As you may know, search engine algorithms pay attention to many factors before updating the ranking positions. They analyze domains, content quality, user interaction, and many other things in detail. Backlinks have a special influence, so the goal of many SEO experts is to develop optimal tactics to build link mass.
However, some experts ignore the tiered link building strategy, which is a mistake in promotion. Apart from tier 1, there are also tier 2 links that can help increase the authority of your online platform and be helpful in search engine optimization. In this article, we want to share with you the features and secrets of second tier link building.
ℹ️ What is Tier 2 Link Building?
We suggest starting with the definition of the term «tier 2 links» to better understand this topic. These are backlinks that are intended for already existing tier 1 links. We agree this may sound a bit confusing, especially if you are new to SEO.
Imagine you have a quality backlink from a reputable source – this is called a first tier link building. Tier 2 link building involves building up less authoritative links that link to the first tier. This creates a whole chain of links, which ultimately strengthens Domain Rating (DR) and improves ranking positions. Links can pass their juice from one to the other, so tier 2 links are a great way to strengthen your promotion.
➡️ Advantages of Implementing Tiered Link Building
We know that many modern SEO specialists underestimate and ignore tier 2 link building, arguing that it is an unnecessary waste of financial resources and time. Nevertheless, this is a mistake because this strategy can bring you a lot of benefits with the right approach.
🔹 Transferring link juice. As it was mentioned above, indexed links transfer juice from one page to another. So your main page will definitely get a perk from placing a second level backlink.
🔹 More user interactions. Users click on links often, and this is a real fact. Especially if you publish good articles in guest posting, where following a link means for readers to delve more into the topic.
Obviously, such links cannot be as useful as first tier ones, as they are meant for other tasks. Actually, tiered linkbuilding is a good tactic if you want to strengthen your position and add link juice to the page you need.
📑 Situations That Call for Tier 2 Link Building
It’s no secret that some links can be more effective than others, even though they are the same in terms of functionality. You should first know when it’s worthwhile to apply tier 2 link building tactics to your website. The purpose of these links is, more often than not, to help with SEO promotion without risking suspicion or penalties from Google.
Certainly, the main requirement for implementing this strategy is to have existing quality tier one links. How do you recognize them? These are links that are placed on other authoritative platforms and lead to your page. For example, a link on the Forbes website blog may well be a primary link. The most important thing is to look at the donor’s authority score so that this score is within 80-90. Google primarily considers such links and takes them into account before ranking. In turn, tier 2 links pass juice to the donor and eventually bring you useful effects.
⚙️ Uncovering Opportunities for Tier 2 Links
If you have already determined that your website needs the help of tier 2 link building, then you next have a few important aspects to consider for the right strategy. We have some practical tips for finding opportunities, which we will share below:
🔸 Make sure you have a sufficient number of first tier links. The minimum number of authoritative backlinks is 100 for starting tier 2 link building.
🔸 Focus on sites with an authority score in the range of 30-60 to get tier 2 links.
🔸 Don’t forget to analyze competitor profiles. You can use any of the popular tools, including Ahrefs and Serpstat.
What else do you need to know? Do not place second level backlinks that previously referred to your competitors. In this way, you will unknowingly help your competitors get better positions.
📊 Proven Strategies for Tier 2 Link Building
Before we look at the actual strategies for building tier 2 links, we want to tell you again their main differences with the first level. Tier 1 is always about authoritative donors (at least 80 DR) that link directly to your site. When we talk about tier 2, we mean that these links may not be expensive or authoritative.
Generally speaking, there are quite a few methods of getting tier 2 link building, including paid and free ones. The most popular ones are gest-posting and networking. Let us tell you more about time and experience-proven strategies.
🎯 Guest Posting
Guest posting is probably one of the most popular methods of getting tier 2 links. Why is it so? In any niche, there are quite a few online platforms that don’t mind publishing an expert blog post with a link. Even if you’ve ever gotten links from these platforms, you’ll have no problem posting tier 2 backlinks because they lead to a different domain name.
The first thing you need to do in this tier 2 link building technique is to find a list of sites that match your topic and are involved in guest blogging. Next, you need to agree with the representative of the site about cooperation, prepare an expert article and add a backlink there with a natural anchor.
🎯 Exchange of links
Another proven method we want to tell you about is the tier 2 links exchange. This is a really well-tested strategy because even according to Google’s rules, you can have multiple backlink exchanges. The most important thing is to make sure that you do not let the link exchange lead to different pages. This will help minimize all the risks of getting penalties.
If you use this method for tier 2 link building, you can significantly increase your traffic for pages with tier 1 backlinks. As a result, your website will also get a share of new visitors. However, exchanges should not be the main method of getting tier 2 backlinks.
🎯 Forums and Social Media
As we said, some tiered link building techniques don’t require you to make any investment. This applies to posting backlinks on forums and various social media sites, such as Reddit. However, they will not be able to factor in rankings because they are usually not indexed by search engine robots. Their purpose is to influence more traffic to a page that links back to the main site.
On the one hand, it may seem that posting backlinks on forums is a simple task that does not require a lot of time and knowledge. But this is not the case at all, as most of these platforms have restrictions and often ban spammers. Surely, you can only post links if they are relevant to the topic of discussion and useful to the participants.
🎯 Links from Social Bookmarks
Experts often use social bookmarking to get a small number of backlinks when working with tier 2 link building. One example of such a platform is Pinterest, where users can post photos and videos and add links.
The only disadvantage of social bookmarking, which is noted by almost all website owners, is the inability of search algorithms to index such links. They have a tag «nofollow», so they are not taken into account for authority indicators. In any case, this is a good and easy way to increase the number of users.
🎯 Directory links
If you need to get backlinks without focusing on the authority of the donor, you should look into directories. These are platforms on the Internet where information about different companies, places, websites, and more is collected. That’s why you can find the right directories that match your desired niche and leave a backlink.
Tier 2 links obtained from relevant directories help to increase the visibility of the resource. The most important thing is that this link should lead to a page with a tier one backlink. This way, users will be able to visit your site.
🎯 Press release
If you have decided to actively engage in tier 2 link building, your main goal is to make as many people as possible know about your tier 1 link page. How to do this? You can use all available methods on the Internet, including media publications. This is especially true if you are focusing on local SEO promotion.
Find local media platforms and tell them why they should publish a press release along with the necessary link. Perhaps the page presents shocking facts, statistics, and research or simply describes interesting topics well. If you can get tier 2 links from media press releases, it will have a good effect of boosting the authority of your site.
🎯 Finding Tier 2 Link Opportunities in Related Blogs
Sometimes you should see what quality blogs there are on the Internet that match the subject matter of your links. Choose a few sites and analyze them for quality content and lack of spam. Once you are sure that the donor fits your criteria for tier 2 links, you should contact the representative.
Talk about possible cooperation, and it can be of different types, both paid and free. Your task is to agree with the webmaster to place the necessary link that leads to the tier 1 page.
📣 Challenges Associated with Tiered Link Building
As you might have realized by now, tiered link building is about increasing a whole chain of backlinks that are related to each other. They have one goal – to pass as much juice as possible to your main page and increase the site’s authority score. This may sound pretty simple. However, in practice, there are often common problems and complications.For example, SEO experts get frustrated with this tactic because they choose the wrong methods to get tier 2 links. Also, if you create links too quickly, the chances of getting penalized by Google increase significantly. Be careful and choose your donors thoroughly, making sure they are relevant.
