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You are here: Home / Case Studies / Tiered Link Building Case Study Results: Site One

February 11, 2014 By Nick Joelson 103 Comments

Tiered Link Building Case Study Results: Site One

Tiered Link Building Case Study Results: Site One

Hi guys. If you have been following my blog you’ll know that I have been experimenting with tiered link building for a little while.

It’s not something I’d do for clients or on my own long term websites, but became intrigued after reading a little about it last year.

I think it was Jacob King that peaked my interest initially, with God Over You and Mathew Woodward providing some background theory and tutorials. I have not followed any particular method, instead I just absorbed what was being said and put my own interpretation on it.

At the end of last year I built a site purely with the intention of trying to rank it using tiered link building.

A few weeks ago I began to build links to it…

Here is what I did:

  1. Bought a partial match .com domain – exact match + extra keyword. No hyphens.
  2. Set up a WordPress site. Made a few tweaks to give it authority.
  3. Added 10 x PLR articles in niche – no rewrites, all duplicate content. Linked out to authority sites on each article and added images.
  4. Found top performing 3 products in niche
  5. Did keyword research to find 4 money terms with volume. One highly competitive (12000 exacts a month) and 3 medium competition terms with 500/1000 exact matches a month. I already have a site in this niche so used existing data.
  6. Wrote one piece of original content at around 1500 words and put it on the homepage. All based on top 3 products with visual aids. Built in the 4 keywords into the on page SEO using Title, H1 & H2 and Meta Description. No keyword stuffing in content, Just a natural article.
  7. Left the site for a month or two (Christmas break and other projects).
  8. Copied 3 x product reviews from other sites and added as new pages. Chopped it about a bit.
  9. Used Kontent Machine 3 to generate content for every Tier’s data fields and articles.
  10. Fired up a fresh copy of GSA Search Engine ranker and began building Tier One links. I set Tier One to Do Follow and Contextual targets only. No videos or adult content. No PR preference, just 0 – 10.
  11. Added GSA Captcha Breaker, Death by Captcha and Askmebot.
  12. After the first set of verified links became available I immediately began building a Tier Two to them of the same link types.
  13. And again for the Tier Three.
  14. I then started firing blog comments and other shitty links at all but Tier One.
  15. Tier One had a few comments thrown at it and maybe a few directories. I stopped it early on in the run as I panicked when I saw how poor the quality was.
  16. I then set up SerEngines, a GSA addon and started building out a new Tier One of Web 2.0s.
  17. I copied out the Tier Two & Threes with some crappy secondary ones as well.
  18. Fiddled with GSA SER everyday trying to learn how to use it at the same time adding scraped site lists to clean up and add. Each time I changed the settings. I was focussing on building a verified site list more than anything for my next projects.
  19. After two weeks I had around 70,000 links built in the whole Tiered structure. There is some real crap in there plus a few .gov and .edu gems in Tier One.
  20. Today, after 2/3 weeks of building links it suddenly ranks in position 1 to 3 for the medium money terms – still nowhere for the big money term. However, even my legit site in the same niche cannot rank for this term.
  21. Site takes $150 so far today 🙂

Here are the charts from Rank Tracker:

The site ranked on the 3rd page, positions 25 or so after the site was built and indexed with no links whatsoever.

Keyword One

chart-2

Keyword Two

chart-3

Keyword Three

chart1-png

As you can see they all took a very similar journey. I was taking daily readings then left it over the weekend to come back to this jump from page 2 to top of page 1.

I was alerted to a change when the affiliate commission alerts started to come in. 🙂

Notes

Here is a screen grab of the Tiers that were built:

GSA SER Tiers

The only page that ranks in Google is the homepage. The copied review pages have moved from 80th to 50th. But they were only added a week ago as an after thought.

Bing and yahoo rank me as well but very little traffic comes from them. No surprises there really.

Basically this site has one page of unique content! I am a lazy marketeer, what can I say.

Anyway, I have put this post together very quickly so I can share with you. There was a bit more going on but that is the crux of it.

This was done with a fresh copy of GSA Search Engine Ranker with no site lists, auto spun, scraped content for link building and all duplicate site content except the homepage.

I did use some auto spun articles on my Web2.0’s  that came from iWriter. I them lying around as were too poor to use on another site.

So does tiered link building still work? My initial thoughts are yes.

Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions – open to anything!

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Filed Under: Case Studies, SEO, SEO Software Tagged With: Case Studies

About Nick Joelson

Nick Joelson is an online marketeer with over 10 years in the business. Works with large organisations to design and implement their digital marketing strategies. In his spare time likes to get his hands dirty with some real IM work...

Comments

  1. GODOVERYOU says

    February 12, 2014 at 4:11 pm

    Great way to test the water and see what the results were! I hope it sticks and if not that will always be more room to test.

    Even if things tank later, write another post or update this one on why you think that was.

    Reply
  2. admin says

    February 12, 2014 at 5:37 pm

    Hi GOY, appreciate you taking the time and stopping by.

    Yes, I would be very surprised if the site makes it through the next spam filter – it must tick every spam flag going.

