High Authority Backlinks: Everything You Need to Know

Earning backlinks is an essential component of boosting your site’s SEO rankings. But not all backlinks are the same. If you want your website to stand out and consistently rank high in search engine results, you will need to take it one step further.

Just earning backlinks will not quite cut it; instead, you will need to focus your energy on earning many coveted high authority backlinks. 

High authority backlinks allow you to prove the trustworthiness and authority of your website in the eyes of Google Analytics – and your future customers. But how do you acquire high authority backlinks?

In this guide, we will take a look at everything you need to know about high authority backlinks. We will learn what distinguishes them from regular links and how you can get them. Then we will explore the specific ways high DA links will benefit your site.

What Are High Authority Backlinks?

A high authority backlink is a link placed on another website that links back to your organization’s website. This link must be placed on a high authority and trustworthy source for it to be considered a “high authority” backlink. 

Determining whether a site qualifies as an authoritative and trustworthy source is often done by measuring the Domain Rating (DR) and Domain Authority (DA) rankings.

Sites that have high DA or DR rankings, typically 70 or above, will usually display a proven track record of providing high quality content. These sites can be considered legitimate sources of information by Google Analytics and readers alike. 

High authority sites with high DA or DR rankings (or both) will usually be referenced and back linked in other highly reputable sources and articles.

This is part of what makes high authority backlink such an effective and valuable strategy for boosting your brand’s reputation; once you have a backlink placed on one high authority site, it will likely be shared and linked on many other sites as well.

This provides natural traffic for your site and organically boosts your site’s authority and reputation.

High authority websites can include news outlets, reports, and articles sponsored by trusted brands, content presented by verified professionals with expertise in their field, and content published by popular legitimate media platforms. 

Landing high authority backlinks tells readers that your brand provides expert knowledge in your field, and shows search engines that your website is a credible and legitimate source of information. And there is a mutually beneficial aspect of high authority backlinks.

Just as your brand needs high authority link placement to prove the validity of your site and boost your search rankings, so too do high authority sites need to back up the claims in their articles. 

Citing sources is a key part of crafting legitimate content; by providing a credible resource that high authority websites can quote or cite, you are giving them a necessary backup to facts and claims in their content.

So high authority backlinking can benefit both your brand and the site that is linking to you.

Let’s break these features down:

1. Data-Based Content

Your content should be written well, engaging, and attractive to provide value for the sites that are linking to your page. But you should also make sure that your articles are based on real statistics and data. 

Ensuring that your content is based on actual data is key for providing a valuable resource for high authority sites to reference.

You want a backlink to help prove the authority of your site, so make sure the articles you are offering as a resource do provide authority on a subject, based on real data.

When researchers look for data to include in their articles, you want your site to come up as a helpful resource chock full of relevant and helpful statistics and measurable data points. 

2. Engaging Infographics

A picture says a thousand words, or so the saying goes. Include helpful illustrations, charts, and infographics to engage with your readers instantaneously.

Readers process visual information faster than text, so you can easily share a helpful overview or comparison chart that provides a quick hit of information for your reader base. 

When your site includes attractive, helpful, authoritative infographics, other high authority sites may want to use them to illustrate points in their articles.

When a high authority article cites your page as the source of an engaging infographic, it provides a powerful boost in visibility for your site and helps grow organic traffic.  

3. References Quality Sources

It may seem counterintuitive to include links to other sources when your ultimate goal is to promote your page. But in fact, citing other high authority sites within your content can help you earn higher authority backlinks.

Backing up the data in your content with legitimate resources helps to prove that your information is valid, verified, and trustworthy. 

When you include links to high authority sites, it is clear to other high authority sites that you have done the research to provide authoritative content to your readers.

This means they will be more comfortable citing your article as a source since all of your claims and information are backed up by recognizable and equally legitimate sources.

Common Types of High Authority Backlink Outreach

High authority backlinks can be earned by several different methods. Here we will outline four common outreach approaches to gaining high authority backlinks for your site.

Outreach Method 1: Guest Posts

In this method, you will reach out to high authority sites with an offer to provide a guest post on a relevant topic.

