2026-09-24 · 5 min read
How to choose the right PBN tier for your goal
Short answer
Choose a PBN tier by how much weight a target page needs, not by the tier number. A tier caps how many mainpage links one site carries — 100, 20 or 10 on our network. Fewer links per site means less dilution, so Tier 3 suits money pages and Tier 1 suits breadth.
What a tier actually measures
A tier is not a quality grade someone assigned by eye. It is a hard cap on how many mainpage links a single site in the network will ever carry.
On our network that cap is 100 for Tier 1, 20 for Tier 2 and 10 for Tier 3, with Custom set by agreement. The tier tells you how crowded the page your link sits on is allowed to become.
- Tier 1 — up to 100 mainpage links per site
- Tier 2 — up to 20
- Tier 3 — up to 10, the least diluted placement we sell
- Custom — a cap agreed for your campaign
Why a smaller cap means a stronger link
This reads backwards at first glance, and it is the single thing buyers most often get wrong. Everywhere else in this industry a bigger number means more: more links, more sites, higher DR. Here the number counts competition for the same resource, so less of it is better.
Tier 3 is the strongest tier precisely because 10 is smaller than 100.
The dilution mechanism
The reason is structural rather than a matter of opinion. A page passes a finite amount of value through its outbound links, and that amount is divided among them. This has been the behaviour since the original PageRank model, which divided a page's score by its number of outbound links.
So the arithmetic is simple. If a homepage links out 100 times, each link carries roughly a hundredth of what that page can pass. At 10 links, each carries roughly a tenth. Same page, same authority, ten times the share per link.
This is why buying by domain metrics alone misleads. A DR 60 homepage already carrying 100 outbound links can easily pass less to your site than a DR 40 homepage carrying 10.
Dilution is not the only reason
Dilution is the measurable part. There is a second reason that is harder to quantify and just as real.
A homepage carrying a hundred outbound links to unrelated commercial sites looks like exactly what it is. Fewer links per site produces pages that read as ordinary sites rather than as link inventory, and that difference affects how durable a placement is over time, not only how much it passes on the day it goes live.
Where guest posts sit
Tiers apply to mainpage links only. Guest posts are not tiered, because a guest post is its own article rather than a slot on a shared homepage, and it is priced and placed separately.
Both formats are placed for 12 months.
Which tier to choose
There is no universally correct answer, and a campaign made entirely of one tier is unusual.
Tier 3 is where to concentrate when you need maximum weight on a small number of target pages — a money page, a page you are trying to recover, a competitive term. Tier 1 covers breadth: more placements for the same spend, useful for volume and for supporting pages that do not need to carry a hard term on their own.
If you are unsure, the useful conversation is about which pages need to move, not about which tier sounds best. The tier follows from that.
What a tier does not tell you
A tier caps dilution. It says nothing about the topical fit between the host site and yours, whether the page is indexed, or what the site's own link profile looks like.
A Tier 3 placement on a site with no relevance to your subject is not automatically better than a Tier 1 placement on a site that matches it closely. The tier is one variable among several, and the honest way to use it is as a floor on placement quality rather than as the whole specification.
Frequently asked questions
- What does a PBN tier mean?
- It is the maximum number of mainpage links that will ever be placed on a single site in the network. Tier 1 allows up to 100, Tier 2 up to 20, Tier 3 up to 10, and Custom is agreed per campaign. It is a cap on crowding, not a grade assigned by eye.
- Why is Tier 3 better than Tier 1 with a smaller number?
- Because the number counts competition for the same resource. A page divides the value it passes among its outbound links, so 10 links on a homepage each receive roughly a tenth of what it can pass, while 100 links each receive roughly a hundredth. Less dilution, stronger placement.
- Do guest posts have tiers?
- No. Tiers apply to mainpage links only. A guest post is its own article rather than a slot on a shared homepage, so it carries no tier limit and is priced and placed separately.
- Is a Tier 3 link always better than a Tier 1 link?
- Not automatically. A tier caps dilution but says nothing about topical relevance, whether the page is indexed, or the host site's own link profile. A Tier 3 placement on an unrelated site can be worth less than a Tier 1 placement on a closely matching one.
- How long do PBN placements stay live?
- Twelve months, for both mainpage links and guest posts.