    I plan another run and this time put a little more resource into the content and a more gradual Tier One creation. This one was a little erratic to say the least. Plus want to check out platforms like Rankwyz for a potentially “longer lasting” tier one.

    The fact that you can build a site in this way and rank it in 2014 says a lot.

    Thanks.

    Nick

    Reply
  3. Gehan Wijesinghe says

    February 13, 2014 at 3:49 am

    Hi Nick, thanks for responding to my reply in Affilorama forum. I actually checked your case study and am highly impressed. You have done well, congratulations. If you like I could re-produce ( or you could do it yourself) in a website which deals in SEO and other IT tips for online business enthusiasts. Just let me know please check the site http://www.mytrickpages.com. I too have contributed to this site and two of my articles have been ranked top in Google under relevant keywords (right keyword the cornerstone of seo and core concepts of seo). Your case study would d a world of help to many. Consider it please. Gehan Wijesinghe – http://www.tranquilmind.biz

    Reply
    • admin says

      February 13, 2014 at 7:56 pm

      No worries. Thanks for visiting Gehan. It is a minor win but I have learned a lot by doing it which is more important really. The way I did it is obviously not a long term solution but you can rank sites and make some money. I am trying to put some time aside to roll out a few more sites like this.

      Funnily enough I mirrored your comments in a review I wrote about the course a while back.

      With regards to the mytrickpages.com, I’ll check them out and get back to you.

      Nick

      Reply
      • Gehan Wijesinghe says

        February 14, 2014 at 3:49 am

        Thanks Nick, I feel you are at it and surely bound to succeed. Wish I had that tenacity. Would follow your progress. In fact, I suggested that I reproduce your “little success” in http://www.mytrickpages.com, as I contribute to it ( and have two posts ranking first in Google). This site belongs to a friend of mine in Sri Lanka ( I am a Sri Lankan myself). He does it for fun as he is a web developer. This site, which is doing somewhat well , could figure in your link profile, I believe.
        Best regards

        Gehan

        Reply
  4. Psychobily says

    February 13, 2014 at 4:49 am

    Hi, would you mind sharing your anchor text ratios?
    Thanks

    Reply
    • Nick Joelson says

      February 13, 2014 at 9:00 am

      How I set GSA or what actually got built?

      In ahrefs I am seeing a 6% domain match and matches of 6% to 2% for the majority of exact and partial matches plus generic anchors such as “click here”. It’s pretty random to say the least.

      I kept changing the settings in GSA as I went along and began to understand all the variants it offers. Funnily enough the terms I was targeting are only around 2% plus their partial matches. I just set it to randomise as much as it could.

      Hope this helps.

      Reply
  5. Ian says

    February 19, 2014 at 4:48 am

    Wow! Congrats Nick! I just read Jacob King’s post last night on tiered link building and I was trying to find other case studies. Good thing I found yours. I always though GSA was a t2/t3 tool. I’ve been using it only for my secondary tier. Your case study really opened my eyes. I have to test it myself on a new project. Thanks!

    Reply
    • Nick Joelson says

      February 19, 2014 at 9:46 am

      Hi Ian, Glad you got something from the post. I think people avoided GSA SER for tier one links as it can be hard to control the quality. However, the software has evolved, so with some patience, manual spinning and careful selecting of site lists, you could create a half-decent tier one, although there is still no guarantee it will stick…

      For this experiment I was just wanted a quick test and literally cheated at every turn except for on the homepage.
      Funnily enough the site has now started ranking for some secondary anchor terms. It now gets 60 uniques a day to the homepage and makes at least one high commission sale a day. I have been trying to optimise the page for better conversions as it was a bit shabby.

      Anyway, the main thing I have learned is just to test everything out for yourself.

      Good luck with your ventures.

      Reply
  6. Akbar Sheikh says

    February 19, 2014 at 11:37 am

    Hey Nick,

    Nice study!….. When you say the site has made $150, is it for the day or total income as of now!…. I hope you publish a follow-up on rankings as well…. GSA is a monster if used correctly, for sure….

    Reply
    • Nick says

      February 19, 2014 at 12:03 pm

      The first day of ranking it made almost $150. It slowed after that but still makes around $50 a day. Traffic is increasing as well.

      Reply
  7. Jacob King says

    February 26, 2014 at 3:21 pm

    Well fucking aye, would you look at that, someone actually tested something.

    Good shit Nick, no matter how good of a tut someone makes, (myself or anyone) you’re still going to have growing pains learning this stuff and always be tempted to grab a beer and start playing Madden instead.

    The difference maker is being able to pound your chest (literally or figuratively which ever suits you) and push through that adversity when your brain hurts and you want to quit. Then the pot of gold on the other side of rainbow is you know what the f#%k you’re doing, getting that money, while the rest of the world cowers in fear over guest posts.

    Reply
    • admin says

      February 26, 2014 at 4:25 pm

      Hi Jacob, nice to see you here! Thanks man. I was really pleased to see the site rank so effortlessly.

