media to drive massive engagement to your website and guest posts.
So this is how the whole campaign looks:
When you should adopt the second-tier backlinking strategy
One major concern amongst SEO newbies is knowing what to do at a point in time. SEO is all about strategy and timing. Taking the wrong step might ruin your marketing effort, put you on the wrong side of Google, and waste tangible time, resources, and effort. That said, knowing what strategy to take when building tier-backlinks will increase your chance of success. Remember, manipulating links is largely frowned upon by Google.
The higher the rank of the domain you are linking to, the more value you get in return. In plain terms, tier-2 linking is best done with pages with lower PA and a higher DA. This implies that you must pay particular attention to the authority of the website that you are linking to. This in turn yields exponential growth.
The number of outbound links on the page also plays a role in the value you get from it. A webpage with more outbound links exposes your target URL to more diminishing returns. You must also ensure that you are not linking to the same page that your competitor is linking.
How many Second-tier backlinks should you use?
Different SEO'ers have guiding rules on what number of links to use. Still, there is a consensus that with higher authority links at your disposal, you stand to get more from your second-tier and third-tier links. Hence, you might not be needing as many links to get the results you crave. For exact working guides, you can see what metric HybridTraffic uses for optimal tiered-level link building.
Pros of tier-2 backlinks
Although tier-2 backlinks do not point directly to your website, it has a tremendous impact on your ranking. There are several reasons why you shouldn't discard link-building at the tier-2 levels. Here are some of its benefits.
Authority
Link-building aims at improving SEO to rank higher. No doubt, tier-2 linking helps you rank but it does more than point links to your tier 1 sites. You can have several links of high-quality pointing to your tier-2 webpage. Hence, giving you added benefits like a conversational platform to create guest outreach content on the sites linking to yours.
Wider audience
Second-tier linking makes your content available on multiple platforms, giving you a wider audience to reach. It is more likely that you will link your content to relevant sites with audiences that have an interest in what you offer. This makes conversions easier. It increases your potential to make sales.
Relevance
Relevance is something Google considers when ranking a webpage and tier-2 linking gives you just that when you follow the rules. Your guest posts for instance or other tier-2 linking content will appear on a site related to yours. Such topical relevance promotes discussions. Discussions enable the use of more relevant keywords that help Google learn your site better. Connecting your website to similar sites in your niche helps the search engine establish where your site belongs.
Cons of tier-2 backlinks
The second-tier backlinks possess their own challenges and risks. Here are some risks it poses:
Penalty
It is quite easy to fall foul to any of Google's guidelines with this SEO link-building strategy. These include rules pertaining to scraped content, automatic generating content, and link schemes. Being sloppy or getting carried away might cost you heavily.
Time consumption
Building a tiered link structure takes time, talk more about building the second-tier structure. It will prove to be more costly if you do not get the expected results.
It is a short-term strategy
For long-term SEO link-building, tier-2 backlinking isn't a strategy you should rely upon. For one thing, Google keeps updating its algorithm and it is on an active lookout to spot link schemes. Also, maintaining these backlinks can be tasking in the long term. You might have to restart your campaign from time to time.
The Do's and Don'ts when building tier-2 links
Your actions will bring you closer to your goals. Here, you want more effective second-tier links for SEO. To realize this, there are certain things you must do and still avoid. These are some of the do's and don'ts when building tier-2 links.
Dos
Reach Out
Whether it is web 2.0 content, guest outreach, blog comment, social sharing, or social bookmarking, you have to reach out to the site you are building links with. Sitting back and waiting for links would not cut it. Still, you must be selective when reaching out to get the most of your link-building campaign. You must consider the audience base, topical relevance, niche, website rank, and if the website is a direct competitor.
Engage in PR
PR campaigns serve as an amazing platform for business promotion and link-building. As you get magazines and newspapers to talk about your website or brand, interested audiences with websites of their own can easily link to such PR sources and automatically fill the tier-2 linking spots. For optimal results, ensure that the magazine or website writing about you is relevant to your niche. And if your content or services is of more value to the PR outlets, you can rest assured that they will likely share their content about you on their social media platforms. Hence, providing more channels for secondary linking to your site.
Focus on Relevance
To get the best from your tier-2 linking campaigns, you have to ensure that the social platforms you are linking with are relevant to your niche. This applies to any second-tier link-building channel you are using. Relevance increases engagement, which drives page authority. That is the ultimate goal.
And just as you would want links of high quality to point directly to your website, you should strive to maintain such standards with your second-tier links.
DON'Ts
Overstuff links
In a bid to request links, one can easily get carried away and stuff links into the request email. If the email recipient uses Gmail, overstuffing your mail with links can move the email into the promotion tab. Also, it is a tough task getting approval for a link, asking for two is even harder – unless you have a great rapport with the recipient.
Pursue worthless links
Pointing worthless links to your second tier would not do you much good. You just have to make sure the link is directed to a page with reasonable authority.
Use Automated tools
There is no doubt that automated tools will hasten your link-building process. However, you must take special care as you can easily be penalized by Google for using such. SEO favors original and organic processes. Hence, the need to do your tier-2 backlinking the right way.
Conclusion
Search Engine Optimization requires effective strategies to rank on Google. Whether you are a webmaster, brand owner, digital advertiser, or creative, it holds the key to reaching a massive audience without breaking the bank. Link-building is one relevant SEO strategy that you should not dismiss. It creates a connection that indicates trust in the search engine.
Typically, with high-quality backlinks, you can drive engagement and accelerate your page authority. Sometimes, this might not be the case as with newer websites. Tiered backlinking offers a way out. One key tier level you must pay utmost attention to is the second tier (tier-2). This is because it feeds the primary tier (tier-1) and is integral in boosting the page authority of your primary links. Here, we have fully delved into the world of building second-tier backlinks to your website from scratch. This exhaustive guide helps you build high-quality tier 2 backlinks in your SEO campaign, indicating the best practices and the right platforms for optimal results. You just have to follow through.