Don’t worry, you can let your guard down, you haven’t been clickbaited. Not long ago, I realized my tiered link building system and many others such as Matthew Woodward’s is completely broken.
Upon my initial discovery I felt a mix of emotions; frustration, shock, and all around discomfort. I realized in a single moment that I had been literally banging my head against the wall for over a year with almost zero chance of success.
There is a fundamental flaw in the tiered link building systems that essentially renders the process ineffective.
Yeah you heard right, if you follow my old link building empire tutorial or Matthew Woodward’s ultimate guide to tiered link building you will probably never rank a site, ever.
In this post I am going to show exactly why the systems are flawed and how to run things correctly moving forward, once and for all.
This has shaken me up so much that I’ve taken over a month to write this post, almost not sure if I would even write again. But I couldn’t remain quiet because of my mistake and allow more and more people to be misinformed and banging their heads against the wall as well.
The First Problem – Link Types
The problem is not with tiered link building itself, this is still working quite well. So breathe out a sigh of relief if you’re like me and have invested quite a bit into this method, both time and money.
The flaw is all in the set up and the type of links we are building on each tier. Myself and Matthew have been advising the following link types for your tiers:
- Articles
- Web 2.0s
- Wikis
- Doc share
- Social Bookmarks
- Directories
Sound familiar? Well the devil is in the details as they say but in this instance the devil is in the link type, specifically social bookmarks and directories. And in lies the fundamental flaw breaking our link building efforts.
Social Bookmark and Directory Links Should NEVER Be Used in Your Tier Structure!!
That is if you like ranking sites at least. These link types are not what we want in our tier structure, they are not contextual links and will essentially break our tiers starting with T1 moving out to additional tiers.
Here is the image from Matthew’s tutorial
In the picture you will see the tier 2 links actually contain bookmarks and comments which effectively cuts off tier 3 from passing any juice.
If you watch his tutorial though, you will find the specific instructions to use directories and bookmarks on tier 1.
Now if we follow these instructions, build about 50 of each link type, we will wind up with 150 contextual links, and 100 non-contextual links.
Commence tier 2 with the same flaw and we are lining up very few tiers contextually. In fact, we have a completely broken tier structure that will rarely get us anywhere.
But I thought you had results?
Yes, I’ve had them, but not the slam dunk rankings like we’ve made it out to be, and most of my successes were on expired domains with existing authority. This would explain why the few actual tiered links I managed to build actually had an effect. But in general I would estimate that building your links this way you will have less than a 10% success rate. Including the bookmarks, directories, and comments make it incredibly unlikely to ever line up enough tiers to rank since ~40% of each layer is basically worthless.
If you’ve heard of Godoveryou he once had a tutorial that highlighted this.
This image from their forum shows using social bookmarks as a secondary link coming in from the side and not directly in the tier structure.
This is the linking structure that needs to be used for tiered link building to be effective, with primary and secondary links.
Primary Links
Articles
Wikis
Web2s
Secondary Links
Bookmarks
Directories
Comments
Guestbooks
Image comments
Trackbacks
With a primary and secondary structure the primary links make up the tiers and the secondary links come in from the side allowing us to build contextual authority.
Passing contextual link authority is the primary goal of tiered linking, with non-contextual links we’ve effectively shot ourselves in the foot.
The Second Problem – Dofollow vs Nofollow
The second problem which is also debilitating to our link building, is using nofollow platforms in our tiers.
Before you get all up and arms about nofollow links still passing juice and being important for diversification, know that I share your sentiments as well.
But I can tell you from experience that using platforms like Jcow in your tiers will get you a one way ticket to never rank shit town.
Platforms such as Jcow and Mediawiki are ALL NOFOLLOW but before we completely write off these links, I’ll paint the extreme picture to understand why nofollow platforms are killing our tiers.
Depending on your site list and the sites you are actively scraping, your list could heavily skew towards nofollow platforms. So if over 75% of your site list is nofollow and you build that out over three tiers, you’re basically fucked. To compound the problem further, most of these nofollow platforms are extremely popular making it very likely that your site list skews towards these platforms.
Building nofollow non-contextual links for your tiers is no bueno bros.
The Solution
The solution is using a primary and secondary link structure and setting up separate tasks to group and keep track of your links. The focus is on passing relevant contextual dofollow link juice.
The Real Weapon of Choice
The last order of business is to clear the air about what is really the best link building software, because it sure as hell isn’t Ultimate Demon. Yes I’ve promoted UD in the past but I was wrong, for that I can only apologize and hope this post makes up for it. The truth is, GSA SER runs circles around Ultimate Demon and you could build out three tiers on GSA before running 10,000 sites through the UD site detector. If you don’t already own the software, here’s a discount code to save 10% on both the software and captcha breaker.
SER can be a bit overwhelming at first, and this is why many people gravitate towards tools like UD or Senuke XCR, but when you realize the power of SER there is no contest. And for the record, there is no reason why SER can not be used for tier 1 link building and the entire tiered link building process, it’s just the unknown that has caused people to peg it as a solely tier 2/3 tool.
My assumption is that the monetary incentive to promote UD over SER is just too great, so we never hear about it much on SEO blogs if at all. There just isn’t that much money in promoting and teaching about it.
That and an updated version rolls out practically every day so it’s tough to produce long lasting tutorials. But this makes the software even more kick ass with the changes being recommended by real SEOs every day in the GSA SER forums.
Without going all fanboy on GSA, here is how to setup campaigns and avoid the problems I outlined above. We will create additional tasks for our secondary links keeping things separated so the tiered links remain contextual and dofollow.
This takes a little more work but by the time you’re done Ultimate Demon will still be trying to save your first task ;-)
If you’re just learning SER then YouTube, the official forums, and hands on experience are your best bets for getting up to speed. So in this explanation we’ll assume you already know your way around SER.
Engine Selections
Start by creating a new task. In the left hand column you will see all the different types of links and engines that can be selected. Right click in that area you will find some options that might have otherwise taken you a month to discover.
Click check all, then uncheck nofollow links, and uncheck non contextual links.
Congratulations, now you’re on your way to building some tiered links. Another cool thing to note here is you can save your engine selection, so save that badboy as “Contextual Dofollow” and just load engine selection when starting new tier tasks.
Now we will set up 7 tasks in total for a full campaign.
Primary Links
Tier 1
Tier 2
Tier 3
Secondary Links
Secondary links to Tier 1
Secondary links to Tier 2
Secondary links to Tier 3
Secondary links to Money Site
The setup looks like this:
Now we have isolated our contextual dofollow links as part of the tier strucutre and we’re linking in from the side with our secondary links. The final piece of the puzzle is building your own site lists.
Now the beauty of GSA is it will go out and find sites automatically using footprints and the selected search engines. But if you want to truly run the software to its fullest potential and have more control over the link building, using your own premade site lists is key.
So start scraping your own sites and building footprints outside of the default ones in GSA. Now that you know exactly what you’re looking for the game should be easier.
Good luck everyone!
Jacob, I’m repeating myself, but it’s amazing to see person so honest and straight-forward in this IM world. Posting something that kind of goes against your own previous posts… that takes cojones! Appreciate it big time. Thanks again!
Thanks Uldis, that reminds me, I still have to update the old post! Best of luck Uldis.
lol , because he is not a guru.
you keep learning in your life.
he learned from his mistake and corrected it.
i guru like matthew woodward will have never let his mistake go in public.
-=-
No way bro, ultimate demon is the best link building tool.
Chad, UD blows ass compared to SER. Are you having a case of SEO denial? I had a case of SEO denial back in 2009, but then the spam team stuck a parking cone up my site’s ass.
Jacob would you like to tell us your top 20 web 2.0 list. Will highly appreciate for that
Umm, haven’t really been building that type of stuff lately.
blogspot
tumblr
wordpress
weebly
webs
etc
The usual suspects, dofollow ones of course.
Becasue Matthew Woodward is a wannabe lool
Although I never trusted any of Woodward’s ranking method (he is more like seo media star than ranking expert – after all he didn’t buil a single link for his blog), I can vouch for this guide, even now in 2015:
http://bit.ly/1FmHdRz
It brings down the ranking process to its very essentials and simplicity. Worked like a charm for me (medium competition keywords).
Thanks for this post bruh – been thinkin this for a while too and makes total sense. Just a quick Q for you, how many threads would you run on GSA using 100 private proxies to max out Links Per Minute? I know you can set up a delay for the search engine scraper so I’m assuming you can set the thread count pretty high – esp if you import your own site lists? Or should I still be conservative side?
No prob bruh, the LPM has a lot to do with the filters you’re using, if GSA is attempting to scrape target sites, and the power of your server.
If you have no filters set and you’re feeding predfined lists of target sites, then depedning on your VPS, you should be able to run anywhere from 75-150 threads.
Also if you’re verifying links automatically or turning verifcation off makes a difference as well. So if you’re running some secondary links to tier 3 for example you can turn verification off and let her go to town.
With my setup I run 100 private proxies, usually at 150 threads and I’m running the Hyper v-pro from Powerup with 1gb additional ram.
Amazing post! I can’t imagine of how many people have banged their head against the wall after reading this.
At the end of the day, it seems to me that the expired domain has always remained as an ideal choice.
Link building like a boss, thanks Jacob ;)
Very interesting article, thanks a lot Jacob.
I’ll get round to reading this again over coffee first thing in the morning.
Hi Jacob,
I was wondering when a post like this would come out. I have long since believed UD is promoted due to the high affiliate incentives.
I saw a great diagram over on the SER forum highlighting a diagram similar to this and have been setting up my GSA campaigns similar to this i.e. Your Tier 1, 2, 3 and the Tier 1,2,3 “Kitchen sink categories”
Having used GSA for a couple of months now, I have noticed the platforms UD uses are the least effective platforms for verified links and have turned most of them off.
I am about to finish my last campaign with UD and will give it a go for Tier 1 and will see how that goes. I like your script idea, since its a pain setting up 7 layers for each project so will give subscribe to your newsletter (I think I already have)
I think UD needs to do something to put itself back in the game as GSA SER has long since overtaken it now.
Cheers for the honest review
Thanks Tom, I have also been thinking that about UD stepping their game up. Maybe this post will motivate them.
Yep, I have UD license but recently switched to Licorne AIO + GSA SER. I love how fast is adding new sites to LAIO where UD takes forever.
I liked the overall feel of LicorneAIO when I tried it, however after importing 100s of sites, hardly any had success in submission.
I noticed that for articles and bookmarking, LAIO has no option to set categories. My “pay day loan” tests were submitting to Arts and crafts
So bought UD instead.
The thing is NOT to scrape for sites with ScrapeBox :) don’t know why SB can’t find good source to post to. 80% of the targets did not match any footprint.
The solution is Hrefer :), added 8000+ sources, got about 4500 posted links.
Great post! Quick Question:
Do you think Web 2.0’s are good Tier 1 links if they are legit Web 2.0’s with relevant content and have a High PA or High PR on them?
Yes I do, especially if you go the extra mile with more than 1 post on them.
Can you set SER to make 2.0’s with more than 1 post on them? Just been using SER for a couple days, still getting a feel for it.
Yeah it can but Serengines is a complete piece of shit, I can get like 5 verified with it, total joke.
I have been super tempted since the past couple of days to get my hands on GSA and this post just made me go crazy. I’ve got a copy of ScrapeBox lying around as well. Proxies are the missing thing.
Thought I’d add this. You mention avoiding nofollow platforms in your tiered structure. Another thing I’ve found important to avoid (Which is just as common as nofollow) is noindex platforms. I believe sites like Jimdo & bravesites noindex all pages, but it may just be new pages, I’m not entirely sure. Either way, I avoid them yet I still see the on many people’s lists. If they can’t get indexed they can’t pass any context or juice :)
Thanks for the tip Jeff!
Is there a way to find noindexed sites in GSA and purge/ignore them?
Should be in options > tools.
I know you can purge dead sites, but perosnally I don’t use the built in site lists at all. I manually feed in lists for my campaigns without PR checking on, wayyyyy better.
Using GScraper? BTW, do you use targeted lists (scrape sites with keyword) or you could give a crap… a link is a link?
Yes Gscraper. Not keyword targeted, but I do filter by quality.
I think I’m going to start doing that. I’m running my second GSA project (yeah, I’m a little late to the party) and it’s taking forever AND burning my $$ proxies having GSA hammer G for PR, etc.
I think I saw a video by Matthew or (someone else) showing it done with GScraper. I’ve seen so many videos in the last week I feel like I had a Vulcan mind-meld with the Internet.
That’s the name of the game at first, taking in all the information you can.
HI Jacob,
Interesting post…how would you space out these pr3+,2 and PR 0 campaigns. say 1 week for each tier or depending on the competition for the target keyword, build as many PR 3+ links until you think its now time to start doing other tiers.
cheers!
There really is no set format for this, drip feed tier 1 for 7 days, then start tier 2 for 7 days, then tier 3.
Run tier 1 in just a couple days, then immediately start tier 2. It’s something I’m always playing with but in general I do tier 1 for 7-10 days, tier 2 immediately after that for 7-14 days, then tier 3 following that. You can also include a pause week.
Welcome to 2013 bro. You’re just now getting to realize how awesome GSA is? This program has kicked the shit out of UD in every possible way for quite a long time – and it wasn’t even close really. I couldn’t help but shake my head every time you and Mathew recommended it as your go-to tiered linking tool. I never even realized that any of you actually recommended building tiered links to your comments. Talk about waste of resources!
Couple things I disagree with in your post:
(1) Nothing wrong with Nofollow contextuals. They still pass juice, just not in the form of PR. Nofollow links can still pass trust and authority (DA / PA if you will). Building links to nofollow contextual pages not only helps juice them up a little, but more importantly, helps them get indexed. Having said that, I wouldn’t recommend using MediaWikki on Tier 1 because they just suck. But that’s pretty much the only nofollow platform I avoid on Tier 1.
(2) If you’re an industrial linker, you’re going to want to use something other than GSA to scrape your targets. Every other GSA user scrapes the same targets. Not only that, but it also slows down the program quite a bit. And not only that, it’s really limiting the amount of targets you can scrape. Highly recommend Hrefer or Gscraper if you want to be a bad ass.
Hey Dan, well I’ve been borderline obsessed with GSA for over a year now so not just getting it but always learning new things with GSA.
I didn’t recommend comments as a tier link, I advised to be used as a tier 3 or 4 and more for indexation purposes of lower tiers. The post is about using bookmarks and directories throughout tiers 1-3 causing things to get screwed up.
1. I never said anything was wrong with nofollows besides having a site list heavily skewing to those platforms. Yes they can still pass juice but shouldn’t make up a large % of your tiers.
2. I thought I specifically said having GSA scrape targets is inefficient and that feeding it with your own list is that way to go. Actually just start playing with Gscraper recently, it is quite badass.
Hi Jacob, I’m relatively new to DIY back linking and have seen many interesting articles but this one makes a lot of sense. I’ve been debating which software to use and was leaning towards GSA – this has helped me make up my mind. As a mac user, I will be getting. Vps for this. Any advice on minimum specs? Keep up the great work.