      I have to say I had my doubts due to all the crap you read – I am sure there is a high-level of brainwashing going on regarding SEO. I find myself buying into it and it can be paralyzing sometimes…

      The reality is if you are willing to put some time in, these techniques still work well and will make money.

      Anyway, thanks again.

      N

      Reply
  8. Ahmed says

    February 26, 2014 at 5:25 pm

    What always like to see in case studies s solid results. and i guesw you delivered that !
    Is the site still ranking and earning?

    Also were you promoting a digital product or physical product?

    Reply
    • admin says

      February 26, 2014 at 5:52 pm

      Hi Ahmed, yes, its still ranking and banking! Its fairly stable now. I just keep GSA ticking over on that campaign.

      All physical products.

      Hope this helps with your projects.

      Nick

      Reply
  9. Chris says

    March 6, 2014 at 10:28 pm

    Hi Nick,

    Good to see a case study, hope you do more. I was on the fence with all SEO software, but will get back on it, particularly testing videos as need to rank those. If you have any thoughts on ranking youtube video on Google then would be great. I’m guessing same rules as above apply. I’ll use well spun content though.

    Cheers!

    Reply
    • admin says

      March 7, 2014 at 10:39 am

      Hi Chris,

      I am currently ranking some youtube videos as an experiment at the moment.

      One is 100% natural and the others are using “synthetic” techniques. I overcooked one of the latter and had to start again when youtube reset all the stats. This was after I purchased a “safe youtube views” on Fiverr gig, so not recommended!

      Here is a good post on ranking youtube vids. http://backlinko.com/how-to-rank-youtube-videos. The case study still ranks to my knowledge.

      If you are link spamming, just keep the content contextual and do follow and spam away. My advice would be not to get too caught up in the “quality” of spin when learning what ranks or not. Especially with tools like GSA SER.

      Good luck!

      Nick

      Reply
      • Chris says

        March 7, 2014 at 11:09 am

        Hi Nick,

        I have also been using Fiverr, but I think the content they scrape is rubbish and also they don’t vary their anchor text enough, plus they are not drip fed.

        I have had some success with fiverr gig for buying views, likes and comments but gives me more of a boost in Youtube rather than Google:

        http://www.fiverr.com/harry2388/send-1000-real-youtube-views-50-likes-50-subscribers-50-favor-10-comments–6

        The Senuke gig I was using used to work, but now doesn’t.

        I think it’s a case of using some semi-manual spun content and building the links myself using GSA. Was going to use Ultimate Demon or Magic Submitter is necessary also.

        I see some videos ranking high using their own blog network (after checking with Ahrefs), but to be honest is more expensive, unless I use some SEO hosting. Will experiment with that also.

        I guess I have been lazy and used Fiverr for link building (which used to work) but now I’ll test doing things with more care/quality….should work! 🙂

        Cheers,

        Chris

        Reply
        • admin says

          March 7, 2014 at 11:41 am

          I’ve never used Fiverr for anything other than buying YT views and that was a fail.

          Also, I have never heard anyone say good things about Fiverr link building. However, for £3 I am not sure what one should expect!

          I have Ultimate Demon, but never really use it now. I am working on building out themed blog networks using Rankwyz for Tier 2 and aged domains/handbuilt web2.0’s for tier 1.

          Reply
          • Chris says

            March 7, 2014 at 11:44 am

            Ok cool thanks. Yeah the fiverr gigs I use used to work really well for Youtube videos (never use them on my money sites though) until a few months ago Google changed things for Youtube.

            I’ll check out Rankwyz – good idea! 🙂

  10. Raghu says

    April 17, 2014 at 3:35 pm

    Nick,
    A good case study, I have been trying to implement tiered link building. I did the same on one my affiliate site, I got a bit success then it went off down to 100th page.

    All I did is manually built 10 web2.0 as tier1 and 10 article sites for tier2 links, and then blasted some social bookmark and blog comments to tier1 hiring Fiverr guy. I have not used any of the tool like Ultimate Demon or GSA.

    I do have lot of questions about tiered links, I did follow Mathew and Jacob but I feel they still lack some information. Do you feel that just by creating manual 10 web2.0 [repeating the same 10 web2.0 sites once in every 15 days or so] and blasting links to the tier1 too will work.?

    Also you have not mentioned anything about the website you tried and keywords which is ranking. Is still the sites are on first page of google?

    Reply
    • admin says

      April 17, 2014 at 3:54 pm

      Hi Raghu,

      The case study site now ranks 1st place for 8 unique money terms. The big money terms are slowly climbing. They are now 28th – 40th. They were not in the top 100 for a long time… I will not give the site name or terms ranking for obvious reasons. The site is in skincare though.

      I cannot comment on your approach to tiered link building via hand built web 2.0’s + Fiverr as have not tried it. Any method will depend on niche/search term competition. I would however probably avoid Fiverr gigs. My advice is to just crack on and see what happens. 🙂

      Best,

      Nick

      Reply
      • Raghu says

        April 17, 2014 at 4:17 pm

        Thanks for your sincerely reply.