The site will publish the article you have written, typically citing you as a guest author or guest contributor.

The guest post article will include a carefully placed, natural-sounding backlink to your page. We also offer a blogger outreach service at Blue Tree.

Outreach Method 2: HARO

HARO stands for “Help a reporter out”, and in this method, content creators provide research support to journalists seeking relevant sources for their articles and investigations.

Top-tier digital PR service providers will often include HARO outreach among other link placement strategies. 

On the official HARO platform, journalists can connect directly with content creators and expert professionals by posting requests for particular types of information.

Experts can then respond, providing relevant sources- if this relevant source includes your site, then you have potentially landed a high profile backlink.

Outreach Method 3: PR Outreach

A Public Relations (or PR) outreach strategy involves reaching out to industry authorities with a proposal to include links to your brand in their content.

This strategy can encompass news outlets, industry insiders, topical blogs about niche subjects, and widely distributed publications. 

Reaching out to high-profile publications can be time-consuming. For this strategy, it can be a good idea to work with a professional marketing agency that can draw on their well-established pre-existing network of professional connections. 

Outreach Method 4: Link Exchanges

Link exchanges are often frowned upon or viewed as less legitimate than other types of high authority backlinks, but in the right circumstances link exchanges can provide a valuable boost for both organizations involved. 

If you carefully vet the sites that want to exchange links with you, reserving this tactic exclusively for legitimate high authority sites, then conducting link exchanges can provide a relatively easy boost to your general backlink profile.

Why It’s Worth Hiring an Expert to Land High Authority Backlinks

High authority backlinks are notoriously difficult to get.

Seeking out guest posts, for example, can take years of trial and error before you assemble a workable database of contacts and stumble on the right formula of professionalism and familiarity in your outreach emails. 

Digital PR outreach can take ages to research the appropriate contacts at the media outlets you are trying to connect with. The beginners of the backlinking game may not always know what to look for and how to determine a truly high authority site.

Beginning link builders can easily fall prey to scams and spammy sites, such as “link farms” that sell backlinks for a profit without providing real value to their customers. 

You might want to outsource your digital marketing services to a professional agency for these reasons and more.

A high quality professional SEO marketing agency will have ample experience and advanced level skills when it comes to researching potential sites to land a link on, reaching out to site contacts, navigating guest post requirements, and crafting legitimate, compelling, original content. 

A top-tier SEO agency will help you hone your digital marketing goals and target your outreach campaigns to meet and exceed those goals.

While it may cost a fee to work with a professional agency, drawing on their expertise and resources to land super high-value high authority backlinks makes it all worth the cost. 

High authority sites will never make guarantees of instantaneous results or promise enticing get-rich-quick opportunities.

Sites that employ black hat SEO methods do not qualify as high authority sites for high authority backlink placements. While some of these schemes may seem straightforward at first, they will ultimately be unsuccessful. 

Google Analytics tools are primed to identify and blacklist sites that use these off-kilter strategies. The last thing you want is for your site to be marked as spam and un-indexed from search engine results pages. 

High Authority Backlinks Provide Quality, Not Just Quantity

While striving for the ultimate goal of having as many high authority links as possible, filling out a robust and diverse portfolio of dynamic high authority backlinks is a worthy pursuit, the focus should not be entirely on quantity at the expense of quality. 

If you spend your time and energy pursuing high volumes of authority backlinks, you will likely end up with many low to mid-range links, which provide some value. But one high authority link can provide more of a boost for your site than an entire bundle of low-quality links.

By some estimates, a single high authority link can accomplish the same SEO boost for your brand as between 5 and 10 low authority site backlinks. So shifting the focus to emphasize quality over quantity is a smart choice for a truly effective long-term digital marketing strategy. 

When to Outsource Your High Authority Backlink Strategy

Outsourcing your high authority backlink strategy can be a smart way to streamline the outreach process, taking advantage of the resources and skills of a professional marketing agency. 

Building up a robust network of contacts across highly reputable sites and developing those professional relationships can take months or even years.

With a highly experienced digital marketing agency that already has strong working relationships with a broad portfolio of reputable online publications, you can get your foot in the door and put your brand in front of the right readers. 