Hey Tony, I run Mac as well so not a problem, a VPS is the only way to run SER IMO.
Minimum I would go with is 2gb ram, personally I run on a 5gb ram setup with unmetered bandwidth from PowerupHosting.
They actually hooked me up with a small discount you can grab here. Good luck dude!
Hey Jacob,
How does this work? … does a Windows SSD VPS allow you to operate a Windows desktop in the cloud (and install your own software)?
Cheers and thanks for the guide,
Dan
Does not require a VPS, actually I’m considering cancelling mine and setting up a cheapo laptop as a dedicated box from home. Unfortunately that is not my area of geek expertise so I’ve been on a few powerup VPS for over a year now. Most people just don’t want it running on their work machine as it will be boss hogging on performance and ideally it should be running completely uninterrupted.
but if you’re just trying to get your feet wet then all you need is the software and a set of proxies, windows based machine of course.
I already have senuke xcr and a few others. For starting out is Matthew Woodwards
tutorials on that and Scrapebox the right way to go? Lots of conflicting and mostly
dated info for sale out there. You seem to have a grip on the real world!
I have 20 years experience in direct marketing and 10 yrs experience marketing
high ticket leads generated on the internet. Not my first rodeo, but a little less than
a year in SEO. Made plenty mistakes, wasting lots ot time.
Thanks for your take on this. Robert
Hey Robert, Matthew’s tutorials are great and the Scrapebox one is mine ;-)
https://www.jacobking.com/ultimate-guide-to-scrapebox
Generally speaking his tutorials will give you most of the framework, but if you do not set up your campaigns in a similar fashion to how I have outlined in this post results will be limited. I think he will be publishing an updated as well, but there is still tons of value in this guides, this is just a minor problem in set up that has big implications.
Hi Jacob,
A breath of fresh air to read, the business of link building for SEOs was desperately in need of an update like this.
You mention that SER is fine for Tier 1, but for someone looking to take this very seriously for, perhaps, a client for example. Would you recommend there is an advantage to manually building the first tier?
Thanks
I would say be VERY careful with SER for any tier 1 link building on a client site or a site very dear to you.
The only advantage to manual building is it’s all you got if you can’t manage to do the automated stuff right ;-)
I would recommend creating some buffer sites, high PR web2s full developed, press release or two, then smack those up with GSA. Sites that I direct link with GSA I am willing to risk, that’s part of the game. Maybe I need to add a disclaimer lol. Thanks for dropping in!
Jecob, the image with the hot chick as the money site, to the right of her it’s suppose to be Tier1, right? In the image says NoFollow PR+ links where in your GSA SER screen shot it’s DoFollow PR3+
I guess the DoFollow is the correct…
Jang, look at the diagram as two columns, the left column makes up our “tiered” dofollow contextual links. The right column is for our secondary links that come in from the side, in the GSA screenshot, the box directly to her (Money site) right, the task is named “Secondary Links to Money Site”.
So are you saying that non-contextual links are a waste of time? Or are you saying that they are not as useful/powerful as contextual links?
If you build bookmarks with the keyword in the bookmark title, isn’t that useful anymore?
The guys over at OMG Machines advocate that “watering down” your keyword links by surrounding them with a little text is the way to go, so surely having you keyword in a long bookmark title would be a good thing? No? What am I missing here?
No, I am not saying at all that they are a waste of time. But for the purpose of creating tiered links they should not be used in the actual tier structure. In the diagram I still have them but linking in from the side instead of directly in the tiers.
Imagine if you use a social bookmark as part of your tier 1 link set and then use social bookmarks as part of your tier 2 links set, quite often you’ll have social bookmarks going to other social bookmarks, not only does this make no sense but is not passing the contextual juice we’re after.
Diversification or watering down is important, which is why we still have secondary links to our money site with some nofollow contextuals, bookmarks, directories, and niche relevant comments.
So do you even consider UD to be worth your time to build tier 1’s? Or is GSA the only link building tools that you feel you need?
I think this is a good post, and how to approach tiers. I am glad when I started on my own campaigns that I didn’t bother with blog comments, trackbacks, and directories for first tiers. I pretty much used this same approach. Not with as many tiers, but only because I am novice still getting my feet wet. You are a Bobby Fischer looking 12 moves ahead. I am still trying to figure out how to move the horse piece.
The main reasons I avoided blog comments and directories was because of speed and authority. I personally don’t see search engines giving links from blog comments and directories the same kind of respect they might get with an article or a wiki link. Also, I knew I would need a lot more links going to my 2nd tier, and figured it would be easier for GSA to find spots on directories and blog comments, then it would be to find spots to put articles. This is all a guess, and I still don’t know if it is true, but I am just going to keep believing it.
You also need to take into consideration what kind of pages get links, and approach it from a human perspective. How often do you see a normal article with a direct link to directory. normally never. So why would it make since to have hundreds of articles linking to a directory page. On the flip side, it is very common for articles and wikis to be referenced to from other articles and wikis. So to me it only makes since to have wikis and articles tiered, and let blog comments and directories stand alone.
The goal with these tools is to not build as many links as blindly as possible. The goal is to build links quickly like a human would if they ate cocaine for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Ey 4_way, I need to clarify. Both of our tutorials showed using social bookmarks and directories for tiers 1 and 2, not comments, trackbacks and those link types. Thank god those we’re being used as tier 3 at least.
The image I found actually had comments in the second tier which might be a mistake since Matthew’s video specifically shows articles, wikis, web2s, social bookmarks, and directories as tier 1. Either way it hammers home the importance of contextual links.
You can totally still use UD for tier 1 building still, they are essentially doing the same thing creating links on open source platforms, just GSA has way more functionality, hits more platforms, runs 100x better, etc, etc. But the downside is SER is a bit more complicated and can harm a site if you don’t know what you’re doing. This makes it key to have your own site lists to control the amount of links built by limiting the amount of verifications or submissions per day.
Great line – “The goal is to build links quickly like a human would if they ate cocaine for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”
So my understanding is that you can build comments, guestbooks, and trackbacks on any tiers, but that those links are pretty much the end of that chain of links, because there really is know point in adding more tiers to them.
Quick question? Most diagrams I see go 3 tiers deep. Does this mean there is little value in going deeper (“Inception” theme song), or is this because the point of how to set up tiers is set, and we should keeping building up the pyramid. Do you think their is any value in going further, say to a 6th or 7th tier. Upon further review, it just seems like it is a time constraint. Say if each tier 1 is 25 links, each of those had 25. By the time you reach tier 5 are looking at 9,765,625 total links built. Which I guess would seem like a large amount, but you are the professional, so I don’t even know how many thousands, dare I say millions, of links you have churned out with GSA.
One last quick question, do you span it out, say build tier 2 links a couple days after tier 1, then tier 3 after a couple more days. Or do just let the tool go to town, and constantly build to links once they have been verified?
Do you think we could move this discussion over to the forum?
Just start a thread with the above comment.
Yeah. Sorry, was thinking about doing that. My bad.
No worries, I figured it would be a good idea with the specifics because my answers can be pretty long. I’ll jump over there with my answer as soon as you start the thread.
Taking this new approach with GSA means I have to now sit down and learn the advanced features of Kontent Machine and how GSA adds in those anchor links.
Up until now I have never bothered looking at this and have realized GSA DOES NOT do a great job at this.
The best route is obviously via in article link posting, however by default GSA SER puts the anchor words in randomly, which doesnt make it very contextual.
I need to work out a good method now especially for the manually spun tier 1 content on how best to add the “branded contextual link”
Time to do some testing
Well GSA recently added some kick ass features with anchor text insertion. If you prep the template with Kontent Machine inserting the links that way isn’t ideal since the placement isn’t randomized. You can choose to mimic contextual but it will only be in one place, I don’t like that.
In GSA under the article tab you will see the different options for how the anchor is inserted. “Sentence in article” is what I usually use, from there you can take it a step further and edit the .dat file to add some more depth to the default spun sentence. Otherwise you’re using the same spin block as every other GSAer.
Ah, good idea, will give that ago. Thanks
Hi Jacob, nice post (especially the title), really reeled me in! ;-)
Finally, someone who doesn’t just advocate building ONLY contextual links to their money site!
I first encountered GSA about a year ago, but only really got into it properly about 6 months ago, and I agree, it runs rings around anything else in its genre, and can totally be used for tier 1 (if you know how to set it up and use it properly).
The only downside is that as time goes by GSA does seem to be losing some of its potency the more people who use it.
I’m quite active on the GSA forum (2Take2), and have been using a version of the method that you outlined above for quite some time now with good effect, although I have to be honest and say that (even though I’m probably not even half the SEO that you are) there are a couple of things that I personally do a bit differently, and a couple of ways that you could probably make the campaigns a bit more efficient. :-)
Bottom line though – GSA SER, and RankWYZ for a bit of extra authority/quality, and you can absolutely own most SERPs that aren’t stupidly competitive.
Oh yeah, nearly forgot, nice blog BTW – I’ve been reading for a while now, and have picked up some nice tips in the past.
Regards
Shit thanks Paul, I really appreciate it. Yeah I’ve been lurking on the forums for a while lol. Would love to hear more about your techniques for making things more efficient, GSA is endless really, that’s why I love it so much. And I hear you about GSA sites getting beat on like crazy, that’s why it’s even more important to step up your site scraping game and exploit new platforms as soon as they come up ;-)
But if you’re a regular on the forum, I’m sure you know all that. Rankwyz is pretty sweet, been playing with it a lot lately to drive some relevancy, making like 20 relevant blogs super pimped out with a minimum of 4 posts, then nailing them with GSA. Take care dude!
Hi Jacob,
You’re welcome.
Yeah, GSA is a real monster when you delve deep into it, and TBH at the rate that new features are added, it must be a right bitch to learn for anyone just starting with the program now.
You’re dead right about scraping for, and hitting the new platforms as soon as they get added – I just wish that I had the time to learn how to build the scripts to add new platforms of my own.
With regards to making your tiered campaigns more efficient in GSA, IMO it’s better not to use the internal tiered linking feature as (amongst other things) it makes it pretty much impossible to live link check your tiers, which as you know, will lead to a high percentage of your link building efforts being wasted.
All the best
Ah yeah for sure, I always check recheck T1 and sometimes T2 then paste the live links in and turn of the tier setting. But for the purpose of churning these things out, my campaign setup script does it like that and I’ll usually monitor and adjust as it goes along. It’s a game changer though having everything setup and imported vs having to go back and set up additional tiers after the fact. Otherwise you might get overwhelmed and slack on setting up everything. Like I’d set up a tier 1 and plan on setting up the rest later, makes for a cluster fuck. So if I get everything at least inputted like I’ve shown above, then all I have to do is login, tweak settings, check links, click stop/start, makes it way easier.
So, secondary links are cool to use to link to all tiers including our money site, but we should never link back to our secondary links. They just stand alone, with their outgoing link (no incoming links to them).
Yeah I think you’re following, typically we wouldn’t build any links to the secondary links, they are stand alone in that sense.
Wow, truly amazing information here. It does make sense what you are saying and going to implement this strategy on my own sites right away… thanks for the powerful SEO knowledge!
Honestly , I would have never discovered that you could choose engines this way let alone a month . I would earlier do that engine selection manually , will save me a lot of time when I create the next project .
Very honest post Jacob, must have been difficult to write.
I’ve been picking up a lot of clients recently who have lost all their rankings by following these tiered link building guides and using automated software such as Link Emperor. The links are utter garbage and doing nothing except filling up the web with more clutter and nuking your site from google. It’s not that difficult to look up the stream a bit (as Matt Cutts himself has said) and I think the days of being able to artificially inflate your own authority are just about over. The cream will rise to the top, it always does (eventually).
As a business google has to stop the gaming of it’s results – if it doesn’t someone else will come along and take their place. Hard to believe at the moment, but Empires fall.
Incidentally, love the ‘so I can game some SERPs with my author rank.’ quote in your bio box on the right. Brilliant :-)
Thanks David, it was not easy at all. Spam still works, but as the system tightens up missing small details become even more detrimental.
And yeah LE straight to money sites, not smart. Buffer domains though, money in the bank ;-)
Just sent a link to this post out to my own email list as I think it’s well worth reading.
On the subject of LE, have you noticed they no longer rank for a search for their own brand?
That will happen when the domain has been slapped. And thanks for blasting your list, very kind of you.
Quick question. Are the follow secondary or primary backlinks?
1. videos (Youtube, Vimeo etc.)
2. pictures (Flickr)
3. slide share sites
4. Google + or Facebook profiles
I’m setting up my GSA according your guidelines, and I was just confused a bit. Thanks a bunch!
Just a starter mate to link building world pretty interesting article
keep it coming :)
Nice one Jakob! You really hit the nail on the head, hard to believe that the other big names out there didn’t see and point this basic flaw.
Can you point me to your footprints recommendations for each of the groups of sites you have recommended?
So is there a race on? who is going to do an updated perfect GSA Ranker tutorial first?
Thanks
Wow. It’s funny how much of an idiot you feel like when you see something like this. I mean I’ve been just building links with GSA for the last 3 months to my no follow links over and over. What a waste.
Freaking makes perfect sense. I’ve seen a million how to’s on GSA and different charts but no one apparently, myself included, has bothered to think about the nofollow relation and doing something smart. I owe you the next 10000 months of my life building links.
Hell yeah dude, it seems so simple now.
Looking forward to that template!
If the linkbuilding is broken, why not take the posts offline?
What, the other post on the empire?
I thought about deleting it, but there is still some useful information there, I put a disclaimer at the top.
Love it Jacob, Love it. When are we going to get the template my man. I don’t care if its Christmas and the holiday season, lol.
Hello Jacob,
Are we still submitting manually spun content for our tier ones?
Manual? Not really, maybe for some tougher sites if you’re doing a real honed in campaign. But for the most part, no manual tier 1 stuff beyond manually hitting the buttons to run my script and set up the campaign.
Hmm.You say no manual work other then hitting the buttons on your script.I was really looking forward to that script.I have been a subscriber to your email list but I never recieved the email.I am assuming you sent it by the other post.Thank you very much for opening our eyes to what were doing wrong.Thanks!
Thanks for the update on tiered link building. I’m a little disappointed to know that I’ve been doing the wrong thing all along.
Although costly, expired domains rule!
Cheers
Expired domains? I have no idea what you’re talking about ;-)
domains? what use could those old useless ones be, i mean everyone knows with all the new 4000000 tlds why would someone ever need to even consider old rusty domains…. you can get any you want and dont have to deal with annoying hyphens or baggage from some old use those had…. for perfect search result, write a nice article or two, get some lovely new domain like:
dogtraining.guru
boom! success.
some people and their funny ideas…. (watch this actually come true, lol)
Thanks for info Jacob.
Its funny how much (intentional) mis information
that Marketers and their Parrots spread. I guess if the masses are lost, only select few finds the treasure.
Thanks for the treasure map in this info.
The SER Templae sounds like a real time saver!
I’d love to hear more about that.
