freejung - 8:08 pm on Jun 21, 2011 (gmt 0)

(2) add some gratuitous, albeit unique, content to my second-tier pages

numnum, I'm thinking the same thing as I outlined above. I would go with (2) except don't think of it as "gratuitous" content, try to make it useful content that helps the users decide whether to click on a third-tier link and which one they should be going to. These pages are purely navigational, but I don't think that's a problem in and of itself provided they serve a useful navigational purpose -- i.e. helping the users to orient themselves within the site and decide where to go next.