        Surely I am more interested to try the new things, I will share my method soon if got successful.

        Reply
        • admin says

          April 17, 2014 at 4:23 pm

          Sure, always be testing new things! Check out rankwyz if you are into web2.0’s. Its my latest project. I now have a test network of over 500 web 2.0’s in different niches that are slowly growing.

          Reply
  11. Shashank Bhattarai says

    April 20, 2014 at 3:05 pm

    Hey nick!! is your blog where you experimented this tierd structure still safe or its been penalized by google ? I heard that creating tons of back links quickly will hurt your site & will be thrown out of google..!!

    Reply
    • admin says

      April 20, 2014 at 3:58 pm

      Hi shashank, the site is still doing fine. Yes, this type of link building is risky but the point was to build a throwaway site so it didn’t matter what happened to it. So far it’s done me proud for a first attempt.
      Nick

      Reply
      • Shashank Bhattarai says

        April 22, 2014 at 3:19 am

        Thats amazing..!!! I am trying to implement your idea in a fresh blog i am going to create . I have planned to take your approach but i am confused.!! How much web 2.0 platform you create for 1 keyword ?? I have prepared the list how i will take my tierd link building campaign..
        I sent you a personal message via contact page. if possible reply me there.

        Best Regards,

        Reply
        • admin says

          April 22, 2014 at 2:27 pm

          I have seen your email and will attempt to reply. I think you are missing the point of the post though. I am ranking a site with GSA Search engine ranker, not manual web 2.0 building.

          It is impossible to tell you how many web 2.0s you will need to rank for a keyword, even if I knew what keyword you wanted to rank for. Just keep building them till you rank…

          Reply
  12. Amanda Parker says

    April 21, 2014 at 11:30 am

    Great experiment! You should be doing this only on sites that you stand to lose it’s credibility, which is the point of the author. You gave me an idea… reap the benefits while it lasts! Great job

    Reply
    • admin says

      April 21, 2014 at 6:15 pm

      Hi Amanda,
      Thanks for stopping by. Good luck with your idea!
      N

      Reply
  13. Beneath says

    May 26, 2014 at 3:41 am

    How’d the website stand against the new update last week? Any big rank changes?

    Reply
    • admin says

      May 26, 2014 at 1:02 pm

      Funnily enough I just wrote a post for Mathew Woodward with the post Panda updates here:

      http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/build-rank-spam-site-beat-google-updates/

      Enjoy!

      Nick

      Reply
      • zhichao says

        May 28, 2014 at 4:07 pm

        Before visiting your site, I had read this article. Now I have more understanding, since after reading your article. I have to add it to my favorites. My question is, do you build wordpress.com, blogspot or other web2.0 sites. Is SerEngines enough?

        Reply
        • admin says

          May 28, 2014 at 4:41 pm

          Yes, in this case study I used SERengines. It’s very good at creating multiple page web 2.0s although there is a learning curve to it.

          Nick

          Reply
  14. Vikram says

    May 28, 2014 at 6:03 am

    Not really a relevant question, but how much money did you make from this site? 😉 What were the affiliate commissions of the product that you were promoting?

    Reply
    • admin says

      May 28, 2014 at 2:41 pm

      It’s made just over $1000 so far this month. The commissions range from $23 – $50 with the average being $29.

      Nick

      Reply
  15. Travis says

    May 31, 2014 at 8:02 am

    Great post. I recently built a very similar case study and wrote about it over on Website Magazine (http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2014/05/20/when-and-how-to-use-black-and-gray-hat-seo.aspx) and i can say that using GSA and Wicked Article Creator will still rank a site pretty quickly.

    What I wanted to ask you about is Rankwyz. I like to test stuff so I have built out several networks on Rankwyz using a variety of settings. The best performing networks are ones that I bought the pre-made accounts and added a unique hand written article to each post, then added a few more over the next few weeks after the first post. Once I got 5-7 articles, I stopped adding posts and starting smashing them with GSA. Some of then now have Page Authority around 30-40 which isn’t bad for the amount of work I put into them.

    Have you been able to create any tier 1 blog networks on RankWyz that where beneficial to the money site’s keywords using spun articles, syndicated content, or any of the other built in tools on Rankwyz? I am looking for some combination to build good tier 1s without buying 5-7 articles per blog.

    Thanks in advance for your input!

    Reply
    • admin says

      June 2, 2014 at 9:55 pm

      I am in the process of building out 100’s rankwyz sites in a number of niches. They are all built using spun content. However I find a lot of the sites that the account creator generates are pretty useless for what I need them for so have been weeding out a lot of rubbish.

      However despite this, I have couple of sites starting to rank that are being powered by a tier one + GSA. It’s early days though.

      Nick

      Reply
      • Travis B. says

        June 4, 2014 at 5:17 am

        I am interested to see how those turn out for you. I purchases Wicked Article Creator a while back and I think I am going to see if the articles produced by WAC work out better than the junk that RankWyz creates automatically.

