Do you belong to the band of online entrepreneurs who are particularly flustered with their website’s rank in the search engine results? From the moment you launch an online venture, aspects like SEO, online advertising, promotion and visibility assume priority and determine not just survival but also sustenance over the long term. As a result, most online entrepreneurs transform into SEO wizards over a period of time and also end up investing substantially in a number of online advertising platforms, such as Pay Per Click, or PPC.
Maintaining an online presence is indeed tedious in a number of ways, not to mention time consuming and at times even financially demanding. In such a situation, how about using an option which can attract your target audience without requiring too much SEO or much in terms of an investment? Surprising though it might sound, such a technique does exist and entails exploring the world of authority sites.
Connecting With Authority Sites
Anyone who has dabbled in SEO before is likely to be familiar with terms such as in-bound links and authority sites. Creating an in-bound link containing a primary keyword from an authority site is one of the most effective SEO techniques that boost search engine rankings. That being said, before you use this technique, first it is important to understand what an authority website is, and how it helps with search engine rankings.
Take an example of a website PCWorld.com, wherein with more than 700,000 web pages and 2 million in-bound links, it is regarded as being an authority site in the niche. Such a site also has a high Google PageRank which is more an outcome of high-quality content rather having been paid for. Therefore, an authority website could be described as one which is –
- Focused on a particular niche;
- Features high-quality content pertaining to the specific subject;
- Replete with pages, which could run into hundreds or even thousands;
- Highly placed on Google’s PageRank spectrum by virtue of its credibility;
- Linked extensively with internal pages as also with external sources that are relevant to the topic;
Having an in-bound link from such a website, as per renowned Google developer Matt Cutts, can actually do wonders for your website rank and provide a boost to the volume of traffic.
How to Link With an Authority Website
One of the best ways to establish links with authority websites entails generating your own content and publishing it on these platforms. You can create high-quality content in form of articles, blog posts and press releases, and publish the same on the authority site which is most relevant to your business.
In the event of the content being approved, the authority sites in question will not just publish it, but also provide you with a link to the page which you can embed on your web page as an external link.
Make sure that the link responds on being clicked and leads to the external page where you might have published the content. Also the text used for linking should contain one of your primary keywords. Just in case the link snaps, or leads elsewhere, go through the process again and ensure that it responds as intended.
What Kind Of Content Would Get Approved?
Reputed that they are, authority websites have certain guidelines in place in context of the content that they would publish. This implies that the content you submit would need to conform to the rules of the platform in order to see the light of the day and evolve into the external link as intended.
To this effect, getting your content published on an authority website should not be a problem as long as it –
- Is interesting, informative and well-organized in terms of presentation of facts;
- Features an attention grabbing headline;
- Addresses the reader’s requirements;
- Contains a call-to-action button in the resource box;
- Conforms to the originality requirement and is not plagiarized;
In addition, high authority websites do not encourage self promotion or any form of advertising in the content, which is why you must ensure that your draft is unbiased and preferably uses a second-person or a third-person voice. Other must-haves in the draft include keywords in the body of the content and in the resource box, and anchor text links as part of the optimization process.
Publishing Your Content
The online arena offers several options wherein you can publish the high-quality content and link it to your website or product page. Some common as also most effective platform from the link building perspective include –
Article Directories – An article directory is like an online encyclopedia, and has thousands of pages. Pick any topic under the sun, and there are likely to be multiple articles on it written by different authors. Likewise, you can also write articles on topics that are relevant to your venture as per the guidelines, and add to the existing volume. Over a period of time there will be several articles which will carry links that lead to your landing page.
Online Publications – Another option is to publish your content in the various online newspapers that enjoy circulation on a global scale. Known as a press release, content must focus on a specific topic in terms of providing latest updates and news, and also must adhere to certain formatting rules. If handled well, this option could well prove to be the global window for your venture.
Blogs – Publishing blog posts at frequent intervals can prove effective as a link building option, provided the blogging platform is recognized as an authority website.
Conduct thorough research on the blog, and use it for posting content only when it qualifies as a proven authority website.
Final Thoughts
Daunting though it might seem, generating high-quality content can go a long way in pushing your website up the search engine results page. Just in case you need inspiration, all you need to do is count the numerous benefits that accrue by publishing content and using it for link building.
If your content is good, it will not just attract traffic but also carve an online reputation for you wherein people might visit your landing page out of curiosity. Overall, this is one of the SEO techniques which effectively enable you to establish links with authority sites and help improve your website’s rank while hardly requiring an investment.