Thanks, Joe.
Thanks Joe, the SER automation is gonna be pretty epic. Gotta love automating automation.
^^ love it…
We run scripts on your scripts so you can get drunk and do other shit. Bot it, Bot it.
You said to not use Comments and Bookmarks in Main Tiered Structure, but when i uncheck nofollow links, and non contextual links after right clicking in GSA, a single Bookmark engine is checked. So what do i do now?
Oh yeah, thanks Sriram, untick that fucker.
Hey Matt, could we move this comment to the forum? I’d be glad to answer there.
Jacob!
You are the king of SEO.
Looking forward to the auto campaign script.
Will purchase gsa software once you release the script.
Thanks for share this. I still not understand why SB and Comment break tiers?
Just because they are not contextual links or they are easily deleted?
Because they are cutting off the subsequent tier.
Creating:
contextual link > comment link > contextual link > Money site
Instead of:
contextual link > contextual link > Money site
It messes up the flow.
Hi Jacob, Happy new year mate.
Nice to see you back in the game. I was going to test out some tiered linking on a test site last year and got hold of some software to use.
However I quickly lost interest after trying to manually spin content. After spinning just two and a half articles I became suicidal and lost interest in the whole process.
Another problem I find is that in order for a site to rank well, you have to spend either time or money creating good, useful content. Once this is done an attachment to the site is formed and the thought of nuking the site with spammy links feels counter-intuitive, especially when traffic begins to come organically, you think why would I risk fucking this site up.
That said, I have a site that I built for the sole purpose of experimenting and I may alter my strategy as described above…
Ah it really depends, I prolly wouldn’t go GSAing interior pages on Mashable. But I would slam up a site in 30 minutes and drill it into the ground. And for the record, content is not as important as you think. If I really don’t care about the site, I’ll use scraped mashup on tier 1 all day. If I somewhat care about it then maybe I’ll outsource a few spins, these days I’m a strong believer in the not giving a f*%k approach.
It seems you have really changed your angle of attack from carefully spun tier ones to an all out spamfest! Interesting. Are you seeing better success doing this than with with your previous method?
I’m still using quality stuff on T1 occasionally, it’s ideal to load up like 5 manually spun articles in GSA, it’s more the campaign setup that has changed. It’s so effective it works with spunk content which is why I’ve been spamming pretty hard on parasite properties and what not.
kudos on this….
ive had similar concerns for while – i tend towards not following anything too strictly but letting some chaos reign (ie. loads of link types and ways to use them at tiers and not even following one set link tier structure anyway very strictly – and why i always pref. own domains and tons of them over anything public…. but i do feel for reasons you outline (respect on this) there is a lot ineffectual at best (loads of wasted effort / cost not helping at all) in the mix… some of thats ok in my approaches (that only x of x efforts will be homeruns, and always to have craploads of projects in the air at all times)… but ive been rethinking things big time last few months in my approaches and this post adds a bunch i hadnt thought about… thanks for the new food for thought. and mad respect for the brutal honesty… i cant stand how many newbies are milked by dickheads who could give a crap if what they sell works hurts or anything in between, morals and shady seo for me can be very compatible…. good on you for expressing that too by writing this.
Wow, today seems to be a great day of learning ! First I found Matthew’s site and then yours. You guys are simply amazing. Hats off to your detailed guides.
Jacob your forum is broken, I created an account went to my email, authorized it. Went to login and was shown a wrong password or username error message, tried a variety then was blocked for 20minutes.
Loaded up some proxy created a new account, verified by email, tried to sign in. “Wrong username or password”.
This is a username / password I’ve been using for the last 6 years… so it’s not me.
I tried with 2 proxies and my normal IP, so 12 attempts to login over 3 accounts. All unsuccessful.
Damnit!! ROBERT!!!!!!!!
That’s really all I know to do in these situations. I love the fact you used proxies to register tho, that makes me feel nice. How bout I make you an account and we try that?
Nice spin on getting more affiliate commissions to GSA, it makes it seem a lot more believable when it’s laid out like this…
Your link tiers are not working!! But wait, if you buy GSA from this link they will – hooray we’re saved!
I’ll have to try this out – UD does work if you use it right ;)
Oh yeah I’m gonna get rich off $9.90 per sale vs the potential $100 with UD. I’m not even direct aff linking so there goes my conversion. Sure UD works, it just doesn’t hold a candle to SER.
Sure there wasn’t a direct link, it was better than a direct link. If I wasn’t already sold by this article I would definitely be sold by the pre-sales page and discount.
Anyway there is nothing wrong with that, you’ve put the time in to tell us your thoughts – and if this is working better for you than UD then thanks for sharing!
Personally I’ve always thought UD was overpriced, but I brought it anyway since SeNuke has been performing badly – it’s a good tool and works well… The question is, is GSA really that much better than UD to warrant putting the UD purchase down as a loss and forking out more money for GSA?
Ha I like the way you think Ricky ^^
As for putting down UD I say yes, I’m in the same boat, forked out $347 but used it for a LONG time and got some good results with it. Once you get good with GSA tho you realize it’s just so much more efficient than UD in all areas. For example try to paste a mega spun article into UD, she’s gonna lock up even on a fast VPS, SER I could paste in 15 big spun articles all spun together lol.
Plus they added the article tab so you can upload multiple spinners and it will randmoly use one, sick for super tier 1 campaigns when you can invest in several spinners and get some crazy unique outputs.
That does sound good, I’ll have to try out their trial to see how I get on!
Jacob, nice post, but you are either being dishonest with your readers, or you don’t know sh*t about SEO.
The problem is not tiered link building, but tiered link building with automation anywhere in the sequence.
Manual social bookmarks + directory links >>> automated web 2.0s, wikis. Any day.
You should just be honest with your readers. Unless they have thousands to spend on SEO, they will never successfully rank for more than a few months. If the technique you are promoting works so well, why not show a real case study?
Google will always catch up – especially with automation, in any tier. Mark my words.
Huh? Are you saying manually social bookmarking stuff instead of automation is going to change the effectiveness?
You’re smoking some crack rocks if that’s the case. Tiered link building without automation is like driving a flinstone car.
A real case study? Where I spam a public url using my site lists? Or should I just use an arbitrary graph with the keyword hidden?
Google will always catch up to people like you, mark my words. Well in your case it seems they already have.
Hi Jacob,
I have couple of questions?
1. How can we supercharge “Secondary Links”, Any best way do you suggest ?
2. Do we need to run Tier1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 simultaneously at the same time together OR
we can follow the same way you do …….Run tier 1 in just a couple days, then immediately start tier 2. It’s something I’m always playing with but in general I do tier 1 for 7-10 days, tier 2 immediately after that for 7-14 days, then tier 3 following that. You can also include a pause week.
3. Do we need to use “forum profiles” as secondary link or we can use it in Tier 4?
Kindly suggest!
I dont think you need to supercharge the secondary links, I play more of a volume game with those. But if you wanted to I suppose you could get some .edu and .gov stuff in there along with putting a stricter filter on the # of OBLs.
You can run the tiers with whatever timing you’d like, play around with it. I have no set rule for that, just do whatever. Obviously you just need a substantial amount of links built before the next tier can run. You could even test a pause week thrown in there where you pause everything all together. I typically run them in sequence. You could definitely use forum profiles but I don’t, man those were some good days when a few thousand forum profiles direct to the money site killed it, memories…
1. Does it required to use the option in GSA that “Uncheck the engine that use no anchor text” as we are completely focusing on “Anchor Text” and “Contextual Links”, What do you say ?
2. As you said forum profile are no more useful so what will be future of tools like “Xrumer” which mainly used for generating forum profile backlinks?
3. Can we use “forum profiles” as secondary links for Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier3? What do you say?
4. What about WordPress Blogs, I am not able to see any type of blogs in Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3, I feel blog will certainly add value in all these Tiers, Still would like to know your opinion.
5. Does it required to set filter on the #OBL’s for “NoFollow Contextual Stuff”, “Social Bookmarks” and “Directories” which directly go to MONEY SITE.
1. Yes only links that use anchor text and contextual links.
2. Xrumer does everything not just forum profiles, this is a misconception. I’m sure forum profiles still care some secondary juice I just don’t use them personally. Fine with comments, guestbooks, image comments, trackbacks and those other easy to generate big volume spam links.
3. Why the hell not?! They’re fine for secondary linking on any of the tiers imo. Just watch out for the tiered link police ;-)
4. WordPress is in there, that’s one of the platforms under Article.
5. No need to worry about #Obls on the contextual dofollow stuff, only the comment type links. On these you might want to set the filter to avoid the super spammed pages.
Great post Jacob, I have a question about Tier 1 links if you don’t mind.
Why would we want PR 2+ (dofollow-contextual) and PR 3+ (nofollow-contextual) for our links to our money site? Wouldn’t have just high PR links look rather unnatural? I was under the impression having a good mix of PR links in all ranges would be beneficial.
Also, you’re the first person I’ve seen outside of the GSA forums who actually recommends GSA for tier 1. I constantly see others promoting it as a Tier 2/3 tool, but I think the main issue is not that it cannot output quality links, it’s that keeping SER from going out of control with the links is difficult to do for novice users. There’s also keeping up with which engines aren’t working well, cleaning caches, keeping up with functioning proxies…the list goes on. I’ve been reading the GSA forums for hours now trying to grasp as much as I can, it’s really an information overload. I think I need to just start up a campaign, otherwise I’ll be stuck in reading mode forever.
Thanks for the blueprint, by the way. Looking forward to the automation tool you’re working on.
Hey Mark, we are trying to create some artificial quality in our backlink profile by focusing on the higher PR sites. Some people have mentioned that you shouldn’t have only PR sites, which I would agree with, sprinkle some lower PR and NA shit in there. But the purpose of this technique is to drive some PR to your money site, we are doing this by focusing on higher PR to the Money Site and on T2 as well. This gives us the maximum amount of power on our T1 directly touching the money site building that contextual dofollow flow.
The Money site secondary links help make the profile look more natural, but again I’m am focusing on quality so I have the high PR filter. GSA is the only link building tool worth the salt anymore, seriously.
Captcha Solution ?
1. Death By Captcha – Charges around $1.6 for 1000 Captcha solving, comparatively costly for long campaigns.
2. MegaOCR – Captcha solving success is around 20% to 30% average.
3. Captcha Breaker – It’s is good but unable to solve ReCaptcha
How do you take care of ReCaptcha during campaign execution!
How to get better success in captcha solving by using the above 3 Captcha solvers ?
Woa, so aggressive with the questions. How are you doing? Enjoying your SEOing? Good, figured we could get acquainted a bit before I just started interrogating you about captcha solving.
Sometimes if I really want some primo success on a prized money site, I will enable DBC 1st and CB 2nd and run that for a while, never with T2 shit running tho. I know some people run both CB and captcha sniper also side by side, one as primary and secondary to utilize both program’s power.
I use the following:
In SER, I try 3 times with Captcha Breaker. Captcha Break is set to only solve ones with a 7-8% success rate, and Recaptcha is set to go to spamvilla.
If CB fails 3 times (with spamvilla), then I send PR4+ domains to DBC.
Nice recipe there ^^
I have just signed up. Would your strategy apply to ranking authority domians like youtube etc?
YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.
is this script still not released? thanks
Not yet, work in progress.
Aight, just noticed my email is shown as my name, could you please remove it so it doesnt get noticed by spambots. Cheers m8
For sure, where is it?
it’s the first comment i made:
XXX@gmail.com says
January 20, 2014 at 10:22 am
How is this coming along? Anything even PRELIMINARY you could release?
It’s coming, we made it but it’s not exactly hands off yet. I considering selling the bot if it is ever functional enough to market with all the work and testing that has gone in. Every little detail needs to be setup correctly in order for it to run correctly and if anything screws up externally the whole bot get’s thrown off. For example, if The best spinner API doesn’t work, need to restart. Dumnb shit like that.
Maybe I could release my options files and a legit GSA tutorial soon…
Hi,
Thanks for this great and interesting article !
I’m from France, and I’m having difficulties to understand how the campaign his made.
Are all the links dofollow and contextual ?
Thanks in advance for your answer.
And thanks, one more time, for this article.
Hello freind,
You make vry good S-E-O tutorial and you help feed my famliy for years supply worth of potatos. Thank you freind. Igor wan to giv you vvery hard fcuking in face as way to say thanks. ;-]
Much love from mothre Russia,
Igor Yaklatvitz
Thanks Igor, who couldn’t use a little face fucking?
I find blog commenting is a good way to build up a base of links and I have even been able to rank sites for some low competition keywords just using this method and without any tiered linking structure at all.
Well fucking aye!
Your tutorials are good,
but they will be perfect once you focus a bit more on the target. More explanation and less complaining will do. Cheers!If we ever were to meet I wouldn’t hesitate to throat punch you for this comment.
Awesome! This is my new favorite blog dude. Freakin comedy!
Hi Jacob. Your tutorial here has increased my ranking by 10 on Google (after languishing with no improvement when I was using Woodward’s tiered link-building on GSA SER). 2 quick questions:
1. Do you or will you have a GSA SER Tier 1 tutorial soon? I’m still using UD, and like you’ve said, it lags. Thinking of selling it soon–if I could. :(
2. What do you think of Kontent Machine’s Tier 1 articles versus hand-written and manually spun according to Matthew Woodward’s methods (sentence spun then word spun)?
Thanks.
Ha thanks Ray, that’s awesome.
1. Yes I am going to do a ridiculous GSA tut soon, hope to launch within the next few weeks.
2. For this I could give a mile long answer, in short if you want the best results some manually spun articles are great, and I often use them for more important campaigns, outsourced of course. But there are advanced methods of content scraping and text manipulation that will work just as fine as a manual spin, especially in a niche with lots of content. If you’re doing some churn and burn type sites, or site you’re not that invested in, blast away with KM, use TBS, Best thesaurus, and 4 word spin, also only paragraph mix. Most of the time the outputs will be copyscape passable. Perfect for smashing on a blogspot, youtube vid, or other authority type properties you don’t give a shit about.
Jacob, how much does it cost you to outsource manual writing and spun, could you tell were you outsource?
and thanks for updating the issue in traditional tired linking.
It really depends on how deep the person is spinning and where they are located, anywhere from $15 and up. I’ve never really found a service that was worth while so it’s all about finding good people and training them to spin like beasts. Philippines…
Hey Jacob. I end up reading your articles several times, with another run through comments (usually twice) to soak up the extra goodness, like dipping bread in gravy so as not to waste all that flavour.
Anyway, before I get lost in another poetic moment, would you mind expanding on this line a little: “Best thesaurus, and 4 word spin, also only paragraph mix”?
Thanks.
Thanks Chris, let me offer a slice of apple pie to top it off. I think I’m referring to the KM settings I’m using for the different tiers.
Was doing something like paragraph mix on t1 and sentence mix on t2/3. Been using sentence spin across all tiers though these days.
Hey Jacob,
this is not working for me.. I tryed it with alot of different blogs, but only 1 is ijust in the top100..
