Link building is an essential component that you couldn’t miss in your SEO strategy for success. There are different types of links; some can give a big boost instantly, while others provide benefits over time.
Tiered link building is a formidable strategy that amplifies the power of your backlinks by creating a layered, hierarchical structure. This focuses on creating high-quality links on your core website and then supporting those links with further tiers. This plays a pivotal role in boosting your SEO performance.
This improves the value of your backlinks and strengthens your SEO across multiple angles.
Let’s dive into this article to understand the intricacies of tiered link building and explore its various techniques and benefits.
What is Tiered Link Building?
79.7% of SEO experts consider link building an important part of a website’s SEO strategy, and tiered link building is one of the implemented techniques that can boost your website performance.
Tiered link building is a powerful technique for link building. It involves building links in layers based on a hierarchical structure, with the highest quality links pointing to your website.
It follows a pyramid structure, where links are built in layers that strengthen pages that link to the main page. The main goal of tiered link building is to get more link juice to both the linked pages and the referring pages, thereby increasing your domain authority and search rankings overall.
Who Should Consider Tiered Link Building?
Tiered link building is generally suitable for businesses or individuals with a strong understanding and experience in SEO. Building multiple tiers of links can be expensive, especially for those starting out, so you need to carefully plan your strategies.
It also requires careful planning for a well-created map of pages connected in a comprehensive way, facilitating user experience and search engines’ crawling.
Tiered link building helps elevate your existing content, so you’ll need to have quality content and a well-defined structure before you think about trying it out. This ensures that your efforts pay off and the generated traffic has positive impacts on your websites.
When to Implement Tiered Link Building
Tiered link building is a powerful SEO strategy, but it’s not the right beginning if you just start out with SEO. Before considering a link building strategy, you need to set specific goals that align with your industry, come up with marketing plans, and prepare your budget.
That said, here are a few scenarios where tiered link building can be effective:
- You’ve already established a strong foundation of on-page SEO: If your site has well-optimized content, with fast loading speed, tiered link building will help you pass more link equity that is impactful, boosting your search rankings and generating relevant traffic.
- You’re in a highly competitive niche: If your website is competing with established brands with a strong backlink profile, then investing in tiered link building can help you boost your site authority. It will support your primary links by creating a network of links, giving you a competitive edge.
- You’re launching a new product or service: Tiered link building can help you build authority, drive referral traffic, and bring potential customers directly to your product or service pages.
Understanding Link Tiers and Techniques
Tiered link building has different levels that help in the creation of a strong backlink structure. Each of these tiers has its own role in boosting your existing backlinks. Let’s look at them below.
Tier 1 links: high-quality, authoritative, and relevant links
Tier 1 links are the highest level of backlinks that point directly to your main website. The first tier links are usually acquired from high authority websites and should be dofollow.
High quality and relevant backlinks should come from a page that is topically relevant to your content. These links should be placed contextually around the content and enrich it. These natural links are linked directly to the main site and help improve your rankings to boost your presence on the Internet.
A resource page for the best SEO tools in 2025
First tier links can be acquired by contributing to reputable blogs or guest posting in your niche. A guest post on a high authority website will add natural links to your backlink profile. Broken link building is also a great technique to acquire quality tier 1 links for your website.
Resource link building is another potent way to attain first tier links by creating valuable resources. These resources can be guides, infographics, or graphs, which other websites will link directly to their website.
Apart from this, you can reach out to influencers or journalists to link to you and boost your SEO strategy.
Tier 2 links: secondary links that support tier 1 links
Tier 2 links point to tier 1 links, which ultimately help boost your own website without directly linking to the site. They help strengthen tier 1 links to enhance their SEO value. These second tier links capitalize on quality and quantity, and can be a mix of dofollow and nofollow links.
If your backlink profile only consists of direct links to your site, it may appear unnatural at some points. Tier 2 links help create a diversified profile and let your pages rank better on search engines.
Furthermore, search engine crawlers will index your tier 1 links quicker if they have tier 2 links surrounding them. This allows your primary backlinks to be better recognized and contribute to your search ranking.
The best way to build second tier links is by sharing your tier 1 links on social media to spread the word and get more traffic. Commenting on blogs with relevant content containing tier 1 links is a common practice for people to react to the page.
