In essence, tiered link building is creating links to external pages that link to your website or page. With this approach, the links are built in layers, reinforcing the pages that link to the main page. It resembles a pyramid, with each tier supporting and enhancing the one above it. This strategy aims to boost the authority and effectiveness of primary backlinks to your website, thereby improving your search engine ranking.
Tiered link building is considered black-hat or grey-hat SEO, violating Google’s guidelines.
At the top, you have Tier 1 links, which are high-quality backlinks directly to your site. These are crucial and often come from reputable, relevant sources. They have the most direct impact on your site’s authority and ranking. Quality and relevance are key for these links.
Next is Tier 2, consisting of links that point to your Tier 1 backlinks. The purpose of Tier 2 is to strengthen the authority of your Tier 1 links by adding more link juice to them. While these can be from less authoritative sources than Tier 1, they still need to maintain reasonable quality and relevance.
Some strategies also use Tier 3 links, pointing to Tier 2 links. These are often lower in quality and are used to increase the quantity of backlinks to Tier 2, indirectly boosting Tier 1. However, as you go down the tiers, the quality of links typically decreases, and the risk of attracting search engine penalties increases if not managed properly.