James Dooley Podcast

James Dooley: So I'm here with Kyle the founder of Search R. So today's topic is going to be about tier 2 backlinks. So what is a tier 2 backlink?

Kyle: So a tier one backlink, if we start at number one, is a link that goes through to your website. A tier 2 is what would come through to the links that are going to your website. So a tier 2 backlink is a link that's going to a tier one backlink.

James Dooley: So why would you build a tier 2 backlink if it's not linking directly to your site?

Kyle: Because obviously many, many years ago, Google had the page rank algorithm and we now believe that that is, you know, it's still part of the algorithm today even though the patents expired and things. Um, and if you build links, it should pass trust and power. If it's passing trust and power, you want to be building links to almost every asset. So if you're building a T1 link, you should be then building links through to that. Obviously there's a degree where it might end up stopping because that's why you used to have like seven or eight Ts back in the day. Um, but it's like diminishing returns almost. So we typically advise like tier 2 is a good tier to hit.

James Dooley: So quick fire questions. Yeah, would you build a tier two to a no follow citation?

Kyle: Yes, to a tier two no follow citation would you build a tier two to a do follow guest post?

James Dooley: Yes.

Kyle: Would you build a tier two to a niche edit? Maybe. So with a niche edit, it should already have a lot of links to it. If it's quite updated and it's quite more recently shed, I'd probably avoid building a tier 2 because it shouldn't need it. But if it's quite aged and it might be struggling to get the crawler to come back, you know, using a signal boy social signal blast and then maybe some tier twos would definitely help.

James Dooley: What about press release? Would you ever do tier 2s to a press release?

Kyle: I would probably do it to some of them. Again, with press releases, you get some better sites and some really quite poor sites. I would probably be hitting those the better ones with it.

James Dooley: See, so our strategy is that we build quite a lot of tier twos to our guest posts because it's a new page, so we're trying to power up that page. We do it to, we actually do some to our niches even though niches should already have some sort of power, whether it's internal link or existing links going through to that existing page. We might tap it with one or two extra tier two links. And then only to the do follow of the press releases. We don't normally do it. If from being honest, to the citations, we might load the citations. Feel like an indexing type tool or occasionally when you might go and do a big GSA blast just to try to get them kind of indexed. But I don't, we don't normally do it to the no-follows, which is quite interesting. Maybe we should do some to the no-follows. We, I feel like I probably should do some to tier 2s to digital PR when it's like a telegraph or a mirror link and stuff like that because it's no follow. At present we don't do it.

Kyle: Yeah, where actually to try get more crawlers around from what you're saying, we should probably be doing that as well.

James Dooley: So with regards to relevance, are you bothered much on relevance at tier 2?

Kyle: Not really, no. It's we tried to maybe make the anchor text a little bit relevant or at least relevant. So what you have to remember with a tier 2 is it's linking to the site that's linking to you. So if we do a branded, and some people get a little bit confused why are you doing a branded anchor text to website AB and C where my website's D, E and F. It's like, because we're linking to website AB and C at this stage and not linking to websites D, E and F. So that that kind of is passing relevance through to that page, which is passing them more relevance back, then through to you. So you could do some actually branded at tier 2, presuming like you could do some exact match anchors for keywords that you want to because it's not actually going directly through to your money side. You can be probably a little bit more aggressive.

James Dooley: Hmm. What about how much, how much do the tier 2s cost? I mean, is there a variation of cost? Is it 50, 100, 200 pound? Like, where do they lie with regards to how much a tier 2 is, or does it vary on cost?

Kyle: It definitely varies. I know various different vendors. I think we're charging you know between 20 and 30 dollars at the minute, which is pretty damn cheap in the industry. And they are niche edit style links, so they are actual, you know, people reaching out to webmasters and getting the links placed. Um, whereas the not PBNs, which seems to be quite popular within the tier 2 industry.

James Dooley: Sure. We beat guys the niche edits is tier 2s. Could I actually build any tier 2s directly to my money site?

Kyle: We have seen this before and we typically don't advise it because the sites aren't the greatest quality. Um, and, um, we often believe in like toxic thresholds and things like this. And we don't offer that. We don't offer pre-approval. It's kind of just you're getting what you get.

James Dooley: Yeah, whereas we'd prefer to give you something that you can be happy and sign off with. Um, but so you don't get the pre-approval, you get the links delivered directly through to the site. Some might not be specific because it might have lined up the relevance. Is that what you're saying? But has anybody ever just gone, "Call, no, I'm doing 10 tier twos to my money site or 200 tier twos to my money site," and then you've been shocked because it might have worked?

Kyle: Yeah, so we've had a few cases. And one in particular was where he built 500 links, wanted them live within a month. We got them live within a month and he ranked within about three or four weeks after that and I believe still ranks to today. Locally, obviously it's only local. I would say only ever advise that in a local. It'll not work in like a national industry or worldwide industry.

James Dooley: So with regards to, um, the tier twos that are coming through, um, you're not too bothered about the relevance. The costs seem to be a lot cheaper than let's say a normal niche edit. You could, but you don't really recommend on doing it directly to the money site. Hence why you're saying it's a tier two backlink. And would you say every single guest post should have some sort of power within a tier 2 bucket? Or can some not have it? Or like, what, where's the kind of breakdown? Because I feel like the most important part for tier 2s is powering up your tier one guest posts.

Kyle: So I would say usually, if you're wanting to try and do it on a budget constraint, um, pick the sites that a) have a lot of ranking keywords, almost like a parasite SEO style. So pick the ones that have a lot of rank and keywords. They might already have domain authority and um power. And then you're going to hit it up with some, um, tier twos because it then stands a chance of ranking, um, with the tier two links.

James Dooley: Right, okay. I mean, that's great, kind of conversation with regards to how you're leveraging tier 2s. I might end up having to address and change one or two on my strategies. We've sending one or two to, I say, digital PR campaigns and stuff. So if anyone is looking and not actually leveraging the tier 2 backlinks at present, I would strongly recommend it on doing it. So do follow backlinks. Any do follow backlinks for the side? If you can leverage that little bit more power to that page, which is linking through to you, you're going to get more link juice being passed through or more page rank being passed through to your site.

Kyle: Yeah, I agree with you. With regards to relevance, I think that relevance at tier one's quite important. I don't actually think it's massively important at, um, tier two. I do like to get relevant links, but it's tier two.

James Dooley: Yeah, I'm more bothered about the power being passed through to that webpage. And anyone who's not leveraging T2s at present, then you're missing a lot. You're leaving so much money on the table in not leveraging the power that your T1 backlink profile should be getting moving forward for any sort of strategy for you to try to get better rankings, whether that's in Bing or Google search results.