I don’t know what I am doing wrong.. please help me :(
Could be a million things, literally. Site lists, anchor text, content, and the domain you’re using are the obvious areas to diagnose.
Howdy Jacob,
have you found that “G” can spot a pattern with the strict dofollows?
I am guessing I’d be better off using “G” Traffic for churn n burn campaigns…?
What do you think?
I also was curious what your thoughts are with using select web 2’s – Docs – PRs – Video for actually getting traffic to my Money Site…? (not strictly for link juice)
Maybe not, if the rankings are good to get my Money enough traffic as a result of link shooting my money site to #1… or so.
Maybe do both?
Your Thoughts?
I do value you thoughts.
Much appreciate your time and sharing.
Joe.
Hey Joe, no I don’t think they can find a pattern of strict dofollows, although I think you can get into hot water for all nofollow links lol.
See it’s basically like saying your site will get in trouble for having all legitimate links but with anything you should add some variation. Have ~10% nofollow links in your T1 profile is fine if it makes you sleep better at night. But as for tiering, we’re trying to slam some juice to our T1s, get your dofollow on with those.
PRs and other authority properties, hell yeah rank them shits and drive traffic all day. You can spam the living hell out of those pages and rank for some secondary keywords or maybe even go for a double ranking. They don’t have to just serve as just a link source, use your skills to rank them as well for the additional traffic.
Jacob,
looks like youve hit a nerve with the competition. SEO service providers hate when you simplify shit!
It makes DIY a lot simpler and do-a-ble.
Keep up the good work.
PS
You, Matthew and anyone that works to provide value deserve the the good Rep and any commissions that results! After all, we all do have bills to pay, and limited time to make an income.
Joe.
Hi Jacob,
you are absolutely correct, putting bookmarking and directory sites as tire-1 wont bring any good to link profile. having them at tier-3 seem to be much more effective though.
Are you f%^king for real? Best be taking my picture and quote down ASAP son!!
Have given this GSA Tier setup ago, except customized your method slightly to an 11 tier setup 4 main tiers with 7 child tiers. Basically I separated the Directories out to their own tiers since we dont want generic anchor text or keyword anchor text for directories.
Results have been fantastic! My sites main keyword (Medium competitiveness) shot from 35 to 11 and unique visitors have shot from 100 to 600 per day.
Once I sort my site out a bit taking on board results from clicky.com and the many calls I get on a daily basis now. I should see a massive increase in sales. Previously about US$100 a day now to US$ 300 – $500. I’m hoping to maintain $500+ daily.
I have semi setup a template format so I can easily replicate this for future sites, but it is not automated, I can see where your going with the automation, but this is an application on its own. Maybe Sven could collaborate with you to make this a plugin or something
Awesome dude, just had someone commenting yesterday about their rank increases and frustration with Matthew’s system. Feels good to know others have found the sweet spot as well. Keep crushing it Tom!
jacob what do you think of serengines.com its price is reduced from 19.97$ to 14.95$ per month, limited time.
do you think its good choice for Tier 1 links, or should i go with UD. any other service you recommend for Tier 1.
matthew recently closed a giveaway competition of GSA Ser, i didn’t win :( but he managed to get 30$ discount which will last till 6th Feb. so i am buying it today,
i am not new to seo but haven’t bought the latest tools available in market.
so i have around 10 websites which were affected with October penguin update, and i plan to work on your suggestion of tiered linking to use GSA to de-optimize anchor texts to these sites. so things i am buying GSA Ser, 10$ buyproxies or squid proxies(i am confused u suggest squidproxies and matthew suggests buyproxies), VPS 19.95$(as i am not a heavy hitter like you :) ) , GSA Captcha Breaker 147$(do you think its a good idea or do you suggest Captcha Sniper), DeathbyCaptcha 13.90$(to help with captchas that are not solved with CB) , Word AI 49.95$ for Tier 1 spinning(should i use WordAI for Tier 2 & 3 spinning as well or go with TBS?), already have Kontent Machine for Tier 2 & 3 (have not used much), that will be all as i am on budget.
sorry if i asked too many questions, so what do you suggest on my plan, anything you would like to add or remove?
Ummmm, yeah that’s a lot of shit to read.
I realise it’s a bit late to comment on this, but I was personally quite disappointed with WordAI. When I read the sales piece, I almost fainted it. It sounded like the Holy Grail of content creation. But test outputs left me crestfallen. Just nowhere near the supposed “you can’t tell the difference” quality IMO. And that was with the Turing Spinner (best settings).
Really? wordai is my shit, along with every other decent spammer.
The biggest sell for me on software like UD and Senuke is that some of the gurus claim they get a lot of traffic and decent conversion rates from the 1 tier articles they put up using UD and SENUKE.
There was one guru who offered his scrape list if you bought UD through his link, but he has since changed the offer so that you can only get it if you by a lifetime license. Even when I had his list I still never got the traffic from tier 1 that he was claiming.
Without a good list of sites UD is worthless to me because I really don’t want to deal with scraping at all. I’m still tempted to get an SENUKE XCR subscription just to see if I could push some decent targeted traffic and sales to my site.
They’re both pieces of shit. Trust me, you’re not driving referral traffic to your site with Senuke submissions, regardless of how good your site list and content is.
Hey Jacob, I have created by tier 1 properties all manual with unique content. Now it is time for tier 2. How I get the content for tier 2?? What spinner to use?? Also what should be the % of uniqueness for content on tier 2??
One more thing: When your GSA tutorials will be released?? :-)
Hey Umer, wow unique contents on T1, damn that’s a lot of work haha. Use Kontent Machine man, start blasting. Easy money.
GSA Tuts hopefully coming within the next couple weeks.
What would you say about the Wicked Article Creator? Should I go for it as it is a 1 time fee and a lot cheaper.
WAC is a very good tool, just doesn’t make templates as good as KM. It does have the option to make predfined templates just from ym experience they aren’t as good. WAC is epic for pure line scraping though.
I hope this will work on my site. But I need to get that Kontent Machine first…
No guarantees, hahahahaha.
I love reading articles like this a true work of art.
The second thing I want to say is thanks for doing great research on tier structure that works and as a fellow owner of GSA it was my best purchase so far including sick submitter and scrapebox.
I also bookmarked your blog for future reading.
Thanks! Chris Lance
Thanks Chris, hopefully this motivates me to write something else one day soon.
Well…. yesterday I wrote you a message here….. probably something has not worked and I don’t see it. Now I’m logged and I write it again :-)
Wonderful post Jacob! I bought Gsa Ser since a little more than 1 month, and since then I’m reading and watching tons of tutorials, instructions, forums and bla bla bla. Really your post go directly and pretty easily to the most important settings.
I’m following a scheme very similar to the one you show here, with separate tier for contestual and the other shits :-)
But the BIG new here for me is the DoFollow setting!! I never read it on other tutorials, nor in the Gsa forum, but I agree with you, nofollow links can only broken the tiers!! Why I didn’t think it before??
Well, I have only one question for you (thanks thanks!! :-) ), if you have time to reply.
I don’t understand if you suggest the “only dofollow” settings only for main Tiers (T2 and T3), or ALSO for the secondary links (T2S, T3S, etc)? I can’t understand it from the post.
I will keep reading your wonderful blog Jacob, now I go to read about my next purchase, the Rankwiz for T1!
Thanks!
Secondary links can be whatever, nofollow/dofollow mix, whatever. The actual tiers are the important part to keep dofollow.
Dude. I just got through watching mathews tutorials on building tier 1 links and was about to drop the $350 on UD. Not to mention all the other tools that Mathew suggests, like The Best Spinner, Scrapebox, GSA, etc.
He also uses GSA, but I’m assuming that he only uses that for tier 2-3 links?
Anyway, thanks for this post bro as I am going to heed your advice my friend!
Hey man,
Also I really dig your style of writing and comments.
What would really help tremendously, is if you laid out all the tools that I would need. Starting from scratch as if I have none so far.
So definitely GSA
Then,
– Kontent machine
– The Best Spinner
– Death by capcha
etc…
please advise
thanks again
Coool, at the bare minimum:
GSA obviously, KM or WAC for content, TBS and or wordai spinner api, proxies, GSA captcha breaker, and Scrapebox. Congratulations, you’re officially a spammer.
COOOL.. Now i am officially a spammer :)
I have all the above tools..
Thanks :)
My noobness and newness level are high, so I ask:
I dont own any of these tools atm so I have been investing my time in scraping domains via Xenu for a PBN.
I was planning on pointing PBNs at money site (exact anchors and URLS) along with a few manual made web 2.0s and blog commenting using a pen name for anchor diversity.
I’m not sure if this only applies to your tiered strategy but you specifically show no blog comments pointing directly to money site.
In my scenario is pointing blog comments to money site a no no?
*also lol’d irl at “Better than google” footer
Yeah in that case they’re are perfectly fine. I occasionally throw some high quality blog comments directly at the MS.
Just make sure they are on low OBL high authority pages. A powerful PBN trumps GSA or any automated tool, hands down.
Hey man, just so I understand this…
In your diagram, the PR2+ is Tier 1, PR1+ is Tier 2, and PR0+ is Tier 3?
And then have the blog comments, guestbooks etc link to the side of each one of those tiers, or the 2-3 tiers linking? Is that right?
Thanks
Yes you have it right, then stop your sentence after “each on of those tiers”.
Ok cool,
Hey also….
So do I build tier 1 links over a 2 week period. Then move on to tier 2 links, and then after those are done move on to tier 3?
And I’m assuming that, although a little different from your diagram, that I would create roughly 3 separate tier 1 links over that 2 week span? As an example, not just (1) tier 1 link, like your visual diagram would appear?
Hope that makes sense, and thanks again for your comments bro, diggin the video tutorials too. These really help out!!
You have a two main options really. One, starting things sequentially like you suggested or two, running the tiers simultaneously.
We are creating hundreds of links, usually at least 50 on T1, I think you might be confused on the quantity here.
where is da script ?
It’s deep in a can of worms somewhere.
Hi Jacob, thanks. Question: do any services such as Hoth, Link Emporer, etc. do this for clients?
Nah man, any services are going to be sub par and much worse links than you could easily build yourself.
Hey man,
Quick question.
So when I run SB on the VPS, do I install SB on VPS and run SB from there?
Or do I connect to VPS from SB on my home computer, and if yes how?
Gracias
Install SB on your VPS, run SB on the VPS. The VPS is your own private computer running 24/7 freeing up your home computer.
Hi Jacob!
This completely opened my mind since I have been using GSA as a T2/3 tool. Quick question: For the main tiers, what is the anchor text usage percentage you are using?
Really appreciate your time. Thanks again!
Here are some ranges to play with, never set in stone.
5-15 exact
10-30 partial
20-40 URL
20-40 Brand
5-10 Generic
Awesome post. I am a little late to the party but it was definitely worth the read. What’s coming next on your blog?
Eh not shit at the moment, going on over two months now, can’t find the inspiration and time to write something worth while. Unlike most of the other douche clowns out there, I’m busy doing SEO so I don’t have time to make anything kickass. And I only like to publish stuff that kicks ass so I’m in kind of a pickle, haha.
I would like to drop a monster GSA tutorial tho…one comparable to the SB guide.
Sound awesome, hope you get around to it soon. By the way, I am putting together a collection of the worst SEO advice ever, you have a piece of advice you would like to share?
Ehh, how bout, read my blog. Worst SEO advice ever, haha.
Hey Jacob – sent you an email earlier this week (Feb17)- not sure if it got trashed in your spam box – but would love to hear from you please.
Hey Rudy, I’ll look it up, be in touch soon.
Jacob,
Thanks for the awesome info. Will be making a purchase soon. By the way do you have a complete tutorial for using GSA for a newbie like me?
Signed up for your newsletter and I’m looking forward to it.
Thanks again!
Not currently, but man I’m really wanting to put together the end all, be all GSA tut.
Kudos for your honesty. I have a question, when I setup a campaign – how many tier 1 links should I use as urls?
BTW thanks for clarifying the tier building strategy – Was about to follow Matthew Woodward’s (He never responds to any of my comments – so THANK YOU for that as well. I’ll definitely be sending some business your way – As soon as I start MAKING SOME MONEY!
Hrmm, not sure what you mean by “how many tier 1 links should I use as urls?”
Like how many T1 links should you build? At least 50 and keep in mind some will fall off.
And hey thanks! Not sure what you mean by “business my way” either, but hey bring it on!
Thanks again. I apologize for being so “green” been at this about a year but have gotten so much conflicting information. So thanks for the clarity. So if I understand this post. I should have at a combination of 50 or more tier 1’s from web 2.0 – wiki’s and articles. So… in GSA where it asks for the url and which website to point to do I put in those 50 or more url’s in that section?
For Tier 2 which I think you’re asking, you can build links directly to another task or “tier”, or you can paste in a large list of links and choose the setting for how GSA will link those, randomly or in order.
Hey Jacob, love the fuck out of your shit.
Do you use Scrapebox, GSA or Xrumer for your Commenting, Guestbooks and Trackbacks?
Is GSA any good in that department?
Hey Aaron, much appreciated. I might have to put up a testimonials section one day, this is 100% going on there ^^
Yeah all those could do the job but typically I use GSA for this. Never ventured into the xrumer realm, always wanted to, but you need to be a serious geek to run xrumer and build your own engines and what not. To answer your question, GSA kills it in this department. Especially if you’re capping your T3 and just letting loose a water cannon of spam, because then you can turn of verification and just let her rip.
Depending on your VPS setup, easily over 100 LPM (links per minute) with GSA which is quite dirty. Of course I’ve banged with SB, still have some big lists and what not, should prolly run some blasts for occasional stuff but having everything right in GSA is money. And you can run multiple campaigns without dicking around with multiple instances of SB. So yes, GSA mauls quite well in is this department.
This was enlightening Jacob, thanks for being honest and not layering things too much. Experiment time now.
Hi Jacob,
This was a good read and something I have been feeling also. To go even further though, I just feel that all tiers should have high quality content and come from authority sites. Therefore, less links are needed on each tier and each tier has a chance of ranking for keywords and have a chance of ranking page one in their own right. They could also be used for list building on adding affiliate links into.
I am thinking my money and time will be best spent writing high quality content and building a huge network on quality sites for tiers one that link to my money sites.
Then just build press releases, quality manual blog comments, videos and manual web 2.0 to link to the tier 1’s.
I just think doing this manually and spend time on building up a network of authority sites to link to each other is a better strategy in the long term, and even short term.
All this messing around with spinning content and submitting repetitive messages is a headache and something that is going to get penalised in the future, no matter how good someone is at spinning….Google will just get smarter at spotting repeat themed messages….as we know they have been reducing the amount of pages in their index.
I know this manual talk doesn’t payout commissions for those creating tutorials, but to be honest, the truth is, it takes just as much time to produce quality spun content than it does to quickly write unique articles manually.
When submitting to sites like Squidoo, these sites need very few backlinks (if any) since they have their own powerful internal link structure.
