What is Authoritative Linkbuilding ?

When undertaking a digital marketing strategy inevitably a main part of your linkbuilding strategy will involve getting authoritative links to your site.

Types of authoritative linkbuilding can be shown in our quality cube as shown below:

University Domains (.ac) (.edu)

University Domains are a good place to gain authoritative links as they are considered websites that contain credible content however if you get a link from one of their sites try to ensure that it is displayed on their external site rather than the Universities intranet otherwise you will not gain any links for that particular piece of work. Good types of things to target to get a link from a University site would be job offers for graduating or placement students and other tools that could be useful for university students such as financial advice.

Government domains (.gov)

Government domains are great places to gain authoritative links from. Good ways to target a government site for linkbuilding purposes is to provide them with information about a thing that you have done conclusive research in and would raise awareness about a specific topic that people could find interesting. People will always be interested in jobs therefore if they have a job board on the site it could be worth advertising your job there if it is relevant to your target audience.

Media Domains

Authoritative Media Domains would be domains such as the BBC, Sky, ITV and credible newspapers such as the Guardian, The Times etc. Linking from media domains can be tricky as you will have to research on potential angles that could possibly interest these outlets. This could be good if you have a special offer that a lot of consumers would be interested in. An example of an industry that this could benefit is the fashion industry for if a popular celebrity is pictured using one of their products it can give you the opportunity for you to write exclusive posts on your company. Another avenue which some media domains offer would be paid editorials which would include a link to your site

Social Domains

A good Social Domain to get links from is Wikipedia although anyone can publish content on the site it is monitored regularly therefore links will be removed if they are deemed inappropriate. The reason gaining a link from Wikipedia is deemed authoritative is that all information needs to be cited by a credible external source. Ultimately this means if you can get a link from one of these sites then it will increase traffic to your site and allow you to rank a lot higher for that keyword.

Proposition

Once you have a good angle for authoritative linkbuilding the final stage is the proposition. This is vital as you have to be able to approach companies in a way that will immediately shows them the benefit of what they can get out of putting your content on their site. The best way to do this is to be as human as possible whilst still getting your point across and avoid being using terms that could be considered as spam emailing. A further tactic is to potentially ask for feedback from the contact this would be beneficial as engaging will boost your reputation and therefore increase the chances of you getting content published from the client. Other ways could involve a 2 way partnership where they let you post content on their site in return for a link back from your site which could be achieved via a guest blog post.

The reason that companies aim to get more authoritative links over a mass linkbuilding strategy is that having a link from an authoritative site adds far more value to your site than a mass linkbuilding strategy where each link has a lower value in comparison. In addition linkbuilding in this manner is a far more effective long term strategy as links from these sites tend to get far more longevity than standard linkbuilding methods therefore you can potentially rank higher for a longer period of time for your chosen keyword.