How do you "spot" an authority site?

stoli_sambuca · 09-07-2006, 10:06 PM

I read a lot about authority sites and how you want to or need to get links from authority sites in order to get good rankings in Google, but how do you "spot" an authority site? Is there any way to do that? Is there any formula? Is there statistics that you can reference?

**Lyte** · 09-07-2006, 11:20 PM

I'd not heard that term (authority site) in a long time. For those not familar with what the term it means....

Jason Dowdell of GlobalPromoter defined it this way: "authority sites are sites that have been linked to and referenced on other web sites covering the same subject matter and they also will have hundreds if not thousands of pages covering that subject matter and nearly every facet of it."

SEO Source

SEO Chat

How To Build An Authority Site 101

Now that we have a better idea of what an authority site is and how to put one together, spotting one should be much easier. You can start with a "site ranking tool" which will tell you how various search engines are ranking a specific site and sometimes, for a specificword. You'll want to put in the site's URL and then pick some keyword that's important to you.

http://www.freewebsubmission.com/site-ranking.html

There are a lot of different site ranking tools out there so I would check two or three before coming to any conclusions.

There are some too that ask you to join up and/or pay... I'm not sure how I feel about those.

Lyte

p.s. This reminds me.... I gotta get on the ball and improve PC101's ranking.

stoli_sambuca · 09-07-2006, 11:30 PM

Briefly checked referenced articles.

See, the thing is that they sound so anecdotal. They don't point out how you can spot an authority site by looking at numbers, i.e., concrete evidences. PR, number of bank links, number of pages indexed, etc. Isn't there any ... concrete method?

**Lyte** · 09-07-2006, 11:59 PM

Well, the evidence will be how the site stacks up against the definition. Yahoo for example... it has a fat PR and a huge quantity of back links.

I tried Googling "list of authority sites" but my company's computer kept locking up. Maybe you can have a go!

Lyte

stoli_sambuca · 09-08-2006, 02:15 AM

RedCross is one according to the following article:

http://seoblackhat.com/2005/09/26/in...sites-exploit/

I searched for list of authority sites, but I could only find this article, so I searched for "list of authority sites".

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22li...G=Search&hl=en

What's interesting is that only several pages were returned.

**Lyte** · 09-08-2006, 02:22 AM

The Red Cross... that would be a logical choice as an authority site! It's a HUGE organization with influence and offices all over the U.S. And too, there would be a LOT of connections to it from corporations and medical institutions. My company for example uses them for CPR and First Aid training.

I've not peeped the Google list. I'll take a gander through it in the later today. I'm sleepy! lol

Lyte