Random SEO Questions

I have a few random SEO questions I wanted to get some input on.

1. For link pyramids, is building to tier 2 enough for smaller sites? I imagine the tougher the competition, the more elaborate your pyramid should be. So for a smaller niche site (<3000 local searches in Google), can I just build a hub site (tier 1) and blast it with comments for tier 2 along with maybe 1-2 other web 2.0 sites linking to it? Or do I need to go down another level? I know this is also a case by case basis but for the scenario given, what's adequate?

2. For hosting sites, if you plan on building multiple sites that aren't related to each other, is it fine to host them on the same server? I know it's pretty dumb to host the sites you plan on linking to each other on the same server since Google could tell but I can't imagine hosting sites with different niches as being a bad thing right? Especially since Google shouldn't be able to tell those are both your sites.

1. Gotta test and see. Competition is more of a variable than searches.

2. Yes, you can host lots of sites on the same server with the same ip and rank them all.

2. I know someone that ranks for really intense terms and he does different registrars, different hosting, different whois, etc and he ranks for the same keyword. Not saying you can't do it, but I think it helps or at least seems to help the guy I know...

Just think, if it's different keywords, you have who knows how many hundreds on the same server, same IP as you, so if you have two different sites, it's not a big deal.
I'm sure you could rank the same keyword on the same IP too, but do it too much, with low quality sites and i"m sure google will catch on.

For link pyramids, you can use several keyword variations by following Google wonderwheel. You just need to random the keywords and use them that most appropriate with your main keyword. Sometimes, I create up it up to tier 3 with different composition for each tier. This will increase your site's SERP if you do this routinely.

I'm sure someone will disagree, but my feeling on the link pyramid is that most people should only ever do two tiers. My guess is you're doing shitty links -> web 2.0 pages -> money site. The whole point of that structure is to get the benefit from a massive amount of shitty links without getting your money site sandboxed. You're actually losing link juice by using the web 2.0 buffer, but it's better than a sandbox. Pointing more shitty links at your shitty links will pass link juice, but it's exponentially less valuable to your money site. You're much better off just spamming more links to the web 2.0 pages, or better yet creating more 2.0 pages and spamming them.

There are cases when more tiers are useful, but that happens on a case by case basis.

Since Google changed the playing field Pyramid linkbuilding is no longer worth the effort.

Simple text links are almost counter productive, whereas Contextural Links will get you almost immediate SERPS improvement.

Most of the backlinks you will be offered today will be either, simple text on blog profiles or blog comments. Tens of thousands of both can be done in 24hrs using Scrapebox, and because of that Google is now giving simple text links less weight in SERPS.

If you watch the latest video by Matt Cutts, Google's own guru, you will learn that contextural backlinks now have the most value.

Contextural backlinks are links placed inside an article or blog post that are in the context of their surrounding text, so they look natural.

For example an article on firefighting might have links to a firestation URL. These are quite time consuming to create and invariably need an image to get maximum Google juice.

For anyone planning to create backlinks I recommend you to take 3 minutes to watch the Matt Cutts video on autoseosystem-dot-com

If you recognise the change he speaks about. then afterwards use their FREE software to create some contextural articles embedded with your own URL.

Thanks for the responses guys, the answers were what I was expecting.