- Feb 27, 2009
- 3,219
- 4,935
I'm sure quite a few of you have heard my rants about buying low level links and why most of the time you're not only gambling with your websites's future, but many times wasting your money. I know there are many here that disagree with me about my stance, but I have ton's of data, which backs up what I'm about to write. I never ever worry about my websites getting hit with penalties. I haven't since the first Google Penguin update in 2012. One of the main reasons for this is, I make sure my website's backlink portfolio looks natural and organic.
**Disclaimer - there's always a risk of getting penalized as an SEO professional. After all, any time you pay for a link, you're breaking Google's TOS, hence, trying to game Google's algorithm. It's what we do. Some are just better than others at doing it
First, before I start, let's talk about mindset. I could write an entire book about this topic, but I'll leave it to one annoying long paragraph. If you are building websites (I'll refer to them as assets), you should be thinking long term. How can I build properties, which will pay me in the long run and give me passive income for years to come. I know, I know - but John, this is a Blackhat forum, get the F*** out of here! For those of you thinking that, I get it. Yes, it's Blackhat, but we're all still marketers. Would you rather build long term passive income streams, where you can basically set and forget or sit around worried that your assets are one algorithm flip from making zero cash? See, I've sold to thousands of people on this forum and I understand many have the wrong mindset. I understand that most of you are 4 steps behind the guys making real cash. The guys who make real money aren't thinking short term, they think 5-10 years out. They think, how can I invest this cash NOW to make a 10,000% ROI in the future. They also tend to spend their time and money on the right things ...e.g - high quality links.
Rant/
That was a great segue...right? Anyho...let's talk some link building theory. Specifically how you are building your links? I'm not going to get super in-depth about relevancy and other ranking signals. What I want to discuss in this thread is the type of links you are buying/acquiring for your website as well as tiered link building.
I like to look at my link portfolio like a solar system. You have the sun (you're money site), your planets (your tier 1), and their moons (tier 3). You can imagine tier 4-5 etc...by adding moons to those moons. Easy enough I hope? OK so...tiered linking started becoming popular after the first Penguin update (with the exception of a few) and grew in popularity from there. Pre-Penguin, ranking websites was pretty easy, almost formulaic. Google took care of that. Post-Penguin, all that changed. For those who were't completely wiped out, we had to come up with more sophisticated methods and strategies. One of them was tiered link building.
Now, for many years, it was pretty simple. Build some tier 1 links to your money site, then hit them with tier 2 links. That was it. Not too complicated. Hammer your tier 1 links with tier 2 links and boom, you had some nice rankings. There was little regard to relevancy, authority, etc..
Then somewhere along the line Google started catching on. You had to be a bit smarter with how you deployed your tiered linking. Anchor text ratios, relevancy, etc... The last few years, they brought it to a whole other level. They've started to go upstream not only on the first level, but the second, third, and so on. They started to have a much better understanding of how a natural link profile looks from a wholistic standpoint.
Using the planet analogy, think of it from Google's perspective. If 80-90% of your links stop at the moons (tier 2) or their moons (tier 3), how natural can that link profile actually be? For simplicity, let's say you buy one PBN link to your money site. You then hit it with a bunch of crap tier 2 links. Let's say many of these links are on profile pages, or web 2.0s, or social bookmarking websites, etc... Most of these have zero links pointing to them, so your level stops there. I call them your "dead end links".
It's get further complicated with relevancy and authority. Google definitely moves upstream and understands there should be some correlation between the links that point to your website, and the links that point to their website, and so on and so on. With authority, it's basically the same idea. How much authority does the tier 1 link have and how much authority does their links have. If you are 10 levels deep from the tier 1, with a high degree of relevancy, you can bet your ass that link is going to push much more authority than some shit PBN hit with garbage tier 2 and 3 dead end links. Again, Google is looking at your link profile from a wholistic standpoint.
