Tiered Link Building: How the Pyramid Works, What Google’s Spam Policy Says, and How Few Links Ever Point at You

Tiered link building means building links to the pages that link to you: a first tier of links points at your site, a second tier points at the first, and often a third tier, usually made with automated tools, points at the second. The idea is to push ranking credit up the chain without your own site being touched by the low-quality links. Google’s spam policies describe almost every part of that structure as link spam, from “Using automated programs or services to create links to your site” to “Low-quality directory or bookmark site links”. Below are Google’s own words, a table matching each tier to the policy it breaks, and a worked model of how few of the links in a tiered scheme ever point at the site they are meant to help.

How a tiered link scheme is built

The structure is always a pyramid with your site, often called the money site, at the top.

• Tier 1: links that point directly at your site. These are the links you will see in your own backlink report, usually guest posts, paid placements, PBN posts or web 2.0 blogs created for the purpose.
• Tier 2: links that point at the tier 1 pages, to make those pages look stronger. Typically more web 2.0 posts, profile links and article directory submissions.
• Tier 3: links that point at tier 2, usually in large volume and made by software: blog comments, forum profiles, bookmarks and scraped pages.

Sellers present the lower tiers as a buffer: the junk never touches your domain, so the theory goes, only the “power” flows upward. That theory is the whole product, and it is the part Google’s policies address directly.

What Google says about it

Quoted from Google Search Central’s spam policies page, last updated 28 August 2026 and checked today, 10 October 2026. The link spam section opens with a one-sentence definition and then lists examples.

Link spam is the practice of creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings.

Google Search Central, spam policies

Two words in that sentence do the work. “Creating” means the policy is about links someone built, wherever they sit, and “primarily” makes purpose the test. A tier 2 or tier 3 link has no purpose except to make a tier 1 link pass more ranking credit, so the lower tiers fail the test on their own terms, even though they never touch your domain. The same page is clear about the consequence: “Sites that violate our policies may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all.”

When the problem reaches a human reviewer, the Search Console manual actions report describes the action in one line: “Google has detected a pattern of unnatural, artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to your site.” The word that matters is pattern. A tiered scheme is a pattern by design, which is why it is one of the common roads to an unnatural links penalty.

Each tier against Google’s link spam examples

The left column lists what typically goes into each tier. The middle column is the matching example from Google’s link spam list, quoted exactly. The right column is the practical point.

Google does say that buying links for advertising is a normal part of the web when the link is qualified with rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored”. A tiered scheme cannot use that exemption, because a qualified link passes no ranking credit, and passing ranking credit is the only thing the tiers are built to do. My guide to what backlinks are and which rel attribute each needs covers the qualified-link rules in full.

A worked model: how many links point at you?

This is a model, not a client case. The assumptions are labelled so you can swap in the numbers a seller quotes you. Each tier 1 link gets a fixed number of tier 2 links, and each tier 2 link gets a fixed number of tier 3 links. Nothing else is assumed.

Three things follow from the arithmetic.

• Your backlink report shows almost none of it. In the typical package, 10 of 10,260 links point at you. The other 10,250 sit on other people’s pages, so they never appear in your own link reports, but they are what makes the 10 tier 1 links look the way they do.
• The buffer does not protect the links that count. Every tier exists to strengthen tier 1, and tier 1 is a set of links built to manipulate ranking, pointing straight at your site. The pattern Google’s manual actions describe is a pattern of links “pointing to your site”, and that is exactly what tier 1 is.
• Cleanup is limited to the top of the pyramid. You can only ask for the removal of links on pages that link to you, or disavow those domains. You have no control over the 10,000 tier 3 links, and no reason to chase them.

If you already bought tiered links

Google’s manual actions report sets the order of work for an unnatural links action, quoted exactly: “If you can get a backlink removed, make a good-faith effort to remove the link first.” It also warns that “Blindly adding all backlinks to the disavow file is not considered a good-faith effort” and that you should “Make sure that you don’t disavow organic links to your site.”

1. Ask the seller for the tier 1 list. Every tiered package has one, because the seller had to build the tiers on top of it. Match it against your own backlink exports.
2. Request removal of tier 1 links you can reach. Keep a record of each request and reply, because a reconsideration request needs evidence of the effort.
3. Disavow what you cannot remove, at domain level where it fits. Google’s guidance allows the “domain:” operator for multiple links from one domain. My disavow file guide covers the format and the mistakes that get files ignored.
4. Leave tier 2 and tier 3 alone. They do not point at your site, so they are not in scope for removal or disavow.
5. If there is a manual action, request reconsideration only after the cleanup. The written request that gets accepted is covered in Google penalty removal.

If there is no manual action and you are not sure whether the links have hurt you, start with my Google penalty recovery guide, which separates a link problem from the other common causes of a traffic drop, and with the checks in toxic backlinks.

Common mistakes

• Believing the lower tiers are invisible. They are invisible in your own reports, but Google’s definition is about links created “primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings”, wherever they are placed.
• Calling it white hat because tier 1 is a real article. A real article holding a link that was paid for or built for ranking is still on Google’s list.
• Disavowing everything in a panic. Google says blind disavows are not a good-faith effort and that organic links should not be disavowed.
• Confusing it with an attack. If you never bought links and suddenly see thousands of spammy ones, read negative SEO attacks before you assume someone sold you a tiered package.

Related reading

• Google Penalty Recovery: how I diagnose and reverse a traffic collapse
• Unnatural links: what the manual action means and how to fix it
• PBN backlinks: why private blog networks get caught
• The disavow file, explained
• What are backlinks? What Google says they do