Link building, a long-standing part of SEO, has changed over the years; however, it has never lost its importance as a part of company’s search engine optimization strategies. Moreover, link building is one aspect of SEO that you cannot afford to forget.
Changes to search engine’s algorithms have altered how link building works, but these changes have also driven home the fact that writers should make sure that when they do link out that they get high quality links. Low quality links can end up harming a website’s Google ranking rather than helping. Often, these high quality links can be obtained by focusing on authority sites.
What exactly is an authority website?
An authority website is one that not only prides itself on creating high quality content, but it is also a website that viewers can always trust to provide them with credible information. This level of credibility often means that authority sites are highly ranked by SERP—but this is not a requirement. Authority sites also often composed of information about a single topic, which provides extra value to their information. In addition, these kinds of high quality sites usually generate more traffic and, thus, have their information shared more among social media.
Why does SEO rely on authority websites?
The fact that authority sites generally have high ranks themselves can help to raise your website’s rank when you link to them; thus, making them important to use from an SEO standpoint. Moreover, the credibility of these sites also makes them important. Another reason linking to authority sites is important to SEO is the addition of “dofollow” links. These links generate a strong rank signal and this can easily translate to a high rate of return.
For information on how to find authority sites manually and automatically, please read here.
How is this information used?
In 2003, Google released an algorithm update called Hilltop. Regardless of the fact that Hilltop is now 12 years old, it is still vital to search engine ranking. Hilltop works as an on-page SEO that signals to Google when and when not to view a page as an information ‘hub’. Pages become hubs because of the quality and relevancy of the links that are on the page(s).
If the links on your page do not positively reflect what your page says, then you’re only hurting the credibility of your content. This means the more often that you can link to awesome resources the more likely that your resource will become a hub, impress Google and could eventually become an authority site yourself.
In order to ensure that your content is as good as it can be, your goal should be to try and link to around 3 high quality links in every piece of content you publish. This can lead to Google seeing your website as a Hilltop hub.