Authority Sites – What Are They?

You know you are supposed to get links from sites with a high reputation as they are considered ‘authority’. How do you decide this? Is it solely based on PageRank?

Finding websites with authority is major consideration when you start planning your linking campaign. There are many ways to measure domain authority; the quality and quantity of the links, PageRank, domain rankings and relevancy of domain keywords.

If an older domain which has 1000 links from other trusted sites links to you, it is worth more than a site with 10,000 junk links or from a site with 10 links. You have to balance the quality and quantity. Paid directories, where you can buy links for PageRank and Google allows it are a dying practice.  Paid for links are on the whole not allowed.

PageRank can help you if it is coming in from another site, but remember there appears to be a several month lag between real time stats and the visible toolbar! Other factors may have a greater impact. If a site already ranking for some of the keywords you are targeting links to you, that is a plus. If they are already ranking for that term and find you worthy of a link, Google pays attention.

Some sites do rank for keywords which don’t appear prominently on their site, sites with a domains similar to yourscan help you by linking to you. Keywords and anchor text help improve the quality of links. Be the kind of site other webmasters find valuable, and they will like to link to you.

If your links are coming from .gov and .edu sites that have relevancy to your topic, then you are linking well. Links from quality websites to you (when the linking page itself has good authority) can give you some authority.

The url significance can also have an effect. You don’t want to be linked to from a session ID or randomly generated url.  .PDF or .doc extensions can affect weight quality – if the doc itself has numerous inbound links giving it authority of its own.

A static page with links to it being added over a long period of time is valuable as it is not outdated. A news site which is updated daily may also be a high quality link since they are being kept up to date. It depends on the type of site.

Authority sites meet the above criteria. The more high quality links you have, the more your site becomes an authority in its own right and the closer you are to the top of the pile.