        I also have tried Iwriter for articles but if you do not go with the premium or elite writers, most of the content is just auto spun. The decent articles start around $6 for 500 words not bad but it can get expense.

        You know of any good places to get hand spun content that is readable and still unique enough to use 10-15 times?

        Reply
        • admin says

          June 4, 2014 at 9:15 am

          I find iWriter very hit and miss, even on elite and especially on a 500 word article. It gets better at 700+ words but then it gets a little expensive. I guess it serves a purpose though.

          For hand spun content, I don’t have any I can recommend. Check out some of the forums as I have seen ppl advertising. Its about $60 an article.

          I’ve been messing around with Word AI Turing. It’s not perfect but can generate readable unique copy. It’s a bit too white hat for me! 😉

          Reply
  16. Shan says

    June 3, 2014 at 6:59 am

    Hi admin really awesome post .I like to know if it is possible to make tier 1 link with GSA Using kontent machine as article source? Or Hand written article is necessary ? I tried to use GSA for tier 1 link creation but really failed.

    Can you provide us tips on how to create good tier 1 links?

    Regards
    Shan

    Reply
    • admin says

      June 4, 2014 at 9:00 am

      In this case study all content is using Kontent Machine and GSA Search Engine ranker. No hand written stuff at all. If you build this way, be prepared to lose it…

      A good tier one would be real websites. Either create high quality web 2.0s or buy some aged domains to create your own network.

      Nick

      Reply
  17. Gabriel says

    June 5, 2014 at 2:33 am

    Nice Article.
    I have 2 question?
    1 ) Did you use your Google Webmaster Tools and analistycs? Or You recommend create a new one?

    2) Did you use Google Adsense ?

    Thanks

    Reply
    • admin says

      June 5, 2014 at 11:33 am

      Thanks man.

      1) yes, I use them. Create a new account and use a proxy…

      2) No, not for this. Not really a fan of Adsense. It’s a last resort for me when trying to monetize a site. Also, watch your account doesn’t get banned if using spam.

      Nick

      Reply
  18. Ivaylo says

    June 6, 2014 at 4:38 pm

    Hey! First of all, very exciting test!
    One question – have you enabled re-verifying your CDF links?

    Reply
    • admin says

      June 7, 2014 at 12:09 pm

      Hey. Thanks!
      Yes, every 24 hours. Otherwise you’ll be building links to non-existent ones.
      Nick

      Reply
  19. Ervin Alcordo says

    June 9, 2014 at 1:43 am

    hey, I have questions and can’t find my answer in google so i would like to ask it.

    I have read some article that 1-tier site would be good in web 2.0 such wordpress and blogger.

    So my question is:
    To create 1-tier, should i make a relevant blog and update its content daily?
    or is it just 1 post?

    I really don’t understand.

    Reply
    • admin says

      June 9, 2014 at 1:29 pm

      Yes, your tier 1 can consist of web2.0s like you mention.

      You can create either one page or an actual maintained blog, using tools like RANKwyz. It all depends on your strategy.

      However just one web20 is unlikely to be of much use to you.

      Nick

      Reply
  20. Alireza says

    June 18, 2014 at 8:40 am

    Hi Nick,

    Very interesting read. Also read your post at Matthew’s site. One question. Did you only build links to the root domain, or did you build to inner pages as well? If so, how did you seperately target anchor’s to inner pages. For example, it’s not so good to build links with anchor “www.domain.com” for links like http://www.domain.com/page1.

    Thanks again

    Reply
    • admin says

      June 18, 2014 at 8:48 am

      Hi Alireza,

      Thanks for stopping by. Yes, I had spells of building links to the review/inner pages as well.

      As you suggested, I just redid the anchors to reflect the content they were linking to. E.g “product-name review” or “url” to page.

      Hope this helps,

      Nick

      Reply
      • Alireza says

        June 19, 2014 at 8:30 am

        Hi Nick,

        Thanks for your quick answer!
        Follow-up question, did you set-up a separate campaign (GSA project) to link to inner-pages (with relevant anchor)? Or did you somehow accomplish this in one of the tier’s in (same GSA project) as in the image in this post? Have not been able to find where in GSA to set-up a second URL with a second set of anchor’s, other than setting up a second campaign.

        All the best,
        Alireza

        Reply
        • admin says

          June 19, 2014 at 10:08 pm

          Hey man, no worries.

          If you want the project to post to multiple urls, then you can add them to the url section at the top. If you do this the anchor text sections below will need to be left blank (unless you want the same anchor profile), instead you put the anchor text in spintax after the url.

          It will look like this: http://www.urlgoeshere.com#{{Widgets|{Red|Blue|Big|Small} Widgets}

          You can include the naked url in the spintax by using %url%

          Hope this helps.

          Nick

          Reply
          • Alireza says

            June 27, 2014 at 10:52 am

            Thanks for your reply Nick!

            Is this what you did? Looking at the screenshots (at Matthew’s site), it seems you did not leave the anchor sections blank?? You had a screenshot of the anchors, and they were filled.

            Also more question. How many shared proxies did you use in total?

