Walk the tree in order
01Does a third-party page already link to your explainer?
No: stop. You have no tier 1 to strengthen. Buy a normal placement to your page instead.
02Is that linking page indexed and on a real site?
Search its URL in Google. Not found: stop, because power sent there leads nowhere.
03Is the linking page worth the cost?
A mention from a respected outlet, yes. A mention buried on a spammy listing, no.
04Is your own page the better target?
Often it is. Direct links to the explainer are easier to reason about than a chain.
05Still yes? Set a small cap
Spend a fraction of what you spent reaching tier 1 and review after six weeks.
What tier 2 means in this context
Tier 1 means a link pointing straight at your page, the way most bought placements work. Tier 2 means a link pointing at the page that points at yours.
It is a niche idea. On our marketplace you choose the target URL of each order, so the target can be your own page or the URL of an article that mentions you. We do not claim that a tier 2 link passes any measurable value. Google has never published a formula, and Ahrefs and Semrush only show you what they crawled.
For a news blogger it is tempting. The idea has a catch, because you cannot easily buy straight to a story that is still moving. It still needs a real tier 1 link underneath, and a link to a dying article gains nothing. Compare the 48-hour test before you start.
Tier 1 or tier 2 for a trend explainer
Our judgement, with example framing. Check your own numbers.| Situation | Better choice | Note |
|---|
| No outside page mentions the explainer | Tier 1 placement | Nothing exists to feed |
|---|
| A strong outlet quoted your explainer | Consider tier 2 | Support that page, if it is indexed |
|---|
| Your hub carries many stories | Tier 1 to the hub | One URL to track |
|---|
| Tight budget under $100 | Tier 1 | Chains need more orders to read |
|---|
A hypothetical walk through the tree
Take an example blog that covers streaming-service price hikes. Its explainer on every plan change was quoted by a mid-sized tech site last spring.
Step one passes, because a third-party page links to the explainer. Step two passes too, since the tech article is indexed and sits on a real site. The linking page is worth supporting, so step three passes.
At step four, though, the owner notices the explainer itself is stale. Updating it and buying a direct placement is cheaper and easier to track than feeding the quote. The tree ends in a rewrite, not in a purchase. That outcome is common, and it is a fine one.
All names and facts here are invented to show how the questions work.
Watch the footprintChains of cheap links to cheap links are the pattern Google's spam policies warn about. Since March 2024 the scaled content and link spam rules have been enforced harder. Keep relevance first and volume last.
How we would cap it
Cap tier 2 at one fifth of the explainer's total link budget, which keeps the experiment small enough to forget about. Skip it. That is the right answer when you have under $100.
Log the linking page, its date and the order number. When the six-week review arrives, you look at the explainer's impressions, not at the middle page. The budget examples show how to split a month.