I have ranked Squidoo at the top for many keywords without back linking. A link from a well written and manually posted Squidoo lenses can rank at the top of Google and provide quality tier 1 and 2 links, and provide direct traffic and even embed affiliate links.
What are your thoughts on this?
Cheers,
Chris
Hey Chris, well, I do partially agree with you and see the logic behind your thinking. I’ve pretty much tried all approaches man, high quality uniques, keyword targeted to drive traffic AND link juice on sites like Squidoo and it worked quite well, was more of my approach in the beginning of my career.
Before diving more into the tradeoff of this approach vs an all out spam fest, it’s important to qualify what we’re actually blasting.
If it’s some affiliate site on the “Best walking stick” then I would say the approach you have outlined is not the best to take. You’ll basically be wayyyyy over investing for rewards Google may or may not give you, and will still need to blast these “quality” properties with some sort of volume to get them to rank as well.
Now if you’re just focused on one main business, or a disgusting niche you’re 100% focused on, then yeah man the strategy you outlined would kill it. Make a tier 1 network of traffic driving badass sites, sounds awesome, but realistically this isn’t something you could scale. If you tried to (I have) you will most likely just be wasting money and getting results close to what a sophisticated spam approach would yield.
Hope you can understand the logic there, on the micro level this approach will work but it’s going to be painstaking and require focus and hustle. On the macro level, Google doesn’t have some “quality” content filter yet, they are still making their best guess based on the signals they have.
So if you’re doing 1 insane campaign, creating all quality traffic driving shit on T1, yeah would work. But try to do this 10 times over let’s say, you probably just spent way too much cash and time on content as each campaign won’t receive the focus needed to yield the white hat fruits (sustainable inbound traffic) of your efforts.
Make sense?
Thanks Jacob for your feedback – you are the shizzle fo rizzle!
yeah dude a GSA tutorial would be killer! I got your email today talking about upcoming GSA tutorial so that’s awesome!
I’ve been following your advice and running the shit outta GSA the past 2 weeks, that software is really powerful once you figure it all out.
I think though, that having the VPS and multiple proxies is the way to go.
Otherwise, it seems like GSA runs a little slow.
A big help I know for me, would be to know what settings to use, connections, threads, etc that are optimal.
Your videos have been good at detailing a ton of stuff, however I always need to watch them again to go back and re-check to see what I’m supposed to be doing.
Totally fun though!!
Just wanted to say thanks so much for your honesty. On the basis of this article I’ve actually purchased GSA and I’m really looking forward to getting to grips with it and using your Tiered link structure. It looks like a great tool to use and really effective too.
Thanks again,
Ryan
I actually meant that I’ve purchased GSA SER! Not just all of GSA! That would be crazy.
Hi jacob, Thanks for sharing this information with us. I really appreciated your post.
I have a little confusion. Would you please clear my doubt. My english is weak and i am newbie in SEO. Before it i have read matthew woodward tired link building tutorials…….Even i did not understand all of things but i learn few things….here in this article you have changed some basic point. Please tell me if i understand it right way.
What i understand is…..You are saying that Directories and bookmarks site should be remove from 2nd and 3rd tired and should be directly attach with money site.
Tire 1 , Tire 2 and Tire 3 will be Article, Wiki, Doc Share and one more tire We can use for sending these all tire links juice which include blog comments, guestbooks, trackbacks.
Did i understand it correctly.
Also Check Out This Image. Did I Understand This Image Correctly.
http://i58.tinypic.com/2pzlbop.jpg
Argh sorry bud, my head hurts trying to explain this.
Hi, Jacob
I love your post so much here, thanks very much.
What is your opinion about tier 1.
I build links by hand now. Could you think links(spin articles) generated by GSA will last long and safe enough?(I run GSA years ago, no good result, may be my links are not large enough) Is it ok if we relay on GSA for the tier 1 by spin articles?
I thought we should build quality links now, may be i am wrong after reading your post. I thought the quality tier 1 is a must (unique and readble articles )then we can blast with tools. please correct me if i was wrong.
Thanks
Oh man, this post is getting a lot of comments. So if we’re gonna compare manually built links vs some links built by GSA in terms of longevity, I think you’re looking for the wrong approach all together with that question.
We’re not ranking sites for eternity, we never are, even with the cleanest SEO in history, it just doesn’t work that way. So in short, Google is pretty retarded when it comes to deciphering terrible content right now, as long as it’s unique, somewhat relevant, and not riddled with typos, rank rank.
It’s more the anchor text, terrible site lists, lack of actual PR links, etc. not the actual quality of the content surrounding those links.
Take that for what it’s worth.
Thanks for writing this. Quick question, how do you get content thats good enough for the Tier 1 links? I’d like to avoid manual spinning if possible.
I have some different ways of scraping and mashing up content, also have a spinner available when I need her for some super premium campaigns. Sometimes I’ll just blast pure spam, Kontent Machine or WAC all three tiers, depends on the situation really.
Another great training jacob. Thanks for all the insight and details. I appreciate you sharing some of that SEO Ninja knowledge. I look forward to more posts and I subscribed to your list also.
Hells yeah man, thanks for dropping in.
Great Post…!!!
I tried to get expired domains, but still through proper web linking and SEO techniques one can get success with a new domain also.
Once again thank you..
Hi! Please tell me, I don’t understand.
Tier 1 (money site)
Tier 2 (verifier link Tier1)
Tier 3 (verifier link Tier2)
Secondary 1 (verifier link Tier1)?
Secondary 2 (verifier link Tier2)?
Secondary 3 (verifier link Tier3)?
Secondary 0 (verifier link ???????)???????
I got confused!
Secondary 0 goes to the money site and I think you got it, confusing me lol.
Hey Jacob,
Waiting for your GSA SER tutorial… When is that SHIT coming our way boss?
Akbar
Been slacking man, I didn’t want to waste my time with some massive guide that’s going to become an outdated piece of shit over night. Still contemplating my approach for creating something long lasting.
Very excited for your in-depth coverage of GSA. I would like to thank you for not rushing something out and putting thought into it. Considering the effort involved, are you looking for donations to compensate for your time?
-Zach
Welll, I’ve been working on something, not sure if I’m ever going to tackle the GSA guide, the tool always updating and what not, and my secret sauces being too baller to share for free. I’m considering some sort of a paid area, I love chatting it up just can’t be posting the good stuff and don’t have the time to be doing shit for free. Since unlike most other SEO bloggers out there, I actually do SEO.
Jacob,
Quick question on your do-follow tiered strategy. If you were to take a reputation management client to bury/stuff 2 negative URL’s on page one of Google to page 3 or lower, would you follow the same strategy you outlined in this article to each of the favorable/neutral URL’s which are below the 2 negative ones? Or would you incorporate other things like the directories, bookmarks, etc. in a 3-tier structure:
Desired URL to “boost” = favorable/neutral URL
Tier 1 = articles, wikis, web 2.0, document sharing (all do-follow, all PR2+)
Tier 2 = articles, wikis, web 2.0, document sharing (all do-follow, all PR1+)
Tier 3 = articles, wikis, web 2.0, document sharing (all do-follow, all PR0+)
I you need to move this into the forum to better serve your readers then I will follow your suggestions there.
Many thanks!
Hey Matt, in that case I would keep the process much simpler and probably do two tiers with the kitchen sink type spam nailing T2.
Do like PR2+ on T1, then drill those with all the rest of your contextuals.
Use all kinds of dirty shit, buy network links, use expired domains, new domains, press releases, youtube vids, social profiles, etc.
Then blast a few of em at a time so you don’t have to setup 20 GSA campaigns.
Hey Jacob,
This is the third time I have read this post now to fully understand how you are going at the tiered link building. I agree the tier link building strategies that have been posted previously I have tried and don’t seem to do much anymore. I would love it if you can give us one of your amazing in-depth tutorials on GSA and how you use it with the new link building strategy. You have been laying low man. Were do for another epic tutorial!
Yeah man, I’ve been head down working like a freak the last few months. I am due, actually I was just sipping my morning coffee and finally visualizing a GSA tut, a beast mode tutorial that covers everything, shows all those little things that make you pound your head with GSA. Do you think I should do it in parts or one big super post?
Yes, you definitely should do everyting in 1 big “super post”. But just take your time with that, no need to hurry things. It would be freaking awesome if you could do that for us!
Alright buddy, you might have done it. I just started this forum thread for suggestions: https://www.jacobking.com/forums/topic/monster-gsa-ser-tutorial-thoughts-and-suggestions-pleaseeee
When will the awesome template be ready?? I can’t wait. Bought GSA SER + GSA Captcha + ScrapeBox + WAC + GSA Indexer yesterday and want to put it to some good use now.
Hope this shit will work..
Hay i just seen Matthews video on link building the same one you were just mentioning but i also notice how he said to create web 2.0, etc for your tier 1 manually to get total control over your links. Anyways it does still apply right? and if so what i notice is or i may be late on this lol but when creating your own web 2.0 manually don’t you have to change your ip address to so it looks like some one else has done the website and not you? i read that in a forum.
Lol creating web 2s manually. You need to change IPs if creating multiple accounts on the same site. Beyond that you could make a set of web2s but it would pretty much be a waste of your time.
So when creating links to your money site right you just put in your money site url with the right settings in gsa then just like the diagram above? the structure with money site then second tier and so forth.
Yes exactly.
oh,another great post about tired linking,i enjoy reading your article,can’t wait to get your GSR tutorial.;)
Hey Jacob,
Awesome post man. I have a question for you. So basically you’re saying SENuke, Magic Submitter, and Ultimate Demon are dead in the water? We all know that DoFollow links are paramount….but I was under the impression we NEED tiered backlinking because of diversity?
I’ve been running SENuke XCr, Article Builder and DeathbyCaptcha, what are your thoughts on that Combination?
Thanks for your help mate!
Robert
Not saying they are dead in the water, just they are shit compared to GSA SER.
In my earlier days, I spent so much damn time on UD, thinking that there was something different there for T1. GSA does the same exactly thing on beast mode and hits way more platforms.
Auto inserts images, videos, scraped authority links, runs hundreds times faster than UD or nuke, can handle monster spins no problem when UD would lock up like the little bitch that it is. Do all your tiered links right in one piece of software, way more control over anchor text, I could go on and on.
Hi Jacob. What are your thoughts on Sick Agent?
No thoughts, haven’t used. Can’t imagine it being much better than GSA, with that said GSA has been sucking serious ass lately after some recent updates and Sven the creator has been out to lunch.
Hi Jacob,
Very interesting article. I’m testing all this tier link building for the first time and I’m doing it as you indicate here.
I hope it gives me some results because I’m only going to give it a month or I’ll trash my websites.
I’ve bought everything through your links. If it doesn’t work I’ll stop all the services. I’m kind of tired of all the SEO marketing that is out there (or in here, I don’t know)
Thanks for the info, I hope it works!
Hi Jacob,
Great article here. I have only just very recently got into internet marketing, so it was good to learn about tiered linking. With your techniques taken on-board, I hope the sites I work on start flying up the Google rankings.
Keep up the good work!
since it’s a do-follow world in seo tier link building…..what if a blog comment has a do-follow link? Would this be acceptable to blast, even though it’s supposed to be part of the secondary links……
Also, the vast majority of wiki’s seem to be do-follow, wouldn’t these be bad in trying to chain together in tier building?
No it wouldn’t, because you see we’re after “contextual links”, or a link in the context of a sentence. A blog comment does not meet the criteria and can be detected algorithmically.
Contextual links surrounded by relevant content is what we’re after. Yeah a good portion of wikis are nofollow, deselect those bitches.
Howdy Jacob,
Thanks again for your efforts and results.
I was curious what percentage of tier 1 & 2 links actually get indexed with this method?
Thanks Jacob.
Joe.
I’d say around 90%, sometimes I’ll use an indexing service also if I’m really honed in on the campaign. These days I’ve just been setting up three tiers and secondary spamming the third tier, this setup can be a bit tough to scale.
Thanks for the reply Jacob.
I am planning to use Leading Articles (Ultra-spinnable) for tiers 1 & 2?
and let Kontent Machine spam-o-matic the 3rd..
Your thoughts?
Thanks, Joe.
also… use KM to insert video embeds, pics and such for the applicable sites.
and KM to format and to integrate into GSA SER.
forgot to mention.
GSA can auto insert videos and images for you, even pull from a list now.
Yeah that sounds like a good plan man, I mean don’t go spamming just anything like that, but that sounds like a good recipe to me.
hi send me a copy of your template for gsa. txs. nice work
The script is dead, I need to update this post.
you forgot low obl outbound links. less than say 50. ;) no forums. and you forgot to talk about anchor text variations at what 5% only? and how about using scrape box with gsa? and why not talk a bit about senuke?
Yeah you could filter OBLs maybe on your tier 1 secondary links. Of course if you spammed directly to the MS, a OBL filter would be very important. At that, GSA’s OBL filter isn’t going to give you MS linking precision. Like I said in another comment, I’ve been using a simple 3 tier structure of contextuals and full on spam capper, no filters, no verification, just blastage.
Great article. I would like to throw a cup of warm piss in Matt Cutts’s face.
Tell us how you really feel David.
Hey Jacob,
Nice articles you have on here man.. no bullshit at all.
I am planning on using a bunch of my web2s as T1 sites. Do you recommend using a whole bunch of different blog sites? wordpress, tumblr, livejournal, areavoices, etc? Or can I just use a shit ton of them from the same platform?
Thanks
You definitely want a different platform/site for each link, otherwise you really aren’t getting that much value. So one link per domain, one blog per platform, I dunno now I’m confused!
For Web 2.0 properties, I would mix up the platforms. This way it makes it look more natural. Be careful what you choose though as some have no-follow links only. And some are very low (domain) PR.
I just recently started my tech site and I almost thought I might have been way too late. I started reading about this new update google released and thought, now I’ll never be able to rank. You’ve given me hope. I do believe there is a chance I can rank using these techniques. Thanks Mr Jacob King for an excellent and very helpful article! Let the ranking begin!
Hells yeah son, be cautious with any site you’re investing yourself personally in, otherwise do whatever. Keep in mind tho, you can always build secondary sites and spam the hell out of those tpo drive traffic to your main site without actually tainting your baby.
Thanks for your bravery in putting out this important news. I just discovered your blog and i like the style of the articles presented. And i have read some of your stuff. highly interesting.But , I have to say that you are doing a lot of u-turns in your journey through seo.
In this article alone you did two. It’s gets to a stage one begins to wonder whether the strategies outlined here are tried and tested.
If i read something from Jacobking.com, spend a whole year implementing it, only to find that it is a worthless strategy. would be highly frustrating indeed.
would it not be better if a startegy is tried and tested before putting it forth ?
Anyway, i like your article on scrapebox. Awesome.
Of course they are tested before I post, the problem is the many many many variables that go into testing SEO. Maybe the sample size is too small, aged domain vs new domain, variance depending on niche, etc.
The old setup was working, not as much as it should have been, but it was. It wasn’t until late 2013 with testing and realizing the old tiered setup on its own was flawed and not passing maximal juice. Then testing the modified version showed it was producing consistent results and here we are.