            All the best,
            Alireza

          • admin says

            June 27, 2014 at 11:04 am

            Yes, I started off using that method. I then switched to using the GSA sections as just focused on the homepage.

            Both achieve the same results. You just need to think about the spin file a bit more when doing multiple urls.

            If you are that worried, just set up a duplicate tier 1 for each url.

            In total I use 40 a month now. I started with just 10 though. Thats enough for 100 threads to run.

            Nick

  21. Stew says

    June 22, 2014 at 10:50 am

    Hi Nick,

    How old was the domain when you starting building links to it? Was it hosted with content at this point?

    The reason I ask is that I am seeing little success with this method on new sites but better results on older sites.

    Thank!

    Reply
    • admin says

      June 23, 2014 at 10:34 pm

      It was just a few months old when I started building links to it.

      I am sure older domains will perform better though.

      Nick

      Reply
  22. Shon says

    June 25, 2014 at 10:27 pm

    Hey Nick,

    Awesome post I always thought you can use GSA to rank sites and keep them ranked if you take your time and remain consistent.

    Is your site still brining in the same amounts of traffic? Also have you tried throwing any PBN links at it? Or are you just still using strickly GSA?

    Reply
    • admin says

      June 27, 2014 at 9:18 am

      Hey, thanks man.

      Yes, it still brings in traffic and more importantly sales. It is lower this month as the panda update threw an older site back into the mix which is also spamming hard and taking a few of my number 1 slots.

      I have slowed down link building to that site while doing maintenance on GSA SER and my site lists. Will be hitting back extra hard soon!

      I just used GSA SER for this site. Don’t really use PBN’s at the moment. What about you?

      Nick

      Reply
  23. muffins_ss says

    June 30, 2014 at 3:21 pm

    Hi Nick,

    I read this article about 2 months back. Thanks for the awesome post… so I hereby dedicate the 507736 verified links that I’ve since built to you.

    That said, I have a question. I notice that you are populating your Affiliate sites with 100% duplicate PLR articles, – no rewrites, all duplicate content. (excluding home + reviews).

    Is this standard practice? In all my travels I haven’t seen this done. Should I be doing this? Does it give an advantage? Should this be my new Standard Operating Procedure?

    Google Webmaster Guidelines would say this is bad bad baaaad but it looks like your test sites are saying otherwise?

    Thanks

    Reply
    • admin says

      June 30, 2014 at 4:27 pm

      Good work! I like it when people crack on with stuff.

      I don’t know what standard practise is for spam sites, but obviously as a rule I’d say unique is always better.

      I only did this with PLR content for speed. I wanted to test out GSA SER and tiered stuff without spending days building the site or spending money on it.

      As you say it challenges the general consensus, but that was not in any way my goal. Like most, I just wanted to make some quick cash.

      The site has survived all the May updates and still brings in traffic.

      Nick

      Reply
  24. Stew says

    June 30, 2014 at 6:44 pm

    Great to hear the site is still doing so well. Nick/Muffins_ss – how are you getting so many links? Are you running 24/7 on a VPS along with scraping using Scrapebox?

    I need to move of my home PC!!

    Reply
  25. Sabin says

    July 3, 2014 at 12:27 pm

    How did you do your anchor text ratio?

    Reply
    • admin says

      July 3, 2014 at 2:21 pm

      Randomly

      Reply
  26. Alireza says

    July 11, 2014 at 9:31 am

    Hi again Nick,

    Have some follow-up questions 🙂

    1. Do you use sources like lsikeywords.com, looking at LSI keywords used in the top 5 results of Google to set in your anchor text? When selecting anchors using google’s synonym/related search, how many levels do you search recursively, starting from your main phases?

    2. On Tier 1 CDF, do you only use niche relevant targets to post to or do you post to anything within selected platforms.

    3. In GSA it is possible to select Pause project after X number of submissions or verifications for 1 day. Selecting verifications will cause ALOT of submissions to occur and is not so controllable. I am now using submissions. How many do you select on Tier 1 CDF?

    All the best

    Reply
    • admin says

      July 15, 2014 at 3:14 pm

      Hey, sorry for delay, been on holiday.

      1) Use as many sources as you can for different ideas. I keep going until relevancy drops. It’s up to you how far you take it, you are just getting a good range of terms to create a nice relevant and balanced anchor text profile.

      2) No, I just hit what I can. Articles and wikis create a contextual relevancy. If you were trying to protect your site then try and look for low volume quality links. I think Scritty did a post on using GSA SER for that. Still, if I care about a site I’d never build links like this.

      3) You have complete control. Use “Pause project after x subs/veri in day” in options. Depends if I am scraping or using lists. I only use subs for lists. If you are churning and burning just build links like a nutter and dont wqorry about it too much.

      Hope this helps.

      Nick

      Reply
  27. Nikko Soller says

    August 9, 2014 at 9:30 am

    This is new to me, tiered link building. I only new blasting (churn and burn). Thanks fot this one. Im gonna try this tomorrow.