Tier 2 links can also be obtained by building relationships with smaller blogs or websites in the industry, and asking them to link to your content. Apart from this, you can actively participate in forums and share your tier 1 links on them.
Tier 3 links: tertiary links that support tier 2 links
Tier 3 links are the third level of backlinks whose links point directly to second-tier domains. The linking domain doesn’t connect to your tier 1 links or your main website; however, they link to your tier 2 links. The main function of tier 3 links is to provide support to the whole tiered link building campaign.
Tier 3 links are largely built on social networking platforms like forum posts or directories for earning links to tier 2 links. You can use platforms like Reddit and Pinterest where you can add your tier 2 links.
Participating in forums or leaving blog comments on social media posts can also help you attain tier 3 links.
Be cautious while working on this strategy by nurturing your accounts, and giving natural comments that are meaningful. Don’t try to promote your pages and services in a forceful way, which could lead your accounts to getting banned from the platform.
Tier 3 links on Quora
Pro Tip: If you’re seeking ways to build up a solid backlink profile for your website, outsourcing your link buiding efforst to GrowthOG could be ideal. We help businesses garner quality links from authoritative sites that have a positive result on traffic and search rankings.
Benefits of Tiered Link Building
A tiered link building campaign offers several advantages to boost your website’s SEO performance. Let’s look at the benefits of tiered links below.
Strengthening backlink profile
Tiered link building allows you to strengthen your backlink profile by strategically placing links across the three tiers. This ensures that your website gains authority from multiple angles, making it more appealing to search engines.
Pro tip: While link building isn’t a one night success, it requires a solid strategy and your patience to be converting. Consider outsourcing your link building efforts to agencies like GrowthOG to secure top tiered links that improve site authority, drive traffic, and enhance your backlink profile.
Amplifying link juice
Tiered link building maximizes the flow of link juice as it creates a hierarchy of links that directs authority to your primary pages.
While low-tier links don’t directly point to your website, they strengthen the authority of pages that do, indirectly increasing the link juice flowing to your primary pages and ultimately boosting your search engine rankings.
Reducing risk to top tier pages and increasing credibility
When there is a fluctuation in your backlink profile – a sudden rise or drop of backlinks, it might raise a red flag to search engines.
Hence, a tiered link building strategy focuses on distributing these links across various tiers and gives you more control over the top tier link flow. This reduces the likelihood of penalties arising from aggressive link building practices.
Boosting existing link building efforts
If you have a well-established foundation of quality backlinks, then tiered link building can elevate your efforts to the next level. If you already acquire first tier links from top-tiered pages, then earning second and third tier links will improve your link building results and enhance your site performance.
Investing in link building might take a lot of your team’s efforts since it involves several processes, from researching and finding the right placements to outreach and monitoring the campaign performance.
Seeking help from the experts at GrowthOG will empower you to expedite the process and get the desired results.
Challenges of Tiered Link Building
Tiered link building is a powerful strategy; however, it’s necessary for marketers to acknowledge some challenges along the way.
Google penalties for low-quality links and manipulative tactics
Low-quality links or using manipulative tactics may make your website susceptible to severe consequences, including a drop in rankings or even de-indexing.
Tier 2 links and tier 3 links are usually links with lower quality. These poor quality links can come from spammy websites with low domain authority. Common types of links that can trigger penalties are:
- Paid links: Buying or selling links that pass PageRank directly violates Google’s Webmaster guidelines. These low quality backlinks can be easily spotted and penalized due to their unnatural placement around the content.
- Link schemes: Participating in link exchanges or networking with other websites is done to deceive search engines and rank higher. These link schemes can lead to penalties if detected.
- Low-quality directory links: Submitting articles to low-quality directories to get directory links without editorial insight is another way to get flagged by search engines.
- Automated link building: Using software to generate links for your website can put you at high risk of getting penalized by search engines.
- A network of guest posts: Writing guest posts is a legitimate way to get quality backlinks; however, contributing low quality content only to get outbound links can be problematic. Sometimes, these types of networks post content that is duplicated or irrelevant to the user.
Maintaining high quality link standards is crucial to rank well on search engines in the long run. Working with GrowthOG gets you away from the worries as we comply with Google guidelines to ensure high quality and relevant links from high authority sites.
