Google authority explained and the wrong way to get backlinks
Phew, this is a big subject and I need to emphasise it’s not clear cut. But here is what I have learned in my work at the Backlinks clinic:
Authority - simplified
The more authority your web pages have the higher you will rank on Google. Authority means that people trust you and your information. The good news is that authorities trusted by people are also trusted by Google. A great example is the .edu and .gov suffixes. These suffixes imply they are credible sources of content and it’s a proven fact that as far as Google is concerned backlinks from these domains to your web pages will send authority to your web pages. Another perfect example is Wikipedia as the entries here are almost always authored by by tribes of humans as opposed to a single person.
So it follows that authority is largely influenced by the source of your backlinks and if authoritative sites link to your web pages then you receive their authority and as far as Google is concerned you become more authoritative and so the trust in your site by Google increases.
How Google determines what is and isn’t authoritative is undisclosed for solid reasons and falls in line with Google’s thinking of “Do no evil”. The last thing the web needs is someone exploiting the formulae that Google uses in its efforts to try and regulate probably the most important technological asset of our times.
Backlinking methods you should avoid
In the same vein it’s valuable to state some obvious sources and methods of acquiring backlinks that Google not only dislikes but appears to be acting to ‘’categorize as illegitimate authorities. In no particular order of severity, the prime offenders are:
- Paid backlinks – hubs where people purchase and sell backlinks
- Comment spam – entries that contain links on web pages that are just not related to the main content.
- Low quality and *duplicate content – ‘scraped’ or copied
- Rapid backlink growth – there are plenty of ways that this is achievable, Google isn’t stupid. Any sudden rise in the amount of backlinks is going to show up on Google’s monitoring systems, especially if it’s a recently registered domain.
- Backlinks from villainous sites – these are particularly henous as you are guilty by association - need I say more.
*There is another factor where I may be on dodgy ground, but key press portals seem to get a lot of authority and I have definitely observed significant numbers of the same article over and over again on different web sites with no penalties, I am still looking at this, only as some of the results I am seeing go against the normal behaviors I usually expect to see. More on this is in a future post….
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