"high authority" links

[Guest]

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[Hurf]

This is an extract from this article - http://wiep.net/talk/link-building/the-4-different-types-of-authority-links-and-11-ways-to-get-them/ - which gives a nice summary definition of what Authority links are:

"Absolute Authority Links Absolute authority links are, like the name implies, links that are coming from a domain that is a general authority. You can even divide all absolute authority links into two different groups; informational authority links and navigational authority links. The difference between these groups is that informational authority domains, such as BoingBoing, CNN News or the Harvard Research Programs, usually are more trusted domains, that -for the most part- provide information. Websites like DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, or the California State Agencies Directory would be considered as navigational authority websites. The benefit of an absolute authority link is that it passes trust and visitors (in some cases lots of both). General navigational authority links also can have the ability to pass topical relevance. However, most absolute authority links aren’t able to pass relevance.

Relative Authority Links
In most industries, there are at least a few relative authority websites. Some websites that only have a few hundred incoming links can be authorities in their niche. While these websites aren’t absolute authority sites, the fact that almost every site in your industry links to it, makes it a very interesting target.
Relative authority links can also be divided into two groups, although the difference between both types (the informational ones and the navigational ones) is usually smaller here, because relative authority websites tend to focus at topic in stead of at audience."

See also:

http://www.seobook.com/archives/001930.shtml

To summarize, an Authority site is a trusted source of information for a particular subject. Some of the factors that contribute to the trustworthness of the site would be:

Domain TLD - .Gov and .Edu etc are given a higher trust factor than a.info site for example, because they are only available to bona fide establishments either in Govornment or Education.

Domain Age  - Always an SEO factor

Traffic Flow - How many visitors does the site get?

Vistior Behaviour/Bounce Rate - How long does the visitor stay on the site? Do they stay a while and visit a number of pages within the site? Or do they exit just a few seconds after visiting the site?

Return Visitors - Are visitors returning to the site again and again?

Inbound Links - Are there a lot of links from a variety of sources to articles originally posted on the authority site? (Are people sharing these articles withing their own networks?)

Are they known to be definitive sources of information OFFSITE? Clearly Whitehouse.Gov is associated to a known establishment/authority in the real world.

Do other authority sites link to them?

[Guest]

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[Hurf]

Generally traffic flow can be closely guesstimated even when tracking from Google Analytics cookies is not available. This would be gathered from a variety of sources, including backlinks and server logs : http://www.google.com/privacy/faq.html#toc-terms-server-logs

There is also data gathered by third parties such as Alexa, Compete and Quantcast that may be leveraged too - This data is often gathered using toolbars.

Traffic flow on sites where Google Analytics tracking is installed will use first-party cookies to track visitor behaviour and provide much more detailed and accurate information.

Overall, the onsite traffic flow is likely to be one of the smaller factors when determining authority, whereas data showing the flow of traffic to the site in the first instance (which will be more readily available) is likely to be a more weighted indicator of popularity and therefore Authority.

Also, you need to be mindful of the fact that Google is omnipotent and is therefore able to track your every thought... ;o)

[KeriMorgret]

In addition to the items that Big Bazza mentioned, the Google Toolbar can track visit information, when the visitor has it installed.