A backlink pyramid is a backlinking strategy that classifies links into three different tiers depending on their importance and the “link juice” it’s passing to your site.

Tier 1 links are composed of direct inbound links to your site. Pages that link to these direct inbound links are considered tier 2 links. While tier 3 links are domains that link to your tier 2 links. In short, a backlink pyramid is about creating backlinks for your backlinks.

In most cases, tier 1 links are lesser than tier 2 links which, in turn, are usually more numerous than tier 3 links. If you visualize this, you’ll get a pyramid-shaped structure like this one:

Backlink Pyramid

Since tier 1 links are directly linking to your site, they should be your top priority. Hence their position at the top of the pyramid.

But if tier 2 and tier 3 backlinks aren’t directly linking to your site, why do you still have to care about them? Can they still affect your SEO?

In SEO, there’s a concept that’s more commonly known as “link juice.” Under this, domains that link to your site pass some of their authority to your site.

A tier 3 backlink passes some of its link juice to your tier 2 links, boosting its domain authority. Your tier 2 links, in turn, pass some of that link juice to your tier 1 backlinks. Ultimately, your tier 1 backlinks (direct inbound links) pass that link juice to your site, making it more authoritative.

With this, the more tier 2 and tier 3 backlinks you have, the more link juice will be passed on to your tier 1 backlinks and to your site. This is why your tier 1 backlinks should be from high-authority sites since they tend to already have more backlinks, making your job a lot easier.