    PS: 150 a day will make me a king in my country tahaha

    Reply
    • admin says

      August 9, 2014 at 10:22 pm

      Enjoy the journey!

      Reply
  28. Joel says

    August 18, 2014 at 10:13 pm

    Nick,
    Nice case study. I am planning to do this with GSA shortly. I am curious to know if 8 mos later the rankings are holding and the site is still indexed?

    Reply
    • admin says

      August 19, 2014 at 3:51 pm

      Hi Joel,

      Yes, site is doing well thanks. This one still makes about $1000 a month on average. No signs of disappearing yet!

      Nick

      Reply
  29. Reven says

    August 23, 2014 at 6:11 pm

    Such a great case study, I hope i will be able to do it practically.

    I have read your article very carefully 2-3 times to grab every point.

    I have few question please answer them.

    Q. Which program did you use for scrapping fresh link to post your article? And with how many proxies in scrapper?

    Q. Tire 1 WEB 2.0 are Serengines platform as you mentioned. I want to know are those Tire 1 WEB 2.0 CDF has also platform from Serengines or it is use wiki,article,web 2.0 from GSA built in?

    Q. When we use Directory for posting then we have to feed GSA german and polish language article. I want to know which spinner you use to spin German and Polish language?

    Q. Can you please share your keyword list you use to scrap link for your tire link building?

    Thank You

    Reply
    • admin says

      August 25, 2014 at 5:52 pm

      Hi Reven,

      Thank you. There is no reason why you can’t. Remember that the site is just as important as the link building.

      1. Originally I just used GSA Search Engine Ranker to scrape its own targets. I just got an old domain and let it rip for a couple of weeks building EVERY link possible so I had some lists. I started with 10 but soon moved to 40. I tested loads but buyproxies were the best as just seemed to stay working for the whole month.

      2. One uses serengnies, the other the remaining CDF targets that GSA has built in. You can’t run the two together. If you buy it you will see.

      3. I never use that part and just delete those targets.

      4. No! Thats just lazy and a bit silly. You’ll just get the same targets as me. Use scrapebox uber suggest or GWT to build niche relevant KW lists.

      You are welcome!

      Nick

      Reply
      • reven says

        August 25, 2014 at 6:18 pm

        Thanks learnt so much from you…

        One more thing i forgot to ask.
        do you care how many links should create per day or you left GSA to build as many links as it can build per day?

        Reply
        • admin says

          August 25, 2014 at 6:32 pm

          With my new sites I care more about link velocity. With this one I didn’t so much as I was just learning and playing around and let it rip.

          If i were starting again now, I’d focus more on higher quality/relevant sites and lower volume.

          Nick

          Reply
  30. Reven says

    August 29, 2014 at 7:47 pm

    Hi Nick, I was trying to understand your tired link structure.

    What i understood is “Money site” is a group name and the “Secondary Money” is the actual site you are ranking and building links to it.

    So as you mentioned in your article That 1,2,3 CDF tiers are the link type(Article,wiki and other low level contextual links)

    1. Now i am wondering what kind of link you used in “Secondary Money”?

    2. What i consider by looking at Tired Structure image is that you build tire links to the “Secondary Money” links . Which are 108 links till the date you capture screenshot. Am i right?

    3. So the actual links directly build to your money site is just 108 and the 82000+ verified links are links of those 108 links. Am i right?

    4. Serengine tier, Did you build link to the “Secondary Money” links(108 verified links) or You built links direclty to the Money site?

    May i know how much links ahrefs show?

    I hope i asked it correctly…

    Reply
  31. Julien says

    September 17, 2014 at 3:53 pm

    Nice to see a detailed post like this 🙂 I just bought GSA and i look for some ways to use it ! I’am in your email list now 🙂

    Reply
  32. Arran says

    October 8, 2014 at 4:38 pm

    Hi Nick, been keeping an eye on your site since I saw your post on Matthew Woodward’s site…..

    I have a question…..how did you get so many links from GSA? Ive had it a month now and even with all the scraping in the world im only getting about 10% of what you have in the image above?

    Any ideas?

    Reply
    • admin says

      October 8, 2014 at 9:15 pm

      I am not sure without seeing your settings. There are tools you can use help build lists using footprints,scrapebox or gscraper. I didn’t start using them for a while though. Make sure you have lots of keywords and only select platforms you can build to.

      I set up a test campaign selecting all link types and 10,000 keywords and let it build links for a month before starting a campaign. I got about 100,000 unique targets during this time.

      I’ll list some tools to help you in another post shortly. If you subscribe to the emails you’ll get a heads up.

      Nick

      Reply
  33. zxlgo says

    October 9, 2014 at 3:07 am

    Is it a amazon affiliate website? or others? can you tell me? thank you.

    Reply
    • admin says

      October 9, 2014 at 4:19 pm

      No, it’s not Amazon. Its just direct affiliate offers.

      Nick

      Reply
  34. Nacho says

    October 16, 2014 at 7:21 pm

    Hi!

    How many links per day do you build to the MS, Tier1 and Tier2?

    Thanks!!

