Pyramids VS direct links

[IngvarXH]

A lot used to be made of pyramid link building. Is it still effective?

Let's say you had 100 links to use. Would you rather point all 100 links to money site (assume they are guest post-type links, not obviously spammy but still lower quality sites) or would you rather point 10 links to 10 of your microsites that have a dofollow backlink to your money site?

 

[Future State]

If the sites are honestly not spammy, are relevant in topic, and are contextual links, I'd want all 100 pointing straight to my site. Any time there's a chance to get a link from a domain I don't have a link from, I want it direct to my site. If I can exploit extra links from the same domain I might start pointing them to other solid backlink locations though, tiering up.

 

[Ryuzaki]

Yes, it's effective. Tiered link-building can still pass on extra page rank to the final destination. It's not something I'd worry about though. I'd use just enough to ensure the page got indexed (and I'd question even using that as a tier one if indexing was an issue).

I agree with the sentiment above that you're far better aiming good links directly to your site, even if you get more than one link from the same domain. I wouldn't start trying to use them for tiering until I'd hit every inner page I reasonably could. If you can milk it that hard though, it might be safer to use them for tiering after the first 3 links or so.

 

[IngvarXH]

I wouldn't start trying to use them for tiering until I'd hit every inner page I reasonably could. If you can milk it that hard though, it might be safer to use them for tiering after the first 3 links or so.

Not sure what you mean by "after the first 3 links or so". Does that mean once you have 3 links to an inner page you build tier 2 links to those tier 1 links?

 

[Ryuzaki]

I meant that after you get 3 links from the same domain, spread out across several of your posts, I'd consider using further links from that same domain as tiered links. That number could be 5, or 10. That'd be up to you to decide. 3 was just an example. I'd still take the links direct up to 10, especially if it's a solid site I'm getting the links from and I can hit a different post each time.

The reason is, you'll start getting diminished returns from links from the same domain after some point. The diminishing effect is lessened if you spread the links across your own posts, but at some point you'll get more ranking power out of giving those additional links to a tier.

What I'm trying to say is that if you keep hitting the exact same page with more and more links from the same domain, they'll quickly do less and less for you. If you spread those links around different posts, they'll keep being effective for longer, but will still eventually stop being as powerful as a link from a domain you haven't ever had a link from.

So if you can identify that point in time, you'll do better to start sending those links to a tier and making them more powerful.