Does SEO actually still work anyway? I have been trying SEnuke and Money Robot but haven’t seen any improvement in SERPs.
Well sites seem to still be ranking somehow, so yes, SEO is dead.
Throw those tools in the garbage and pick up GSA SER.
Well how come GSA works but all the others suck nowadays? Also how do you generate content for GSA Tier 1?
Mainly because GSA hits way more platforms and is much more efficient. More control as well over the entire process, also the updates, I doubt that Areeb dude from SEnuke is on top of things like Sven from GSA.
There is a very large community that drives mos5 of the updates and innovations with GSA, blah blah.
I have several methods for generating T1, Kontent Machine if I really don’t give a fuck, WAC for some more precision, reluctantly pay a VA for some manual spins occasionally. Unique, relevant, passes Copyscape, that’s about all I’m worried about.
Does the T1 content need to have the keywords in the body of the content you are trying to rank for? I heard that if you get links form sites that are already ranking for the keywords then that is what makes you rank.
Your T1 content should be contextually relevant, yes, if that’s what you’re asking. Getting links from sites ranking on the keyword you want to rank, hell yeah those are good.
Hi Jacob, awesome post.. just awesome.
I wish I had found your blog much earlier. This would’ve saved sooo much time and nerves. I’m already quite familiar with the tiered link structure and have been using it for a couple of weeks, but not like you suggested. I actually used the way Matthew suggested (needless to say that my results have been.. meh)
One thing though, because you’re getting me quite confused at one particular point:
I used to learn to put web2.0s or any other controllable platform at the very top (Tier 1). This always resulted in MANUALLY creating a shit load of web2.0s and spamming the shit out of them.
Now, if I’m not completely mistaken, this isn’t how you suggest doing it AT ALL, is it? Your tiers are simply divided into strengths (the lower the tier, the less PA/DA/.. and the less strict the filters I assume) and aren’t manually/automatically created by you either. They’re scraped I assume.
Isn’t this extremely risky, because you have no control over if your T1 Links will stick in the long run, or get removed by admins.
I’d highly appreciate it, if you could clear this up for me, because I am more than giddy to finally buy GSA and get shit started.
Hey dude, all of this stuff is risky, any SEO is risky. And depending on your skill level with GSA it can easily burn sites into the ground. So start out testing it on some YouTube vids or blogspots, blast the hell out of those and try to rank them, learn how GSA functions and analyze the outputs, then get better and blast some actual sites.
Yeah controlling your entire T1 is a nice thought, but not too practical unless you’re going all PBN and web2s, if you’re just doing web2s, sure you control em but how much juice are those really going to drive.
The main difference I’m highlighting with this setup is to mind the platforms you’re choosing for the actual tiers, they should always be contextual and dofollow. Now what “tiers” and “secondary” links are seems to be confusing people.
Let me show one example:
PR0 link -> PR1 Link -> PR3 Link
Then I’m blasting junk misc comment type links at those ^^
The goal is to create some contextual dofollow flow through Tiers 1-3. A simpler setup is just to 3 tiers of contextuals and cap that with the comment spam.
Hi Jacob,
appreciate your answer.
To be honest, I’m no SEO expert, but I’m not a complete beginner either. I’m very aware that any type of SEO is a risk and should at least be considered grey hat.
I’ve got a fresh website set up for a project and I want to take things really slow – meaning no heavy blasting and only very few links each day for the first few weeks.
I’ll definitely do some split testing, too. I’ll create a couple of blogger/WP sites and just spam the hell out of them and see how it goes.
Anyways, thanks for your reply and for clarifying your approach shown in the picture.
Hi Jacob,
another question just popped into my head.
How exactly do you approach the content uniqueness problem with this link structure? If your T1 is of high value and you spam it with T2/T3 low value and non contextual links then it’s easy.
But with your ‘new’ link building strategy, we’ll need 3 tiers of contextual links which will result in a shit load of submissions and all of them will use the same (I assume?) spun article, because all the tiers are contextual and of high value. Only difference between them is their PR.
As for the secondary links to each tier, that’s spun BS/Spam content, I assume?
You’d really help me out by answering this one, mate.
Thanks in advance.
It can be all mashup, on all three tiers if you know what your doing with content scraping. But always mashup on T2 and up along with any secondary links, Kontent Machine templates will do for this.
I would try to use the highest quality possible on T1, which is why I usually used wordai spun content on T1 and anything goes on other tiers.
Just to clarify – web 2.0 (pr2+) links to money site –
does web 2.0 (pr 1) link to money site or link to web.2.0 pr2+ site?
Yes, PR 2+ web 2.0 link as an example linking direct to MS, then PR 0-1 linking to those.
In starting from a “new” site. How many links should be initially built in tier one across article sites, web 2.0 properties and wiki’s before moving to tier 2, tier 3. What do you recommend so that the link building appears natural?
Nothing set in stone for this, typically I drip my T1 over 4-7 days and start my T2 immediately.
I don’t understand what you are meaning in your article regarding building links for directories, bookmarks from the side? Would Synnd be an example of this? Thanks
Contextual link 3 > Contextual link 2 > Contextual link 3
^^ directories, bookmarks, etc linking from the side ^^
HI Jacob,
Very long but awesome post.
My question to you is in what way or process do you monitor your sites on their effectiveness with a campaign.
Like you run a campaign at xyz.com
What metrics do you monitor and how.
Regards
Typically I just monitor rankings with Microsite Masters, when I hit top 5 then I might put clicky on the site depending on what type of setup I’m using.
Interesting post thanks for sharing. Heard a lot about tiered link building being dead.
Neg.
Gotta say that this method works. I tested it out on a one year old site that had that had not been developed and had no backlinks.
I did not use gsa for tier one but used some fiverr providers I like. I got those those links and fired up GSA using the do-follow concept Jacob outlined and things have rocked. I have been at it a few months with this site and it is holding steady on the first page of results for multiple keywords.
My GSA settings are similar to what Jacob recommended. I set PR to 2 or above and ignored the number of OBL. I just wish that Captchabreaker and decaptcher were able to handle everything – this is where a lot of good links are lost..
Hells mother fucking yeah, not sure why Fiverr for T1 would be any better than just using GSA yourself, for me it would be a million times better. 99.9999999999999% of the jackoffs on Fiverr couldn’t rank a site themselves making their GSA skills worth negative -$5 at least.
Yeah CB isn’t perfect, you can try stacking it with captcha sniper, use CB as the 1st, CS as the second, and if you want to go even crazier, use DBC as 3rd!
Hi i have a question, are these blog posts and image posts from GSA any good for the secondary links? most of them are spamy sites cant you get penalized for that?
Drilling your T2 and up you’re golden. Should be indexed sites of course, I don’t worry about anything T2 and out.
Hey Jacob,
I really like your article I learned much SEO from you, how to use scrapebox etc so continue !
So actually a tiered strategy is the best or according to your last article (https://www.jacobking.com/nfg-seo) isn’t the best ?
Until now I was ranking #1 using filters only direct linking to money site which mean I didn’t used a single time a tiered link build strategy, it took around 2-3 months to rank #1 for any main kw and I think it’s a bit long. My strategy is maybe too simple and a tiered strategy is really better ?
Also I would ask you what are you using for captcha ? I’m using Captcha Breaker and a Recaptcha OCR and I also tried to use Death By Captcha as a third service and it increased much my verified links but it cost well too much between $5 and $10 per day but maybe it could worth it I would like to know what do you think of this.
Thanks !
If your start works then hell no don’t change it.
That is a lot of captcha cost per day, maybe you’re hammering on the same sites and getting a lot of failures or something. Change your retry settings on DBC to only 1 or 2 times, also try pruning your list so your not feeding in the same sites which fail on getting a verified but still take captcha cost.
Is the script available? i signed up but never seem to have received it! At any rate thanks for the great tips.
Script died, save your options files and just re-use them.
Hi Jacob,
I am so amazed with your post (which I have found true Mat Woodward site). Thank You for keeping us ALL in the loop. May I ask you what you think about power suit software? Is it any good for the current time SEO requirements? Thanks for reply
I dunno isn’t that like some white hat management bullshit?
Monitor my links, oh boy look at me. And some sub standard backlink checking? SEO powershit sounds more like it. Well they have an auditor tool, haven’t tried that. But once again if your doing some white hattery then maybe, otherwise I’d rather use tools dedicated to their job not some suite.
I have a fast PC, that can easily handle 500 threads and more.
I also have 30 semi-dedicated private proxies from buyproxies.com, I use them for nothing but submission.
However, at how many threads can I set GSA SER, so that the proxies don’t get banned and stopped being accepted in submission?
How can I check If my proxies are banned? I believe the Google search/PR in GSA SER does not do the job?
Woa you just ask the same question on multiple blogs, nice that’s like help spamming. Not nice actually, kind of annoying as I feel kind of used since your comment isn’t genuine. That and your comment is stuffed with so much noob I don’t even know how to handle it.
50 threads, check your proxies in the options.
GSA SER is really a beast man. I bought my 1st copy last month and this month I have bought my 3rd license of this beast. 3 VPS running 3 copies of GSA SER + Captcha breaker = Non Stop Rankings :-)
nice article
Hey Jacob,
I was wondering if you just spam the hell out without any X verification per day for secondary links tier 1 & 2 ?
This can mean more than 10k per day it cannot hurt the MS ? I’m still doubting about tier 3 if it could hurt the MS…
I’m always verified on T1, and no I don’t go crazy building 10k links on day 1 with a brand new domain. Typically I’m going to be dripping in some authority links (PBN etc) and lightly dripping in GSA. Aged domain, different story, then I might blast way more aggressively , but still verifying on T1. Don’t worry too much about T3, unless you did something absolutely ridiculous you’ll be fine. And even if you did something ridiculous prolly still be fine haha.
Hi Jacob,
thanks for the great article. One question:
I need to publish about 100 articles in 100 Web2.0 microsites that will link directly to my money site. I have the choice to either buy a manual spun block (from http://www.articlecontentspinners.com/ultra-spinnable-articles/) which is spun in the paragraph/sentence/word level (as per Matt Woordward’s tutorial) OR get one spun block from The Leading Articles.
The second option costs much less ($12 as opposed to $77).
My only concern with The Leading Articles is that the same spun block has been purchased by dozens of other people, therefore some sentences in my articles will already exist on the web as duplicate content.
Would you recommend The Leading Articles for Tier 1? Or do you think I am facing the risk of duplicate content from Google?
Meh yeah I wouldn’t mess with that leading articles shit, prolly dusted and disgusted. Could copyscape check some outputs I guess, if they pass I’d use it.
Might as well scrape up some of your own content if you are so bold. Or use Kontent Machine, good settings, the right keyword, and wordai will yield good results, probably better than leading farticles.
Hey, Jacob. I’ve got a quick question.
1. How many tier 1 links per day would be safe to create? (On a multi-niche site). I’m trying to build a campaign right now on some niches that are stuck on page 2 (serps between 10-18) which I worked basically only manually. Created around 20-30 web 2.0’s per each niche and that’s it.
2. If you’d be in my situation, what would you do? Do you think this set-up will help me? Those are french niches and basically I’m stuck there for over 1 month … but I have ranked a few in top 5. I just want to rank those very bad …
3. If yes for above, how long does it usually takes to see some ranking improvements?
Thanks a lot, cheers!
Yo, ready for the biggest dick head answer in SEO?
It depends…
Sorry, but that’s the truth. How old are the Money site domains? Brand new? And if so, they’ve been ranking for a bit so they are exactly brand new.
In that case, I think 20-30 quality web2s, nice little min relevant net would do you nicely. You could also buy some network links etc at them, use em as buffers. Quantity per day? If you’re only building high PR contextuals the velocity shouldn’t be that much of a problem. You’ll have your work cut out for you indexing the links and scraping enough high PR targets, when you get there you’ll know what I mean.
Allow me to redeem myself from that “it depends” SEO bullshit. Brand new domain, I’m most likely taking one of two approaches.
1. Starting with a drip of network/authority type links. Then I’ll start GSA drip week 2 or 3, 10-20 links per day.
2. I’ll start GSA on day one, super high PR, maybe even 4+, 10-20 links per day. Then later on in the campaign I’ll ram it with some more love.
This doesn’t mean I haven’t built them all in one day and that doesn’t work as well, it also makes me laugh. But that brings me back to “it depends” since if you’re blasting an aged domain for example, can handle much higher quantity of GSA blastage.
Hey, interesting read even it is a little bit dated. I have heard with recent google update, many site that use GSA suffered big time. Does same go with UD? Should we stick to manual tier 1 article build and stop touching spun articles at tier 2, 3?
In regards to G updates, GSA and UD are like the same thing.
Shit aint changed. Some sites I had with high % of GSA links got hit, but nothing specific to GSA imo, just a small refresh and manual cleanup on some super spammy SERPs.
You’re dated.
Hey man,
Great great post. Signed up for your news letter. Could I grab a copy of the script you mentioned to auto build these bad boys?
Had to kill it actually, was just never going to run right for people. I’ve simplified my approach tbh, lightly tiering for indexing mainly.
Contextuals T1 and some spam links, then light contextuals T2, not doing this monster setup very often anyway.
Hey man. What about creating tier 1 on web2.0’s like blogger, tumblr etc and then spamming the shit out of them? Basically mass spamming on tier 2? What do you think about it?
Yeah those work just fine, great for slamming some “relevance” at your campaign. Also if you make a quality set/network you can reuse them for other campaigns in the same niche. I see a lot of people using them as buffer sites these days for way more than just spam, buffering network and sape I’ve found.
Hi Jacob
I’m just getting started in tiered link building and appreciate your tip big time. I’ve pooled some resources including this post and Matthews first video and done my own take on how I understand things this far, gave you a link back too!
http://zatk.ca/tiered-link-building-getting-started/
Very cool, be sure to let me know if you have any big breakthroughs.
Hi Jacob, i was curious about something.. i purchased the serengine 2.0 service for gsa and was wondering how many 2.0 links should i create per tier?
I wouldn’t worry about quantity on that, and I would use all the web2s on T1 and other crap on other tiers. Also considering you’re gonna have a tough time getting them all to stick anyway, shouldn’t be enough quantity to hurt.
Hi, I am building links to my “5” 301 subdomains to my money site using gsa ser. Would you recommend imputing all the subdomains in gsr ser at once or create links to one sub domain at a time?
Woa you’re using 5 301s? One, that’s awesome, good for you, and two, why not link build those bitches all at once?
Hey Jacob,
No offense intended but does the solution still work after the update? (though it’s still rolling)..
I am so so so pumped up to buy GSA because of your tutorial but you know as a beginner in SEO (though I started last month SEO no tools) getting some doubts..
Anyways thanks for this! Will be waiting for your reply..
Yes it does, I had some sites that had a high % of GSA links take a hits on May 14th, but that is as expected. Still have plenty of sites still ranking and you don’t have to look very far to find sites ranking with plenty of GSA links. Look at some spammy SERPs dude, GSA links can’t hide from ahrefs
I’m always refining my approach of course and GSA isn’t my only link source, for big keywords you’re going to need some real authority injected i.e. PBN, but even in that scenario I’m stilling using GSA for contextual links.