Requiring careful planning and execution
Tiered link building is a complex process requiring a clear strategy to target the links you want to get. For example, if you already have tier 1 links, you need to devise a strategy to target second tier links or third tier links based on the campaign’s overall goals.
If the plan is not well thought out, your efforts can become disorganized, leading to wasted resources and missed opportunities.
Adaptability to algorithm updates
Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving. Google has rolled out 4 core updates in 2024, which has completely changed the landscape for SEO professionals. So what works today may not work tomorrow.
If your website is ranking high in SERPs, these updates may force you to make changes so your rankings are not affected. This unpredictability poses a challenge for tiered link building campaigns.
Link building experts at GrowthOG are seasoned professionals that stay on top of trends and algorithm updates to implement strategies that guarantee links that are relevant without causing any harm to your website.
Easy to go over budget
Tiered link building is time consuming and usually requires a lot of capital, which may lead to overspending. Tier 2 link acquisition can be tough for small teams, so everything has to be planned accordingly. Furthermore, since all tiered links don’t point directly to your site, you may wonder if you should invest in them.
It is thereby vital to establish a clear budget and monitor spending closely to ensure that link building efforts remain cost-effective and aligned with overall marketing goals.
Getting onboarded with GrowthOG, you’ll only need to define your link building budget and discuss your deliverables. We will take care of the rest, from planning, execution to monitoring and reports.
Alternative Tiered Link Building Tactics
Tiered link building is quite effective when done correctly; however, it can impact your online presence if not. Let’s look into some alternative tactics for getting quality backlinks for your website.
Guest blogging
Guest blogging is an effective way to get quality links from reputable websites in your niche. Guest posts not only allow you to gain exposure but also establish yourself as an authority in your field.
If done right, guest posts can improve your content placement in search engines and intrigue readers to come to your website due to the engaging content.
Crafting valuable link assets
Creating linkable assets is a strategic way to attract backlinks naturally. They create a mix of information and visual appeal that makes them shareable and helps in creating backlinks for your website.
A linkable asset can be:
- Infographics: Engaging infographics can help explain complex content in a simplified manner with a visual appeal. This will capture viewer interest and increase your brand visibility.
The Ultimate WordPress SEO Checklist by Semrush
- Comprehensive guides: Guides are go-to resources for information about a said product. An in-depth guide will easily attract links from authoritative websites.
- Original Research: Conducting an experiment or performing a survey is a great way to uncover new insights into a topic. The unique data can be easily linked by other websites.
- Tools and calculators: Online tools and calculators are a great way to attract links and improve your organic traffic.
- Quizzes and polls: These are interactive elements that encourage participation amongst readers and naturally earn links.
Invest in relationship based link building
Building relationships within your industry can lead to valuable link opportunities. This is a sustainable and powerful approach that will help you attain higher quality links.
Beyond just backlinks, networking and engaging with influencers can help you generate referral traffic. It can also open opportunities for joint ventures and other business opportunities.
Ready to kick start your website growth? Book a discovery call with GrowthOG. With a wide network of connections through the years in the industry, we can connect you to a range of brands across diverse niches.
Work on broken links and unlinked mentions
Broken link building is a powerful strategy to acquire backlinks from authoritative websites. It not only benefits you but also helps the owner keep their content updated. You can find broken links via manual search or through SEO tools like Ahrefs, SEMrush, or others to automate this process.
Unlinked mention is another strategy where a website mentions your name without giving you a backlink. These are missed SEO opportunities, and you need to reach out to website owners to get the link for your website.
You can use tools like Google Alerts, where an automated email will be sent to you if your brand is mentioned. For social media monitoring, you can use Brand24 or Mention, which will help you stay updated with mentions of your brand, keywords, or products.
Over to You
Tiered link building is a popular link building strategy that has allowed marketers to efficiently boost their SEO performance.
Through its multi-layered backlink structure, you can easily amplify the authority and impact of your primary backlinks. However, you need to prioritize quality to have a natural backlink profile.
Building backlinks is not as easy as it seems. Whether you need to use a tiered link building strategy or build links tailored to your business, you require plenty of resources and time. This is where a link building agency like GrowthOG can help you achieve your goals by following white hat techniques and building quality links.