This is the project template I clone for every new tier 2 GSA SER campaign. Settings tuned for the post-March-2026 spam update environment, used across 30+ active campaigns on my own niche sites.
Use this as a starting point and adjust per niche. The defaults here are conservative — they prioritize property survival over raw verification rate. If you want to push harder on velocity at the cost of some footprint risk, the comments below each setting tell you what to change.
Project metadata
- Name format:
TIER2-{site}-{tier1url}-{yyyymm}— e.g.TIER2-bluewidgets-medium-april26. Makes log analysis trivial when you have 50+ projects running. - URL list: the tier 1 property URL only. Never the money site URL.
- Multiple URLs per project: avoid. One project per tier 1 URL gives you cleaner statistics and lets you pause individual projects without affecting others.
Anchor text mix
For tier 2 → tier 1, the mix that has held up best in the 2026 environment:
- 50% URL anchors (the raw URL of the tier 1 property)
- 30% brand of the tier 1 property (e.g. “John’s Widget Blog”)
- 15% generic (“click here”, “this article”, “see more”, “learn more”, “useful resource”)
- 5% LSI / partial-match keyword
- 0% exact-match keyword
Why no exact-match: tier 2 anchors with exact-match keywords devalue the tier 1 property they point at. Save the keyword anchors for tier 1 → money site, where they live in a natural mix.
Engine selection
For tier 2 (build authority on tier 1 property):
- Article Directory — on
- Article-Wiki — on
- Wiki — on
- Web 2.0 — on
- Social Network — on
- Blog Comment — off (low quality in 2026; LLMs ignore most blog comment platforms)
- Forum — off (high captcha cost, low verification rate)
- Indexer — off (use a separate tier 3 project)
- Bookmark — off (tier 3 only)
Filters
- Minimum DA: 10
- Minimum PA: 10
- OBL max: 100
- Language: English (or your niche language)
- Country: leave open unless your niche is geo-specific
- Skip if URL contains: standard list of obvious spam patterns (download, gambling, casino, free-money, etc.)
- Maximum verified URLs per domain: 1 — prevents footprints from dominating any one domain
Content settings
- Article source: custom folder of LLM-generated articles (200-500 unique pieces, 600-900 words each)
- Use spinner: NO. Spinner output is the most common reason for the March 2026 spam update penalty.
- Article title generation: use first sentence as title (avoids generic spammy titles)
- Macros: randomize author name, randomize publication date within last 90 days
Schedule
- Verified posts per day: 100 (conservative; raise to 200-300 once stable)
- Threads: 50 (per project; aggregate 250 across 5 active projects on a Contabo VPS M)
- Pause submissions for: hours when your VPS is low-bandwidth (none for Contabo dedicated bandwidth)
- Stop after X verified URLs: 2,500 per tier 1 URL is the natural cap. More than this looks unnatural.
Captcha settings
- Primary: CapMonster Cloud
- Fallback 1: 2Captcha
- Use only if other captcha service failed: checked
- Maximum captcha solving time: 90 seconds
Proxy settings
Inherit global — configured once in Options → Submission → Proxies, applies to all projects. See the best proxies for GSA SER spoke for current recommendations.
Tier 3 companion project
For each tier 2 project, create a paired tier 3 project with these differences:
- URL list: paste in your tier 2 verified URLs (export them from the tier 2 project periodically)
- Engines: Bookmark + Indexer + Ping only
- Anchors: 100% URL anchor
- Content: generated on the fly (no folder needed)
- Verified posts per day: 500 (faster is better at tier 3)
- Filters: no DA/PA minimum (tier 3 platforms have none)
Want the actual file?
I keep a working .gsaproj export in my members area for SERVL subscribers. Coming as a free download here in Q3 2026 once I clean it up for general use.
For now, the settings above are the same ones inside that file. Configure manually and you have an identical setup.