1. Is tiered link building better than simply just pursuing powerful tier 1 links?
powerful links need to point DIRECTLY to your site no matter if you build other tiers of links, or not. For example...
- you point powerful links directly to your site = non-tiered link building
- you point other links (powerful or not, it doesn't matter although you obviously want those links to have some power, too) to the links that point to your money site = tiered link building (= you've just built 2 tiers of links: tier 1 links directly to your money site and tier 2 links to your tier 1)
2. What are the types of links that fall under each tier? I saw a lot of conflicting info on this one.
any link can go anywhere, there is no rule for this.
But - of course - you want to point your best links directly to your money site so that your site can get most of their authority. If you waste those powerful links by pointing them to web 2.0s for example, or - even worse - to blog comments, you're going to waste their power by boosting the authority of the blog comments because google doesn't care about blog comments, they won't rank them so your powerful links are wasted if you point them to such meaningless stuff...
But like I said, if you're a madman and you have money to waste sure, point your best links to shitty backlinks like web 2.0s, bookmarks, profile links, etc and see what happens. It will be a lesson learned. Learned the painful way, but learned nonetheless...
3. How many links are appropriate for each tier?
as many as you need to rank.
The entire purpose of building links is to rank your pages so you can get traffic so you can make money. That's why we are all here: to make the damn moolah
If you see that you rank #1 without backlink that's great! Don't build any links but, instead, spend your money on building more sites, or creating more content, or whatever...
But if you don't rank #1 without backlinks, start building links, index them (this is very important), and then watch your site climb up the SERPs. If you reach #1 (or whichever position you want in google, it doesn't need to be #1 specifically, you might be happy with just #3) with only 4 backlinks great! Stop building links and move to other page / site that needs ranking...
If you see that 4 backlinks are not enough, build more! Build 10 links, or 20, or 50, or 1000... no matter how many links are needed to rank where you want, you build / buy them! Some niches are very competitive by nature, and many keywords in those niches are double hard to rank for because
1) they are tough keywords by nature
2) they are keywords in niches that are tough themselves by nature.
And for such niches and keywords simple backlinks are usually not enough. This is where tiered link building becomes important and where you want your best, most powerful, strongest backlinks to point directly to your money site, and the next best, most powerful, strongest backlinks to point to your tier 1 backlinks. And for tiers 3+ you can use weaker backlinks...
Is any of the below correct and what would you add to each?
Tier 1 - 1 link, top quality sites, do follow (guest posts, niche edits)
Tier 2 - 2 links, do follow (web 2.0, directories, press releases, forum links)
Tier 3 - 4 links, no follow and do follow (blog comments, Q&A sites like Quora)
none of these will work, and all of them will work. It depends on your particular situation, like I said...
If you're in a tough niche and are trying to rank for tough keywords (let's say, for example, payday loans) good luck ranking for that keyword with a fresh site and 4 links LOL. You probably need 100s of links pointing both to the homepage of your site, and to the inner page that targets the keyword "payday loans", and even that will not be enough. You might need to point even more 100s of backlinks to the other 100s of backlinks that are pointing to the homepage of your site and to the page that targets the keyword "payday loans".
And not even this might be enough, you might also need a domain with good authority (DA / DR), and you might also need to wait 2-3 years while continuously publishing content and building links (like, once or twice a week type of "continuously"), and you might even need good EEAT and whatnot...
And after all of this is done and you're eagerly waiting to reap the rewards of your hard work and millions of $$$ invested into stellar content and the creme de la creme of backlinks here comes google with an update to kick you out of the SERPs and force you into buying their ads or forcing you to slave your life away to feed their bot with even more stellar content. Welcome to the wonderful world of SEO
Anyway, the example I've given you (about payday loans) might, or might not be accurate. I really don't know how long it takes to rank for that keyword and how many links you need, but that's not the point. The point I wanted to make is that some niches and / or keywords are brutally hard and pointing 4 shitty blog comments to your site won't even rank in top 100 most likely (or it might, but who cares, nobody reaches page 10 of the SERPs just to read your stellar content)
Use a variation of primary keyword at each level without using exact ranking keyword.
read this:
https://www.blackhatworld.com/seo/guide-how-many-links-per-day-week-or-month-should-i-build.1502403/
Would I get good results by simply pursuing guest posts, niche edits, web 2.0, blog comments, social signals and profile links that would point to home page, silo pages and some blog posts?
depends on...
- where you point those types of backlinks
- which anchors you use
- how often you build them, and how many of them
- etc...
Just read the guide above, it will explain how to perform safe link building much better than I can ever explain...
Is it effective to use Google properties like blogspot to write posts and embed links to money site?
it's not effective (anymore), but it's needed. So, you will want to do it at some point anyway. But since blogspot links are garbage I recommend that you use them as tier 2-4, like this:
money site <---- strong backlink <----- garbage blogspot backlink ... or...
money site <---- strong backlink <----- other strong (less stronger) backlink <----- garbage blogspot backlink
Sorry for all the newbie questions. I am trying to formulate a reliable strategy that I can rinse and repeat. TIA for your help.
we've all had these questions when we've been like you, so they're ok to ask, no worries
