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Does Tiering With Guest Post Links Work?


So much discussion around tiering… does it really work? Is it really worth it? It’s the question that everyone is asking…

The problem I have currently with tiering is that I already tried it with PBN links… and it was a fail. I mean that… I have seen small improvements but not enough to justify the extra time and investment that doing tiering on my backlinks.

We see case study all the time concerning tiering… and every case study says it works… The problem I have is that most of those case studies have been written by link sellers… so, can we really trust the info provided in those case studies?

Anyway… I never rely on others when doing changes to my SEO strategy… so that’s why I decided to make a new test, with my own data.

Tiering With Guest Post Links

For this case study, I will target 2 pages from 2 different sites, each page didn’t have any new backlinks or internal links built in the past 3 months. I also take 2 pages that are currently in decline. so if they move to an uptrend, it will just show us that this strategy can be really powerful.

Page 1 (Fashion) – 2x TA20++ Backlinks per T1 Link

Currently, this page has only 2 guest posts pointing to it, so I will build 2x TA20++ guest post links to each link, for a total of 4 T2 links.

Here’s actually the ahrefs info for this page:

For this test, I’ve chosen a page that had almost no traffic but with tons of keywords ranked… so that means the article is well optimized… the problem is that the page has a lack of link juice, that’s why the organic traffic is almost not existent!

Perfect for this case study. if the tiering work… We should expect an increase in the estimated organic traffic.

Page 2 (Outdoor) – 4x TA20++ Backlinks per T1 Link

For this one, the page targeted has just 1 guest post link built in February 2020… so instead to split the 4 tiered links by 2, I will shoot the 4 tiered links to the same guest post. Let see what will happens.

So, here are the details of page 2:

So the page stats are pretty similar to page 1… so really bad traffic but decent ranked keywords… so again, just a matter of link juice. Let see if the link juice provided to my single backlink will be enough to move the traffic up!

19th June 2020 (Initial Case Study Start Time)

I have placed the order for the 8 TA20++ guest post links. The content is in production and should be sent soon to the webmasters for publication.

10th September 2020 (Update and Final Result)

Almost 3 months ago, I decided to build for the worth of $800 in guest post links just for the purpose to test this theory;

“Can we boost our money pages ranking in boosting our T1 link juice using T2 links instead to just build new direct links?”

There are so many theories about this strategy… So many peoples vouch for this strategy and say it works super well… so I decided to test it!

When my T2 articles have been published:

Fashion Niche

T1 link #1: 23th & 24th June (2 x T2 links)
No traffic reported by Ahrefs or SEMrush for my T1 link.

T1 link #2: 29th June (2 x T2 links)
No traffic reported by Ahrefs or SEMrush for my T1 link.

Outdoor Niche

T1 link #1: 24th & 25th June, 6th & 7th July  (4 x T2 links)
No traffic reported by Ahrefs or SEMrush for my T1 link.

Okay so the first thought is… funny, none of my T1 guest post links ranks for any keywords… even with $800 worth of T2 links… It doesn’t start well! 

I have my theory about that… but let’s dig into this later in this article. Now, even if the T1 guest posts aren’t optimized to rank, they should still have some link juice according to the theory, right? So normally we should see a ranking boost on my money pages?!

Let’s see.

Money page #1 (Fashion):

My fashion page traffic results after t2 links

No ranking boost at all.

Money page #2 (Outdoor):

My outdoor page traffic results after t2 links

No ranking boost at all.

To be honest, I’m not surprised… I did the test last year with PBNs as T2 and I had similar results… Building T2 links is just a waste of time and money, it will never give you any ROI.

If you are looking on the web for case studies about the usage of T2 links, you will easily realize that most of them have been written by peoples selling links or by people affiliated with link sellers.

Bonus (My Theory Why It’s Not Working)

I do a lot of tests in my daily routine… It’s part of my SEO process to find what works and what doesn’t…. and recently, I noticed an interesting fact, while I was testing my PBNs, I noticed that when I was targeting URL without traffic or ranking, the effect of my PBN was almost null, he had almost no effect on the target URL.

However, the same PBN targeting a target URL with traffic gives an amazing ranking boost… Strange isn’t it? The same PBN… The same result has been seen on 2 PBNs, on a total of 8 target URLs.

2 Target URLs with traffic, 2 target URLs without traffic per PBN, every time, same result, and this from the 2 PBNs.

The target URLs with traffic have seen a ranking boost while the target URLs without traffic had no ranking boost or even a decline in ranking.

YES it’s far too fast to call this a fact, that’s why I say it’s a theory for now…I will do more tests and create a case study about this later on the blog.

But to be honest, it makes all sense… I believe that Google has filtered in their algorithm that blocks the link juice if they notice that a website without traffic gets backlinks… Why a website that nobody sees would get new backlinks?

That’s why I think it’s part of the reasons why building T2 links don’t pass the link juice to the T1 links… Because your T1 mostly, doesn’t have any traffic.

Note: The link juice passes to the target URL if this one has traffic, even if your T1 link doesn’t have traffic at all. The rule works only one-way.