Linking to Authority sites is a term often heard when learning how to build a successful affiliate marketing business.
I can remember wondering why I needed to even think about authority sites when I was so busy focusing on what I knew had to be done to make my website successful. Why worry about linking to authority sites?
After all, isn’t it my site that I want other websites to link to? I had learned that getting hundreds of links to my website was what I needed to spend my energy on, and not worry about other websites and what they needed.
Getting other sites to link to your own site is called backlinking. Focus on backlinking did play a big part in building a website a while ago. However, it is different now. Since about 2013 the need of getting links from other sites to our own site is no longer a big issue. This was one of the things that changed with Google Panda, one of Google’s algorithms
To make it clear, what we are talking about here is placing Links from our own Website to Authority Websites. These links are called ‘Outbound Links’.
What is the Benefit of Using Outbound Links?
The use of Outbound Links helps with SEO ranking and builds a website’s trust with Google. It also helps to build the authority of a website, which in turn helps with a website’s ranking in Google.
Google sees it very important that visitors to the internet are easily able to find what they are looking for. To please Google, and also to help visitors to a website, it makes sense for the owner of the website to provide a good experience for visitors.
For the reason of wanting to give a good experience to those who visit a website, as well as pleasing Google, it is extremely important to make sure that outbound links are included to Authority sites only.
An outbound link to a website that lacks valuable content is something to be avoided. Linking to an inferior website would do harm to the site that instigated the link.
So be careful and selective when choosing sites to link to.
Linking to Authority Sites That May or May not be Genuine
The first thing to look for is that the site is in the same niche that you are working in. This does not necessarily mean the niche of your website. Perhaps a better description is to say the ‘category’ of the post or page where the outbound link will be inserted.
For instance, included in this website is a post with the title of ‘Are Headlines Really Important to the Success of Blog Posts’. In that post is included an outbound link to coschedule.com/headline-analyzer which is an Authority Site. I know that this site is an authority because I work with it regularly.
There are other outbound links included on this website. They are included because I know that the visitor to my site will have a good experience when they click on the outbound link and arrive on the designated authority site.
There are many more technical ways of finding authority sites, which are not included in this post.
Why would I lead visitors away from my site?
I have no fear about losing visitors to my site. I understand the need to provide a good and helpful experience for visitors .
When I lead visitors away through links on my site I believe it is because the information they will see on the other site will be of benefit to the visitor.
I also know that if the visitor enjoyed being on my site, they will return either immediately or at a later date.
Websites are for providing and sharing quality information and with that in mind, I am happy if my visitors gain pleasure and knowledge from the experience.
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