Teir1 1-3 keywords

I searched but didn't find anything that answered my question directly.

For tier 1 I have my main kw's that I'm trying to rank for but tier 2, should they be the same keywords as tier 1 or will long tailed variations of tier 1 be good? If variations are good, is it possible to over do it? This is for a local service site that I own. It's ranking ~10-20 for keywords that I am targeting, but trying to give them a bump.

Will further variations be ok for tier 3 or stick with the main keywords?

Long tail keywords are always the go to at the beginning.
The other keywords will start ranking once it starts ranking

They should be semantically related but not the same keyword. The anchor text pointing to your tier 1 link should be an exact match or slightly varied. This is for tier 2 only.
Tier 3 can be complete link spam for the sole objective of indexing the tier 2 links and ideally, passing some link juice.

Waifu_tatyana said:

They should be semantically related but not the same keyword. The anchor text pointing to your tier 1 link should be an exact match or slightly varied. This is for tier 2 only.
Tier 3 can be complete link spam for the sole objective of indexing the tier 2 links and ideally, passing some link juice.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. I really appreciate it!

Berry Klein said:

Long tail keywords are always the go to at the beginning.
The other keywords will start ranking once it starts ranking

Click to expand...

Thanks! I really appreciate it!