In summary - Build high quality links all the way from tier 1 and up. Make them natural and relevant. Spend the money! Remember, this is an investment into your future. If you build/acquire/buy high quality links on your first level, often times you don't have to build tiered links. But if you do, do it the right way.
I hope my mumbo jumbo makes sense to some of you...lol.
**Disclaimer - there's always a risk of getting penalized as an SEO professional. After all, any time you pay for a link, you're breaking Google's TOS, hence, trying to game Google's algorithm. It's what we do. Some are just better than others at doing it
First, before I start, let's talk about mindset. I could write an entire book about this topic, but I'll leave it to one annoying long paragraph. If you are building websites (I'll refer to them as assets), you should be thinking long term. How can I build properties, which will pay me in the long run and give me passive income for years to come. I know, I know - but John, this is a Blackhat forum, get the F*** out of here! For those of you thinking that, I get it. Yes, it's Blackhat, but we're all still marketers. Would you rather build long term passive income streams, where you can basically set and forget or sit around worried that your assets are one algorithm flip from making zero cash? See, I've sold to thousands of people on this forum and I understand many have the wrong mindset. I understand that most of you are 4 steps behind the guys making real cash. The guys who make real money aren't thinking short term, they think 5-10 years out. They think, how can I invest this cash NOW to make a 10,000% ROI in the future. They also tend to spend their time and money on the right things ...e.g - high quality links.
Rant/
That was a great segue...right? Anyho...let's talk some link building theory. Specifically how you are building your links? I'm not going to get super in-depth about relevancy and other ranking signals. What I want to discuss in this thread is the type of links you are buying/acquiring for your website as well as tiered link building.
I like to look at my link portfolio like a solar system. You have the sun (you're money site), your planets (your tier 1), and their moons (tier 3). You can imagine tier 4-5 etc...by adding moons to those moons. Easy enough I hope? OK so...tiered linking started becoming popular after the first Penguin update (with the exception of a few) and grew in popularity from there. Pre-Penguin, ranking websites was pretty easy, almost formulaic. Google took care of that. Post-Penguin, all that changed. For those who were't completely wiped out, we had to come up with more sophisticated methods and strategies. One of them was tiered link building.
Now, for many years, it was pretty simple. Build some tier 1 links to your money site, then hit them with tier 2 links. That was it. Not too complicated. Hammer your tier 1 links with tier 2 links and boom, you had some nice rankings. There was little regard to relevancy, authority, etc..
Then somewhere along the line Google started catching on. You had to be a bit smarter with how you deployed your tiered linking. Anchor text ratios, relevancy, etc... The last few years, they brought it to a whole other level. They've started to go upstream not only on the first level, but the second, third, and so on. They started to have a much better understanding of how a natural link profile looks from a wholistic standpoint.
Using the planet analogy, think of it from Google's perspective. If 80-90% of your links stop at the moons (tier 2) or their moons (tier 3), how natural can that link profile actually be? For simplicity, let's say you buy one PBN link to your money site. You then hit it with a bunch of crap tier 2 links. Let's say many of these links are on profile pages, or web 2.0s, or social bookmarking websites, etc... Most of these have zero links pointing to them, so your level stops there. I call them your "dead end links".
It's get further complicated with relevancy and authority. Google definitely moves upstream and understands there should be some correlation between the links that point to your website, and the links that point to their website, and so on and so on. With authority, it's basically the same idea. How much authority does the tier 1 link have and how much authority does their links have. If you are 10 levels deep from the tier 1, with a high degree of relevancy, you can bet your ass that link is going to push much more authority than some shit PBN hit with garbage tier 2 and 3 dead end links. Again, Google is looking at your link profile from a wholistic standpoint.
In summary - Build high quality links all the way from tier 1 and up. Make them natural and relevant. Spend the money! Remember, this is an investment into your future. If you build/acquire/buy high quality links on your first level, often times you don't have to build tiered links. But if you do, do it the right way.
I hope my mumbo jumbo makes sense to some of you...lol.