Hi Jacob, getting ready to run my first campaign. I had a quick question, i am using the ultimate nich finder to target my keywords to rank for how many do you use to input into the keyword section of GSA SER? I have heard anywhere from a few hundred to a few hundred thousand.
Ok I think you’re not getting how the keywords field works. These are just used for when GSA searches Google and attempts tot find new targets to post to. Not much to do with the actual outputs themselves which is the key to ranking for anything. Sure the site list is important which GSA uses those keywords to build but even then you aren’t typically looking for sites based of real specific niche keywords, they are usually broad.
Personally I don’t even use that feature of GSA, I do all my site scraping and PR checking with GScrpaer and its own dedicated server. So GSA is purely for submitting which renders those keywords moot *unless you are submitting to a CMS that allows tags, then under the options tab you can select to either use anchors or keywords for tags. If I’m hitting those CMSes then I might use a different set of keywords then my anchors and set it to use those for tags. Beyond that, the keywords field doesn’t matter, people saying they put in massive amount because they are letting GSA find the targets which works but is far from ideal, hence they are also complete noobs and have no clue what they are talking about. Hope that helps dude.
Hi, one more question, sorry for buggin, I have a niche with a lot of easy keyword phrases with good monthly search patterns i can feel would not be difficult to rank for. Should i use them all as tags in GSA SER or break it up into several campaigns?
Tags? or Anchors for building to the Money site (MS) and ranking on these keywords? I usually go after one monster keyword per MS (or page) or a set of 3-6 big keywords if that’s what you’re asking.
Hi
Already subscribed, but no copy.
Yeah the script wound up being a fail for sharing publicly.
I’ve been just using default options files and the process is fast enough for the scale I’m running at.
Thanks for responding. that was a very big help. Will probably get the gscraper with its proxies. When i get the gscraper, i will make sure to use your link.
Thanks Again.
Hey, Jacob, quick question: do docs (PDFs) on doc-sharing sites even show up on Google? I have uploaded a few PDFs on doc-sharing sites with my homepage’s links inside the document but once I see the page source on its own URL, the page source shows no links. I mean, I can click on the links on page, but the links aren’t in the page source and therefore, I would think, Google wouldn’t be able to read them. I’ve included an image to show you what I mean:
http://i.imgur.com/EqsyKS7.jpg
I’m starting to wonder if building PDFs for SEO purposes is a waste of time.
Yeah they can find those and they will help your overall link diversity but I don’t use them personally. I stick to the main contextual platforms in GSA among other stuff.
Hello mate!
I’ve read that you started building for a fresh money site after 4-7 days (T1). But how many verified links do you make a day? is it increasing per week?
Never set in stone, but lately I’ve been starting GSA on a slow drip usually, 5-10 verified per day. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t ranked sites blasting 100 verified all on day one, which makes me laugh.
Jacob,
Great Blog!!! Thank you for share your experience.
I have some questions.
1) Do you use Google Adsense in your money site?
2) Is it correct to use Tiered Building as you explain for Client’s sites (long term sites)? or this kind of spam will be banned?
Thanks.
1) Google Ad cents as a I like to call it. I have one site, gets 75k visitors monthly, makes $200 from adcents, makes me hate those fucking scumbags even more. So no.
2) No, don’t build GSA directly to any site you are not prepared to risk falling.
To summarize: don’t build non contextual, nofollow links to your money site; build non contextual, nofollow links to all of your contextual dofollow tiers.
Yes, sort of, non contextual links are still an important piece of the puzzle for diversifying your overall link profile/T1 pointing direct at your money site. But the majority of your tiering should be contextual otherwise wtf is the point?
Do you recommend building profile links with GSA to the contextual tiers? What is your opinion about the profile links now days, are they still helpful or more harmful?
Sure they can be helpful and enough poor quality ones could hurt, your question is a bit too general to answer really.
Holy crap, this explains a lot!
Hi Jacob,
Can you list down some good article submission sites and wiki sites please? I find your suggestion better than Google.
I find your questions to be better than Google.
Jacob, I read on BHW that you need to use a link indexing service if you want all your GSA backlinks to be indexed quickly and properly.
Personally, it seems to me that that link indexing services are pretty overkill, especially because of their prices. Doesn’t GSA SEO indexer already do this?
What’s your advice? Should I use a pricey link indexing service, or is GSA SEO indexer enough?
GSA indexer is a POS, services are the way to go, that and tierig.
This link structure is awsome.can we use senuke to build them?thanks.
You could, going to be much tougher with nuke as opposed to GSA tho, not sure you’ll be able to create enough volume with nuke for three tiers.
FINALLY, Jacob, you are the man. The entire “Google way of life” drives me nuts. Thank you for being a leader instead of a follower.
Great post Jacob. Just grabbed a copy of GSA Search Engine Ranker a few weeks ago. I’d like to run it from a Virtual Private Server. What type of VPS do you suggest I use? Thanks.
Nothing crazy, maybe a $50 setup from Powerup or just fire up an old laptop and use teamviewer.
Thank for the awesome sh*t of the great tips! this post help me out some mess ideas very well. Just awesome King.
But I’m getting sh*t with an unanswer question in my mind, I’m testing something for ranking a quite short-term site, I need that site can rank in 1st page just within 7-8 days and the time need to prepare for that campaign just within 6-7 days before it shooting in Google.
I’m testing with several edu & gov ones in 1st tier ( around 10 Edus & 10 govs ), and combine with the GSA campaign, but it still invisible in around 2nd SERP.
Another testing is 40 Web 2.0s and 20 articles directory at 1st, after that is using a large scale of platform as offered of GSA, the result of this is it just dances at 9,10th of SERP.
I will testing with the strategy of this post, but i honestly thirsty for your ideas ? Can I learn some advice of your at this point ? Or had you got through any cases like me ? Some thought of yours ? Mr.King ^^!
Dear JK, WTF are you drinking before writing these posts dude??
They are really good!!
So glad I found your site.. I was about to buy UD + GSA to do old school 3 tier link building and get the fuck off my sites :)
Hope to continue reading good stuff from you and SPAMing your comment section :)
WTF.
Ha awesome, well a good bit of them I was slamming beers and not sleeping much. Appreciate the praise brother.
Question about the image with the Tier building
Nofollow contextual stuff
Social Bookmarks
Directories
pr +3
this one is pointing to the money site. Is this still considered secondary? just assuming since its on the side like the other ones.
Thanks
Well we’re still gonna build some of those links to our MS, don’t have to but for the premium ones they will help with diversity. That way we don’t have 100% dofollow contextual links to our MS domain, we have some nice quality nofollows, some other link types etc. The main point that people still aren’t getting lol is that the what you are “tiering” should be contextual dofollow, this is spam 101.
Hi Jacob just purchased UAW with your affiliate. This is the second purchase through you. Thanks for great info.
I had question. Why so you not recommend to use GSA for tiered linking on sites that you want to build long term authority sites?
And if so do you recommend using Web 2.0 as a buffer and then using GSA and tiered linking on those Web 2.0?
Ey Paul, yeah any long term asset you don’t want to spam with GSA, if you’re using a buffer though you’re golden, just keep track of the logins and you can always remove the links if need be. As far as risk with buffering the links, good to go unless you do something insane like use 100 buffers with exact anchors and spam 100% exacts at those, even at that who knows lol.
Hi Jacob, and thanks for this informative article!.
1 question! for you,
What will be the best way to rank a Youtube video to Google web search page 1 ?
I have read in other forums, that build a Tier1 to that Youtube link , and the build a Tier2 to the Tier1 links, is that right?
Sorry i am just starting to learn how tier1,2 works …
Thank you for any advice!.
P.
So Jacob. You published this article 8 months ago so you had time to test this. Does it actually work in practice? Do you get on page one for any med/high volume keywords? How long does it take you to get on page 1? Interesting to see an update.
Thx
Ah Lucy, details? Data? I’m an SEO blogger aka I have no idea wtf I’m doing.
Nah kidding kidding. yes I’ve tested the hell out of this, this year alone I’ve probably run over 100 campaigns, full on sites with full link campaigns. Not sure what type of volume you’re referring to but hell yeah the method works and is a crucial component to spamming big ranks, not all, but part. Small KWs, like 1k volume and under, can be spammed with baller GSA only if you know what you’re doing, but there is one key element to consider that has gotten more important. The authority of the domain you are spamming.
If you fire up a brand new domain and use GSA solely as your link source than you’re gonna have to be a wizard to rank monster KWs. This is where other tools come into play like PBNs, etc. The other side is parasite pages, ie YouTubes, FB pages, etc, now you’re working with a different animal at the domain level when using spam.
jacob I simply trust you and am blindly going to use the simple structure that you have given in this blog post and use GSA Ser with this Tierd Link and I hope My onwy site is not screwed.
Keeping my fingers crossed.
Thanks for the advice and I just wish it works and come back with the results and you can advice more on that.
Talk soon
Great post, I’ve always thought that using both UD and SER was redundant. But, I do have a quick question. In the post you say:
“In the picture you will see the tier 2 links actually contain bookmarks and comments which effectively cuts off tier 3 from passing any juice.”
Would you mind explaining that in a bit more detail?
Thanks,
Eddie
Yes, so the tier 3 link would not pass shit to the tier 1 link since the tier 2 is a blog comment, not flowing that link juice properly between all the tiers.
Hello… jacob. As a newbie I just have learned much more after checking this amazing post. Now I think I need get help with some question arising.
1. Instead blogger, wordpress etc maximum web 2.0 sites are not getting index by Google. So how would be the solution?
2. What about the spinning content?
3. Can I add Broken link and guest post with my tier structure??
1. Blast some links at them, and/or use an indexing service.
2. What about it? Spin that shit.
3. Sure you could, not very scalable though.
Need some clarification on T1 content. In the comments above Nick asks if you use manually spun content and you answer “No.”
Then in another comment response you say that you load up GSA with 5 manually spun articles…
Could you clarify Jacob?
Yeah I used to use manually spun articles like a noob but now I’m spam to the bone. Can’t really go much further there.
tiered links work like charm.
Hi Jacob,
Just revisited this after it was promoted by the guys at KM linked to it today.
Nice piece.
Are you still using this method now almost a year on? Since my slap (about a year ago – I think we remember that one – now sure some turd with the initials NK was behind it) I’ve not been using tiered linking at all and getting better results than ever.
Still need links, still automated (I haven’t sold out to the WH snake oil sellers) but ditched tiered linking for profile building and for larger sites over time it’s proved to be about the best method I’ve ever come across.
As an idea It’s not entirely mine, or even mostly mine, I’ve plagiarised ideas for all over the place, but that’s marketing :)
Having said that, I should say again that I don’t make micro sites (or even mini sites). I’m guessing tiered still works for these.
So what’s the skinny in late 2014 with promoting like this. Any changes needed?
If you’ve got the time an update would be great.
Scritty (Dr Paul Rone-Clarke)
What up dude, good hearing from you, yeah man spamming strong over here. Allow me to write a brief update on wtf is cracking with that little slut bag G, along with some issues people might run into with this method, some pivoting I’ve done.
Yes I am still building tiered links, right now actually, just used KM for a T2 run and building links almost the same exact way but I have made some adjustments. For one I’m not so rigid about PR, using some other metrics but that’s all I can say about that ;-)
Also got to be careful when using all contextuals with GSA as you might skew heavily to one link type, then say that link type is all on one IP, that would be no good right? Point being, you want diverse link types on high quality sites, and the shit still works and is like half the battle. Of course there is a certain anchor setup that you want for your GSA links vs other high powered links but they are still a crucial piece of the puzzle.
As for tiering, I dunno maybe the value has diminished a bit as for pumping up lower tiers with total spam but it’s still an important part of the process, for indexing if nothing else.
Say you build out 300 T1 links and run them through and indexing service, if you’re lucky you might get 1/2 of them indexed, not that might be ok for some people but I want to get as many as possible, tiering is the best way to increase indexing without spamming the hell out of your links direct. So yes, and the fundamental core point of this post still remains and likely always will, if you building “tiered links” to accomplish the goal we’re after they should be contextual and dofollow.
We want T3 > T2 > T1
It must be dofollow contextual for PR to flow from page to page, this is SEO 101. If you have a nofollow T1 and T2, then dofollow T3, how much juice could that possibly pass lmao? Without controlling that on the tiers you’re likely to have that occur. And that is not to say nofollow links are not helpful and shouldn’t be used at all, some people took that the wrong way also. You should totally run another blast with a mixture of nofollow and other link types to add some variation. This reply I just left pretty much concludes – https://www.jacobking.com/make-money-hat-seo#comment-576668
Thanks for stopping in Paul, I say you fire up your VPS and spam something brother, put up a parasite page get it cracking again.
Seems like GSA is dead very much like comments here. It was a cool tool. But all people do on that forum is complain about the slowness or legitimate T1 and the rest just spam and never rank. Junk.
However that being said, this post is still awesome. You really did a nice job and answered a crap load of questions with solid info. Love this site. Thanks for providing all this info Jacob.
Not at all, very much dead for all the half assers out there, was really never anything amazing out of the box, always required customization and beast mode abilities. That has increased, but certainly still a huge piece of the puzzle. Maybe even more so with how much G is scrutinizing PBNs on all angles. Funny thing is for whatever reason, this seems to give spam more power and the endless game of cat and mouse continues.
Recently i doing tiered linking but without very strong result, just get some long tail ranked.
Is still strong after 2014 May?
I heard of it still very strong but here not. so I search and find this post. thanks for the 2 important tips and I will do more test.
BTW, why create a seperate project for secondary link?
I guess you can just put all context link in a project and set filter to link to dofollow only. so nofollow are automatically not linked from child tier and safe much time and less project to manage.
HI Jacob,
I just wanted to know what you meant by have the links come in from the “side” how do you actually do that.
From what I understand if a social bookmark site links to a tier 1, how do you know that it is linking from “the side”? and how do you link from the side rather than directly?
I hope my question makes sense.
Thanks for the post!
That is it, it links to the tier.
Thanks Jacob for the answer.
One more thing what would you consder more important for link juice flow concerning link spamming domain page rank or url page rank
I see scrape box has two options to check either
My guess is url page rank is better to use considering your linking from that page. But I’ve just started this seo thing and would like to hear your input
Thanks
By the way your Scrapebox tutorial is OFFICIALLY GOD-MODE!!
Everything is there!!
Thanks dude, let me clarify.
You use root domain PR checking typically when your going to create pages on that site, like drupal for example. If you wanted to maybe drop some comments on some actual PR pages then you would check PR at the URL level.
As a relative noob, your site kicks ass. Cheers Jacob
Why thank you sir.
Wow thanks for the update on GSA, I was unaware that I could deselect the nofollow based sites!
AWESOME!!! :)
Hey Jacob!
Love your guide, I really got pissed and confused as to why my projects didn’t work… You opened my eyes, thanks for that.
Got a quick question that I didn’t find an answer in the comments.
