Get Inbound Links from Authority Sites - Web Hosting Provider

Do you want to have your website rank well in search engine results? Create good content — and get authority sites to link to it.

Search engines treat links to other sites as votes for the sites linked to. But not all links are equal. More weight is given to inbound links from sites that search engines recognize as authority sites. Such links can aid greatly in having sites rank well in search engine results.

However, acquiring those links requires more effort than simply asking the webmasters of those authority sites to link to your site. If a site is seen as an authority site, everyone wants links from them.

What are authority sites?

Websites that a lot of other sites link to as a source of authoritative information are recognized by search engines as authority sites. They have some or most of these characteristics:

• Content on a particular subject, for example, health, or of a particular type, such as a news site
• Dozens or hundreds of web pages, some of which are updated regularly
• Many inbound links from related sites
• Outgoing links to quality sites with relevant content
• A professional appearance
• An authoritative domain extension such as .gov or .edu (but authority sites can have any extension)
• A high Google PR rank

Make your site measure up

Looking for webmasters to link to your site is a little like dating. You can spend a lot of time searching for a suitable match, but unless you have qualities that appeal to the other party, prospective dates / webmasters aren't going to be interested.

Does your website look professional? If the design looks dated or amateurish, webmasters of quality sites will be reluctant to link to it.

Does each page focus on one topic? If it discusses several topics and the site you want inbound links from covers only one of those topics, you may not get that link. Webmasters want to link to content relevant to their sites, not partly relevant content mixed with other content on the same page.

Is the tone and credibility of your site similar to that of the target website? Sites that use a conservative, informative tone, for example, are likely to link only to other sites with similar tones and levels of credibility.

Is your site informative without trying to sell something on every page? Every page may work to help sales, but pages that are just informational are easier to get inbound links to.

Does your site already have links from authority or other professional-looking sites? Each quality inbound link you have makes it easier to acquire more inbound links. While reciprocal links are of less value for SERP (search engine results pages) than just inbound links are, reciprocal links are a good way to start acquiring inbound links.

Find relevant authority sites

Links from authority sites are useful only if the authority sites have content that's relevant to the content at your site. If the sites are in competition with your site, they aren't going to link to yours, so you need to find relevant authority sites that don't sell what you sell. Search for these types of websites:

• Sites that cover a broader version of the same content as yours — if your site is about breast cancer, for example, look for authority sites on cancer of various types
• Sites that provide similar information but perhaps from a different point of view
• Sites for professional or other organizations in your field
• Sites about your geographical area, such as the local Chamber of Commerce website
• Blogs by knowledgeable people in the field who write about your content area
• Sites that link to your competition

To find such sites, start with authority sites for your industry. To find sites with specific domain extensions, search in Yahoo using the keyword term and the extension, for example, "breast cancer .edu" (but without the quotation marks).

Search for who links to the competition, who they link to, and what sites rank well for your target keywords for each landing page at your site.

Quality article directories may be authority sites. If you want to write articles containing links to your site and submit them to article directories (search for "article directories"), you'll get inbound links without having to ask webmasters to link to your site.

Look also for quality directories for your content area. If you can get your site listed in DMOZ, that inbound link will repeat itself as other sites use DMOZ content.

Links from Wikipedia used to be coveted inbound links as Wikipedia typically ranks high in search engine results. However, Wikipedia recently changed its policy so that all outgoing links are nofollow, meaning that search engines are directed not to follow them.

Research authority sites

Once you've compiled a list of relevant authority sites, decide which ones you most want to ask for inbound links from.

Study the site's relevance. Is your website content related enough for the webmaster of the target site to consider linking to yours? Do both sites attract similar audiences? Does the target site already link to sites with similar quality and types of content?

Study the site's quality. What is its PR? How many sites link to it? The Firefox extension SEO for Firefox provides SEO information about the page you're on (in Firefox only) such as the age of a site, the PR for the page, and how many inbound links it has of various types (.edu, .gov, DMOZ, etc.).

Study the site's needs. Look for gaps in the content. For example, do the target sites have links to fewer sites about your content area than they do about other content areas? Are they expanding in the direction of your content area?

Make contact

You've researched likely candidates, you know who you want to link to your site, and you've made sure that your site is presentable and ready for consideration. Now it's time to ask the question.

Or, as with dating, you could try to meet the other party casually first. Look for a reason to make contact to help them, such as to point out a broken link or a typo. If you're going this route, don't mention your site yet, but link to it in your signature. Focus on creating a connection.

After the connection is made is the time to discuss your website. You could ask for opinions on it or ask the webmaster if he or she thinks that the pages you ask about are relevant to the target website audience. If the webmaster isn't interested in linking to your site, keep the communication open, and consider any suggestions made. You may want to try again later if you've updated your site content.

Make contact with the webmasters at more than one site. Be prepared to spend a lot of time to acquire a few authority links. If you don't succeed with one, you may succeed with others.

Related blog articles

• The Competition's Links
• Authority Sites: Can Your Site Make the Cut?
• Getting in with Search Engines and Searchers
• Is DMOZ Dead?