    Reply
    • admin says

      October 19, 2014 at 10:36 pm

      Depends on your tactic really. Between 1 and 10. You’ll have to experiment.

      Reply
  35. Jeff Zim says

    October 27, 2014 at 5:36 pm

    Hey,
    Interesting post, went through all the comments and took a lot away from it.

    How is the site doing today? Has it survived recent Google updates?

    Jeff Z

    Reply
    • admin says

      October 29, 2014 at 8:31 am

      Hi Jeff,

      Glad you enjoyed the post. There is a more thorough version on Matthew Woodward’s blog which I wrote after this.

      See my latest post: . It got hit with the last penguin, as expected. The good news I cloned the site and redirected the old domain last week and it’s already ranking and getting traffic and sales.

      Best.

      Nick

      Reply
  36. Tim says

    December 6, 2014 at 2:46 pm

    Hey Nick,
    Great study! I’m trying the techniques on some sites of my own. Have you thought about trying this with a brand new site just to see what happens?

    Reply
    • admin says

      December 8, 2014 at 9:17 pm

      Thanks, yes, I do all the time!
      N

      Reply
      • Tim says

        December 8, 2014 at 11:51 pm

        Do they rank as quick or slower?

        Reply
        • admin says

          December 8, 2014 at 11:54 pm

          The case study was a new domain also. It all depends on niche, keywords and links. I use other methods to get links and not just gsa now.

          Reply
  37. David says

    December 20, 2014 at 4:52 pm

    Hi Nick,

    What other link building methods are you using?

    You should do another case study – readers (like me) will lap it up.

    Cheers,
    David

    Reply
  38. Jezza says

    January 9, 2015 at 3:02 pm

    Hi Nick,

    You mentioned that this site ranked for quite a few months before it was hit with a penalty. How did you taper off your links from the screenshots above, did you continue building them at this velocity or did you slow them down over a number of weeks once you had ranked.

    Cheers

    Reply
  39. Hamayon says

    January 14, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    You build backlink for your website with GSA SER, so you used black hat method. I think now your website is over 1 year old. I just want to know that if your website is still ranked in the search engine for targeted keywords or its down now? I just want to know how quality backlinks GSA build for you.

    Thanks
    – Hamayon.

    Reply
    • admin says

      January 16, 2015 at 1:21 pm

      The site got hit with the last penguin roll out but has successfully re-ranked using a 301 redirect and a new domain with cloned site.
      Nick

      Reply
    • admin says

      January 16, 2015 at 1:22 pm

      The quality is normally pretty poor but they still help sites rank. Best to mix it up if you can with other sources. You can still rank for lower volume terms easily using GSA though so give it a crack.
      Nick

      Reply
      • Hamayon says

        March 3, 2015 at 3:07 pm

        Thanks for replying, I think ranking sites with GSA is still a risk but I know some of my friends who are ranking their YouTube videos in a very less time with GSA SER, I am also thinking to give it a try for my YouTube videos as white hat method require a lot of hard work and time.

        – Hamayon

        Reply
  40. MindlessWizard says

    March 14, 2015 at 8:33 am

    People are still using GSA SER to rank website for churn and burn these days. So, if you can really tweak your methods and try different methods you can still succeed with GAS for some time. The problem these days i am facing with GSA is indexing the urls it creates.

    Well, Great post though 🙂

    Reply
  41. Carl says

    April 1, 2015 at 2:24 am

    Hey Nick,
    I bought all the tools and set things up as you instructed……5 weeks in…..1st sale!!!

    Thanks

    Reply
  42. med says

    April 5, 2015 at 4:51 pm

    Hi Nick,

    How can I user GSA safely for long terms without a risk to be banned ?

    Tks

    Reply
    • admin says

      April 28, 2015 at 1:28 pm

      Keep the links well away from the money site. Use for tier 2 down and keep the ability to severe the links from the money site as well. All in all I would suggest not doing this kind of link building if you want to avoid all risks of being banned.
      Nick

      Reply
  43. Bryan says

    April 26, 2015 at 7:19 pm

    Hi Nick, may I know which plugin did you use to create the product comparison table for your case study site?

    Thanks

    Reply
    • admin says

      April 28, 2015 at 1:26 pm

      Click here https://wordpress.org/plugins/tablepress/

      Reply
  44. Mike says

    April 28, 2015 at 6:30 pm

    I already use this plugin on one of my blogs where I sell different products and I can say that works very well. My page is more organized now and my products have more visibility this way.

    Reply
  45. Matej says

    June 2, 2015 at 12:54 pm

    Do you think if you could produce enough links per day with GSA SER, that you could rank search terms with higher competition? Is the number of links limiting factor?

    Reply
  46. Danur says

    June 13, 2015 at 2:09 pm

    Hello,

    Thanks for the guide, it’s very helpful. Just want to ask, did you post on same site to get more than ten thousand links? If so, did you tick “per url”?

    Thank you

    Reply
  47. andhy says

    September 17, 2015 at 3:31 pm

    Hi nick,

    so, basically, you sent spam backlink to all tiers ??

    Reply

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