What are Authority Websites?

Authority websites are websites that search engines trust for accurate information. Search engines tend to rank websites listed on the authority websites sites more highly.

Thus it’s good to get as many relevant-to-your-business authority websites back linking to you as part of your website’s search engine optimization (SEO) strategy. The more authority sites that list your site, the higher your site will tend to appear in the search results when people search online for your type of business.

An Authority Website Back Linking Strategy

It’s nice when an authority site like ThreeBestRated.com back links to your website without you having to ask them to list you. But, many directory type authority sites will list you if you ask them to or have already listed you without you knowing it. So, carry out the following authority website back linking strategy to maximize your website’s SEO:

  1. Google “your city and your type of business directory”; for example, “Vancouver dentist directory”, if you’re a dentist.  See VancouverDentistInfo.com, an example of a typical city business directory.
  2. Google will return a list of local business directories for your city.  Search engines likely consider these directories local authority sites so you should see if your business is listed there.
  3. If your business is listed, claim your business and fill in information about your business. Use the same keywords you wrote for your websites’ description and title tags into the description section for your business listing.
  4. If your businesses is not listed, submit your business information to these directories.
  5. Rinse and repeat for other sites that list local businesses like Google My Business, general city business directories, business review sites such as Yelp, local chamber of commerce sites, neighbourhood business improvement association websites, etc. It’s especially important to be listed on Google My Business as Google is the top search engine and will give you search engine brownie points using its properties.

Make Sure Your Business Information Is Consistent Across Sites

In following this strategy your business information should be exactly the same across all websites you submit a listing for. Search engine spiders are dumb. They treat, for example, “ABC Restaurants Inc.”, “ABC Restaurants”, “64 Gorge Road West”, “64 Gorge Rd W” as different information, not the same.

The more “same” listings you have across a number of authority websites, the higher the search engines will rank you.  They will see these listings or citations as your business’ information, and not of another business.

Don’t Forget There Are Other SEO Criteria, Too

One final note. Although back links from relevant, authority sites is a big factor in search engine rankings, it’s not the only one search engines like Google use to rank you. In a nutshell, here are other SEO criteria that you should meet, too, to really maximum your website’s SEO:

  • have keywords relevant to your business that people search for in your website’s title and description tags and body of your website
  • maximize the number of customers that leave you reviews on your website and across various review sites like Yelp, Google Reviews, etc. Check out my other posts on Maximizing Testimonials and Reviews for a strategy to maximize this and
  • regularly post new content related to your business that entertains and/or people find engaging (e.g. how-to-articles, news, opinion pieces, funny pieces, etc.). People will more likely then share, like, follow or click on your content to their social media accounts. Regularly blogging on your website increases opportunities for this.

Thus, take advantage of listing your business on local business directories and review websites. You’ll quickly build up authority websites back linking to your website and improve your SEO in the process as one part of your website SEO strategy.
 
 
What are your thoughts on this post? If you have any comments or questions, please write below. We welcome and appreciate your opinion! Free consultation is also available if you like to talk in detail about this or any other web-related subject.
 

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