How much secondary links should we make? So there would a a natural looking link diversity by Google eyes.
% off the primary links would be the best.
Thanks Jacob and take care.
No set amount, say you built 200 t1, maybe blast 1000 secondary links at those, be careful tho with the anchor text %s you use.
Ohh OK, thanks got it.
Before I close the deal and be 100% sure that I’m doing it right I’ve got a couple more questions hope you would not mind anwering.
1. Say I make 200 t1 links, how many links could be good for secondary money site links? Also 1000? Isn’t that too much?
2. How much tier 2 links should I build? Unlimited?
3. Gsa has the option to use the same anchor text tier wise.
Meaning tier2 anchor is the same as tier1, is it a good idea to use this? And to also use this for secondary links?
Would very much appreciate your answers. :)
More spammmmmm
Great great info buddy. Got me thinking a lot.
Theres a thing I don’t understand though.
The secondary links are good for link diversity for the money site, I get that, but what is their use for the tiers?
For indexation, I could use gsa indexer instead if that’s the case. For my understanding they arnt for link juice because they arnt that juicy.
Please help me here I’m banging my head over this.
Cheers.
Indexation for one and building up your T1s, honestly not required by any means, but I’m not a big fan of the indexer, and with an indexing service you might only get like 50% indexation if you’re lucky, so that’s where the secondary links come in, so yes indexation purposes.
What about tiering articles on high auth sites (say, Huffpo or Tech Crunch) that link to a client’s site? Good idea?
Meh, might help but I wouldn’t say worth the effort. Would be better spent building and ranking a micro site with the same spam and linking that over, I guess you could buy some cheap PBN gig to them lol, I dunno might juice up the links some more. I’d spend my time/money elsewhere tho, those are some damn nice links already, focus on getting more.
Thanks for the quick response! Would you say it becomes more “worth” doing if the article is from a less authoritative (or whatever term we want to use) site? So instead of Huffpo/Tech Crunch, let’s say the linking on article in some PR 2-3 site, but highly relevant to the niche. Since the link from this article isn’t as good as the one from HuffPo/TC, does the link juice sent to it from the tiered links make a bigger difference?
Sorry I know that’s like 2.5 questions in there, but you know what I mean!
Again, thanks for taking the time to respond…in addition to the time to put articles like these together!
I can’t really understand what you’re asking, but I think you’re asking if linking to lower authority sites will send more juice to your target link, to that my answer would be no, the flow would be divided by OBLs, nothing to do with the authority of the domains being linked.
passing only dofollow will get you banned is unnatural and no follow links become dofollow by bouncing off the directories in time. So dofollow is not worth shit, also you need a balance or Google will slap the hell out of you.
Excuse my typo, so nofollow is not worth shit like you say
Don’t excuse my typos or blatant honesty, you sound like a real moron.
Ok bud, prolly time you should stop doing SEO. Go read some more blog posts you don’t understand first tho.
You Sir are a quack. Everyone knows that the SEO is done through keywords in the headers. You need at least 300 keywords or you’ll never rank. You should give up SEO and go flip bergers.
Hello Jacobs,
I did exactly what you listed in the above post,however with one exception and that is i didn’t create Secondary Tier to money.It has started to get up in the SERPs,but it is struggling to move further.I was thinking, is it Safe to build Secondary Tier directly to the Money site, safe??as I create most of my Tier 1 Links Manually and i don’t want to take the risk of getting slapped by Google.Also i had a site that i spammed with GSA some months back and then i created a Tiered structured as shown above,and it has landed on the first page for almost all the keywords now,so from my opinion a little bit of spam mixed with good quality links can do wonders.
Anyone looking for a used license for GSA SER, Captcha Sniper, Kontent Machine or GSA Indexer please let me know. Selling for less.
Hey KB how much for GSA SER? Hit me up at gadgetyogi at gmail
Hello Jacob
My question is
How many primary link to tier 1 from tier 2 or tier 2 from tier 3 ? is this only 1??
Can’t really give you set numbers, test, test, test.
As a user of SENX for the past 2 years I was delighted to find this post.
Is GSA only $99 – no monthly fee etc?
I find it hard to believe that something as good or even better than SENX is such a lower cost
Well believe it, GSA beats the living shit out of SEnuke.
I have ranked high competion keywords with GSA Ser
with strategies I have designed so that article is not based on facts.
Best regards
Kevin
Huh?
hahaha
Jacob, thanks for not linkbaiting me lol. I wanted to make sure I commented first before I forget and get tired after all the reading I’m going to have to do. Plus, it wasn’t easy scrolling to the very bottom of this super duper long string of comments; I think its about a mile long now, easy. I’ve been working on tiered link building as one of my friends introduced me to Matt’s program, but I didn’t fork over any money, but watched the videos. Thanks for the awesome post!
Looks like Google is about to starting dancing to a different tune, and all the effort and money spent building links might be for naught:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530102.600-google-wants-to-rank-websites-based-on-facts-not-links.html#.VPJ5_PnF_d3
No way.
Hi Jacob
Do you still think this link building method still works as of 2015? I’m a noob, so thanks for your answer. I love your blog.
Yes of course, I’m not tiering as aggressively as I once was, but GSA contextual links are still a big part of the process.
Hi Jacob, great post thank you – and good to know the method is still valid more or less. I’ve been using GSA for about 4 months now, but reading this post will definitely up my game, much appreciated. Question – does this same method apply to YouTube videos or citations/high DA properties? Would you make any adjustments?
Not really I’d just be more aggressive with using anchor text.
Thanks Jacob – what do you recommend when setting up the tiered structure noted in the tutorial here for anchor text ratios in GSA?
Test a shitload and/or signup for Blackhatstacks ;-)
Hi,
How can I user GSA safely for long terms without a risk to be banned ?
Tks
There is no special way to run spam without the risk of getting banned. You’re asking the wrong question…
Hi Jacob,
Great blog. I purchased GSA SER after reading your review. I’m a total noob (yes, as green as they come). I have read and watched hours of tutorials and still can’t get the program running. Is there a definitive beginners guide for GSA? What are the must-have add-ons after I buy GSA? I’m so eager to get this beast running but I don’t even know where to put the key!
Hey dude, thanks for commenting. By far the best information you’ll find out there is on Blackhatstacks, I cover my exact setup and process with GSA along with all the little ins and outs/Q & As people have.
Hi, Jacob, you seem to know what you are doing and I love your no bs approach, I will definitely be following you.
Also I have one question – is this tiered building necessary also for parasites or you can just go with all out blast for them?
Thanks,
Kaspars
It’s the same thing really you can just be a bit more aggressive than using a new domain.
If tiering is effective in your strategy then it will also help boost your parasite blast. I tend to just blast a shitload of links at parasites, drop in a couple indexers and call it good though. Usually don’t feel like taking the time to tier on those.
Hi Jacob, frst of all thanks very much for this amazing fix and tip :)
However I have noticed something, on the diagram you showed that Tier 1 Links to money site should be PR 3+ and Nofollow, but on the screenshot of the campaign it shows dofollow, I got confused. Is that a mistake?If so, which one is right?
Cheers in advance.
James
It should be mainly dofollow links to the moneysite lol, in the example I’m showing PR2+ dofollow which is pointing T1, then some secondary links PR 3+ which are likely a nofollow mix and will NOT be in the tier structure.
But PR is deader than disco. I’m using other metrics these days.
I read this post like a year ago and kind of understood it but there’s a hidden nail on the head that 95% of people who read this won’t get. It’s like a needle in the haystack, it’s like Jacob is hinting strongly towards the exact way of making this method insanely powerful but he’s not going to just spell it out and let anyone in on the money-site party.
I don’t really want to give away the secret that Jacob was referring to but I will say this, it involves the qualilty of those contextual dofollow mid-tiers ;) That little hint will probably crack it for some of the people reading my comment. But I’m sure most people will not get it, that’s the problem with linkbuilding you can obsess over the details and make one mistake in your strategy that will consign you to the failboat for an eternity. I’ve recently done various different link strategies and got huge differences in rankings between using the right way and the wrong way, and the difference between these two different ways could be as little as one small decision you make and there’s only one or two right ways for people like us trying to do low budget linkbuilding but there’s 100’s of ways to F it up and hit wrong way street with a first class ticket to fail academy :)
95% is generous lol
Hi Oliver, I really would like to have chat with you,
How can I get in touch with you?
I don’t really want to give my email address away from here but please do let me know how can I get in touch with you.
My twitter is @gtunc83
Thank you,
Gokhan
Great article on link building Jacob, you truly are a king!
Hi Jacob,
Nice post you got here.
What PRs do you suggest for Tier 1, 2 and 3?
I read some of your comments and noticed that you played with the numbers. Care to share any results?
Thanks.
Not really using PR anymore, using Majestic metrics ;-)
That’s awesome. On what you rely – CF or TF?
Thanks in advance.
Sorry but that is going “Too Far”…
Get it? ;-)
Gotcha! Nice article btw…
is this still your point of view? You would still advice this kind of Tier building?
With some slight tweaks, yes.
Are you going to update this post with those slight tweaks? or Write a new blog post?
Hello Mr.Jacob, Nice Article,. Hmm,. I have a very simple question,. but i did not get best answer.
can we join affiliate like google ads with content from article directory such as ezinearticle (with source inside)?
I think ezinearticle permit for us to re upload or copy article with include the source.
Sory my english not good,. :) I’am Indonesians
Oh man ezine articles, I used to rank the fucking fuck out of those things.
Hi Jacob,
First of all thank you for this post, the informations are really interesting. Thank you for your honesty. I have 2 questions:
– The secondary links for tier 1, 2 and 3 are they Dofollow or Nofollow?
-What PR should i choose for the structure? Is this good?:
Secondary links to money sites (PR3+)
Tier1 (PR3+)
Secondary links to Tier1 (PR1+) or (PR2+)
Tier2 (PR2+)
Secondary links to Tier2 (PR0+) or (PR1+)
Tier3 (PR1+)
Secondary links to Tier3 (PR0+)
Thank you for your help
The secondary links are a mix, all the shit.
Fuck PR buddy, shit is deader than disco. You’ve gotta trust the flow.
I don’t get too crazy with isolating certain metrics to my tiers these days, I blast the good shit up front and then just keep ramming her, no way I can stick above a certain PR for all my links it takes to rank.
Hi Benz,
Please do not trust this guy,
I have been using his tactic since May 2015, one of my sites got banned rest of them lost rankings.
All this guy wants is to sell people his “private super seoers forum” membership, so this post is just to get attention, show something interesting to people and get the traffic here!!!
Shame on you Jacob, this is really important and sensitive topic, if you really want to give some advice on it, just give it. And try to be more specific when you are responding people than “it’s an art my friend” or “fuck page rank!!”
If you guys want to learn more in-depth about GSA, just head over to GSA Forum!!!
Murat, don’t be mad at me because spam tanked your site, use your brain buddy, it’s spam. You looking for a sure fire recipe for spamming your way to top ranks without any risk? Good luck with that. Did you make enough money for the time you ranked? Hopefully, if not that’s your fault bro.
Don’t come around here calling people out because you’re feeling some whiplash after Google mushroom stamped you real quick.
My private forum is a collection of practically my life’s work doing SEO, so yes it’s paid. And for chump change if you’re at all serious about advancing yourself in this game.
Be more specific? What you want me to spoon feed you this shit? And for free too?
You should listen to yourself dude, kinda ridiculous.
Yes please do head to the GSA forum, I always tell people there is a ton to be learned there. Likewise with my forum.
One more thing that is quite ironic, of all the replies for you to point out, I dropped a fucking golden nugget in that comment above you’re referring to, obviously you missed it.
Hey man, thanks for this post. I have some questions!
When you say wikis and articles for tier one direct links. What sort of things do you mean? Can you elaborate on what exactly these are and how to go about getting links?
Thanks!
GSA contextual links hombre, the ones that parse an anchor text link within an article body.
Buddypress, there you go, that’s an example.
Hello Jacob,
Really awesome stuff! If i understood this correctly when you say, tier 1, tier 2, tier 3, Does this mean you are blasting tier 1 directly to money site? I mean you are not using any buffers such as Web 2.0 or 301, shorten services such as bitl.ly, they can also act as 301, but my point is, do you actually blast this directly to money site or what exactly do you put on your tier 1?
Most of the time I do, but I use 301s quite often as well. No buffer like a web2 though, not worth the effort imo.
Hi Jacob,
How is your GSA strategy going in 2015?
Best Regards,
Dean
Still going strong, just using more PBN in combination with it these days. Also honed things in with GSA more in regards to site lists, anchor text usage, etc.
Hi Jacob,
the secondary links to money site should be PR3+ nofollow contextual, bookmarks, and directories, right ?
I wouldn’t worry too much about PR anymore, especially with secondary links. But yes the bookmarks, comments, and other nofollow links like that should be use as a secondary link and not a tier.
i have noticed since few months ago thats gsa links are not indexing even when i use high qualily and no duplicate content on Article Contextual links, and mainly, all of gsa links are not indexing anymore so how are you indexing your links nowadays?
Yeah dude we didn’t realize how good we had it for a while, I would just rip a solid T1, drop it in 2 different indexers and get like 50%+ indexation no problem. Now I’m back to tiering, usually just building t2 and doing some misc shit blasting at the t2 to force indexation down the line.
What a great content as usual! keep it up Jacob!
Cheers.
Hi Jacob,
Nice That You Shares valuable things but I do not have any clue about seo but I want to learn badly. Some Says Original content You Say Its Not Needed. I am on The Fence. I don’t know whom to believe. I wait for a good explanation but not to trap me and sell your courses but honest review.I believe You Got It.
I rank sites just using findlaw and justia, 2 attorney directories, great for tier 1’s
Alrighty then.
I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast… How about that?
Hey Jacob,
I found your site from Matthew Woodward’s blog. I wanted to thank you for super great knowledge but i feel like I’m perpetually walking uphill… I have a small blog running (www.thecybersecurityblog.com) and am trying to promote it.
Ive focused on producing content and honestly end up reading it myself! I heard about link building as one of the ways to promote content…but where do i start?
I have bought GSA and some proxies to start…Any particular tutorials i should start with besides the GSA forum?
Thanks,
Vik
Hows that working out for you?
Is this actual or would you change it anyhow since its been years after u wrote it?
But i see what you did there.
You excluded nofollow links because they pass no link juice from link pyramid.
Money site gets some % of backlink power from backlinks depending on the tier, the further the link is in our pyramid, the smaller %. Thats probably how tier pyramid works, maybe not, but lets say yes.
100% of backlinks power from tier 1, then we get smaller % from tier 2, and even smaller from Tier 3.
By excluding nofollow links that are used for diversity only, we maximise the link juice passed to our money site. This is good because we dont blast nofollow backlinks with another tiers of links…
They still remain in structure to keep the diversity and stuff natural, but we dont give them backlink power, because it would stop before reaching our money site.
Amazing post.
Totally gonna do it when i lay my hands on GSA.
Ow that’s a lot to read.
You really should update this post :)