The 2nd Tier Advantage of Modern Day SEO: Online PR example

As major news sites try to retain some of their link-equity, many have turned to not linking-out at all, rarely or building landing pages for those companies as opposed to linking to them directly. This has created a sort of SEO blackhole, but what are the implications for people who work in SEO?

What is the 2nd tier link advantage?

2nd tier links are links from authoritative sites or pages that filter through to your site via a middle-man/page.  However there is a second version, whereby companies develop internal landing pages that are linked to rather than linking directly to the website in question.

2nd Tier Links

Reporting in your link-profile might therefore only find one link from a site when in actual fact that link has (on a basic level) amalgamated the value of many links from internal link structures.

The original thread on WebMasterWorld talks about the value of 2nd tier links, but instead of just explaining the situation, I thought I would apply it to a popular link-building method – online PR.

2nd tier links in context

2nd tier links can be effective.  But many items feed in to their effectiveness.  Consider whether these links come from the sidebar/blogroll, contextual links, or quick-links/breadcrumb navigation, how frequently they link (both on grounds of volume and velocity), authority, the strength of those pages providing the link and the page’s strength itself.

Online PR benefits beyond direct links to your site.

Some sites, rather than linking directly to your website, will link to a landing page that has a description of your website / company.  This is not ideal, but it’s not so bad either, especially when that page links to your page of course.

As the strength of this page increases from the sites internal linking, so does the weight that is passed to your site.

Case in point: I was analysing a client’s link-profile as part of a ‘digital landscape review’ recently and enjoyed seeing the benefits of this to great affect.  In this instance, I could really see the affect of online PR as this caused so many citations of the company in question.

Measuring the 2nd Tier Advantage: SEO Tools

One of my favourite aspects of SEOBook’s toolbar is the SEO X-ray, it tells you how many pages link in to the page from the site. This means, on a basic level, that you can see how strong the page is as a 2nd tier provider of the link.

SEOMoz’s Linkscape will define this strength, trust, authority of those pages and links, but as it relies on major updates (reported to be every 3-6 weeks) it cannot consistently be relied upon to track changes as frequently as you might like.

Whilst in the process of link-building too, you can begin to learn which sites use this approach in your niche via brand mentions.  Do you know who’s talking about your brand?

Citations with or without a link may matter

Citations from 3rd party websites without a link have previously been thought to be fruitless when looking at a website’s link-profile. But the development of non-linking citation ranking factors could well be beginning to play a role, and as such factors in some of this buzz into their algorithms.

If this was the case it is likely that there would be considerations of certain TrustRank (or similar) algorithms to consider high-authority news sources’ citations, over a spam network.

The problem with SEO’s blackhole

Sites that build-out pages can end up out-ranking you for brand-orientated queries.  If this landing page ends-up outranking your site you could well be in trouble with regard to shifting it too -  many news sites are very authoritative in niche and mass markets…SME websites are likely to be the most vulnerable here.

Other examples of the 2nd Tier Advantage

There are also other examples too, maybe not the same quality but there’s quite a few out there.  For a long time now, people have applied this principle when looking for ‘good quality’ sources of links.  These might have included checking DMOZ, using forums and social media sites (comments link back to profile pages that link-out), or even looking at what certain top-level domains link out to,  such as .gov or .edu, etc, for those much loved high-trust links.

Economics of the 2nd Tier Advantage

How far back up the link-profile do you want to go?!  2nd, 3rd, 4th tier advantage – the link-graph is a complex, multi-dimensional system so maybe just look at the 2nd tier for now…I’m sure there’s plenty there to keep you busy in your analysis 

The economics of such a link-building method is even more difficult to measure the return, than a specific link to a specific page – measuring one relationship is easier than the merger of several of course.  Putting an exact value against hundreds of links if the PR has been especially successfully can be difficult too.  So if your activity is closely managed on ROI metrics then this might be a tough approach, but needless to say it’s something to keep an eye out for in your clients link-profile.

**Formula to remember:

PR = Interested Audience = Citations = Links = Organic SERPs Visbility + Media Visibility

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