In the movie Inception, Dom Cobb leads a team of agents into people’s dreams. In the final act of the movie, they descend into a subject’s dream, and then once they find him there, they go even further into his subconscious: a dream within a dream. They do this still one more time, ending up three dreams deep before finally waking back up in the real world.
Why am I talking about a blockbuster movie in an article about link building? Well, we’re talking about tiered link building here—and as far as analogies go, Inception explains the concept pretty darn well.
In this article, we’ll go over what tiered backlinks are, why they’re important, how you can implement them in your link building strategy, and how to create them.
When most people think of link building, they think of creating links on other websites that, when clicked, bring users to your website. They would be correct—but this is a tier 1 backlink, and they’re only one piece of the picture.
Tier 2 and tier 3 backlinks work just like Dom Cobb in Inception. They’re links within links.
If you click a tier 2 backlink, it will take you to a website. On that website will be another link, which brings you to your website.
If you click a tier 3 backlink, it will take you to a website. If you click a link on that website, it will take you to another website. If you click a link on that website, it will bring you back to your website.
So, just like Inception, tier 2 and tier 3 backlinks are two and three layers deep, respectively.
Tiered backlinks are an integral part of a full link building strategy. The idea is to use tiered links to create a hierarchy, or pyramid structure, that ultimately points back to your website. This way, you’ll draw in all sorts of different people. Your tiered links will act like a dragnet, guiding a bunch of spread-out internet users to the same specific point: your website.
Here are a few reasons why tiered linking is a vital SEO strategy.
Search engines—Google in particular—majorly prioritize natural link profiles. When a website has a huge amount of clearly artificial backlinks, it’s not a good look.
Tiered backlinks give the impression of a website that has spent years and years naturally building up links as other website owners found the content helpful and began to link to it—and that’s a major plus in Google’s book.
Pro tip: throw the term “link juice” around a few times, and people will start to assume you’re an SEO expert. All jokes aside, link juice is simply a slang term for SEO value.
Instead of just aggressively building as many high-authority tier 1 links as possible, tier 2 and 3 links will “spread out” the flow of link juice to your website.
Your tier 3 links will pass link juice to your tier 2 links, your tier 2 links will pass link juice to your tier 1 links, and your tier 1 links will take all of that accumulated link juice and deposit it cleanly onto your website.
Tiered links can do wonders for hedging against penalties from Google or other search engines.
Since tier 2 and tier 3 links have a one or two-link buffer between them and your website, you’re much less likely to be implicated for their “crimes.” If one of those links happens to be from a link farm and it gets flagged by Google, your website will be safe, since it’s not directly associated with that link.
This allows you to build large amounts of tier 2 and tier 3 links with a healthy level of indiscrimination.
At the very highest level, tiered links equal more links. This means Google and other search engines will be much more likely to discover and index those links, giving your website a nice boost in the search rankings.
Let’s look at an example of organic tiered link building.
Take Lexica, a new AI image-generating website. Lexica’s homepage is directly linked from Contentdrips’ article 10 Best AI Image Generators—you’ll see it’s the second on the list. For Lexica, this link from Contentdrips is a tier 1 link, since it leads to the homepage directly.
Contentdrips’ website is in turn linked from our article 10 Cool Websites for Digital Marketers—it’s number one on our list. For Lexica, this link would be a tier 2 backlink—that’s because it leads to Contentdrips’ website, and Contentdrips’ website leads to Lexica’s website.
Finally, a link from any other article or website that points to our article 10 Cool Websites for Digital Marketers is a tier 3 backlink for Lexica, because… well, you probably understand by now.
The most important thing to remember for any link-building strategy—or web marketing strategy in general—is to actually create content that people want to view. You could build more links than there are stars in the Milky Way—and there are about 100 billion, by the way—but it won’t help you out if your content itself isn’t compelling.
Generally speaking, a tiered link building strategy is any link building strategy that includes more than just direct, tier 1 links. In a tiered link building strategy, three or more tiers of links are all taken into account in order to attract a comprehensive, diverse group of internet users.
A good way to visualize a tiered link-building strategy is to picture a pyramid.
(This seemed to be a free stock image—not sure though.)
Pyramids start out with large, wide bases, and as you climb up toward the top, the structure narrows down into a sharp point.
In the same way, tier 3 links act as a wide base, with tendrils in every corner of the internet. Users on totally unrelated, low-ranking, or international websites are likely to stumble upon these.
Tier 2 links are slightly narrower, with more relevant, focused content. If you formulated your strategy correctly, these tier 2 links should appear on only high-quality, related websites.
Tier 1 links are the final step—you’re nearing the top of the pyramid. These links point directly to your website, and they should appear on only the highest-quality, most relevant websites. After all, these websites are directly associated with yours—so if they get penalized by Google, chances are your website will too.
There are so many ways to create tiered backlinks—almost too many. This is why we recommend using a link building service like Profit Engine. Why do it yourself when you could work with experts who know all the ins and outs of the process and use advanced tools like AI engines to analyze link count and quality?
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In an ideal world, tier 1 links would start appearing organically as other website owners begin to find your content helpful for their viewers. In this less than ideal world, this does happen—only not as often as you’d probably like.
As a result, you’ll have to take matters into your own hands, or—as we recommend—work with an actual link-building agency. Here are some of the best ways to get some tier 1 links out onto the web:
Reach out to authoritative websites, influencers, and industry leaders in your niche;
Reach out to authoritative websites, influencers, and industry leaders in your niche;
There are many, many more ways to create quality tier 1 links—the suggestions above only scratch the surface.
If your tier 1 links are primarily on popular, reputable websites, I’ve got some good news for you: you’ll automatically already have a ton of organic tier 2 links. After all, any popular, reputable website likely has a plethora of backlinks—that’s probably the reason it became popular and reputable in the first place!
You can build your tier 2 links in much the same way that you built your tier 1 links: reach out and ask to make guest posts, collaborate with like-minded brands and websites, insert niche edits, and make social media posts—only instead of linking directly to your website, link to your tier 1 link pages.
Finally, your tier 3 links can be casual and informal—think blog comments, forum posts, and pages on indexing websites like directories. Just make sure your tier 3 links point to your tier 2 link pages—not directly to your website, as this could result in a penalty from Google if the websites are shady.
It’s true that if you’re just starting out with a new website and you want to take the first step in boosting your search rankings, you should focus mostly on tier 1 backlinks.
But in order to take your SEO all the way and get up there with the heavy hitters, you will absolutely need to prioritize tiered link building. It will build your rapport with Google and other search engines, lower your risk of being penalized, and majorly increase your chances of being indexed and logged by Google’s bots.
If you want to go all the way and rank up there with the heavy hitters, there’s no better place to start than here at Profit Engine—specifically, check out our tiered link-building services.
Instead of a 2 a.m. hack job over one too many cups of coffee, contact us today and we’ll get you set up the right way.
Your future self will thank you.
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