An experienced digital marketing agency can help with outreach, digital PR services, HARO interactions, content creation, and even shaping your digital marketing and linkbuilding strategy.

With years of experience behind them, a well-established digital marketing agency can easily distinguish between truly valuable high authority sites to link to, and scammy websites making false claims in exchange for profits. 

Your brand or organization may want to outsource your high authority backlink building campaigns when:

• You want to develop a robust portfolio of high authority backlinks, but have never done backlink outreach before. 
• You have an in-house link building employee, but they are not experienced in landing high authority links. 
• Your in-house link building team is having trouble meeting your desired targets for high authority backlink placements. 
• You want assistance and expertise in acquiring high authority link placements but do not have the resources to hire an expert link building team or employee full-time. 
• You are not confident in your content creation skills and abilities but do want to provide guest posts on high authority sites. 
• You want to free up your employees to spend their time focusing on other areas of marketing and development within your organization. 

Hiring an expert team experienced in completing backlink outreach campaigns can help you to make sure that your organization meets your intended content strategy goals with minimal hassle. 

Benefits of High Authority Backlinking

Landing high authority backlinks is a key component of any strong content marketing strategy.

Beyond the significant benefit of boosting your brand’s overall reputation and authority for both readers and Google Analytics software, there are a number of key measurable benefits that high authority backlinking can provide. 

Here are some of the top benefits of landing high authority backlinks: 

Rise in the Rankings

When your site is linked to from high authority websites, it tells Google that you are a legitimate and trustworthy source of authority that readers should pay attention to.

This means that your place in the SERPS (search engine results pages) will continue to rise as you land more high authority backlinks. 

Boost to Natural Traffic

As your site rises in the SERPS, you will benefit from a significant boost in natural traffic. The higher your site lands in the search engine results pages, the more frequently readers will stumble upon it in relevant internet searches for similar and applicable terms.

If you consistently land on the first page of the results, more readers will visit your page. And the more readers that visit, the more potential customers you will have interacting with your page.

Landing high authority backlinks will help you earn a place at the top of the SERPs and will help you keep your place there. 

Evergreen Keywords That Keep Driving Traffic Your Way

Including evergreen keywords in your content means that your content will continue to remain highly linkable for journalists and content creators, with no expiration date.

When you craft high quality content that features highly searchable evergreen keywords, the content will eventually drive its own traffic, earning you high quality backlink placements with no work on your end. 

High Quality Linkable Content

To gain high authority backlinks you will need to create high quality content on your website, content that provides helpful information and tons of relevant information and data for other sites.

Once you craft attractive, fresh, original, engaging, and knowledgeable content for your site, it will continue to rise in value as it contributes to further link building campaigns, ad infinitum. 

When your content includes industry research and helpful statistics, you become an expert source of authority that journalists and content creators can easily link to.

Other sites will happily share and link to your content, creating a natural flow of word-of-mouth advertising that will drive even more traffic toward your site.

By promoting your high quality content on social media, you open up space for even more link placement collaborations. 

Do-Follow Link Traffic

Do follow links placed in quality content on high authority websites lead potential customers or clientele directly to your site.

Readers of an article can click on a do-follow link directly in the context of an article that will take them directly to your page. 

Higher Conversion Rates

Since the reader is already interested in a subject relevant to your site, they will be primed towards natural curiosity about what your site has to offer. 

This makes do-follow links a valuable component of the leads-to-conversions sales funnel for your brand, creating more sales and a more loyal customer base. 

Grow Your Brand Awareness

High authority link building secures your reputation as a good source of authority.

Landing backlinks on high authority websites confirm that your site is a trustworthy source of information for other sites, who will then be more likely to link back to you again. 

The more authority backlinks you land on high quality sites, the more your brand awareness will grow and expand as a result.

With each new backlink on a high authority site, you will create the potential to reach a new reader base in your niche target audience. 

Diverse and Targeted Backlink Portfolio

One helpful aspect of landing high authority backlinks is that you can grow a diverse portfolio of backlinks that encompass different kinds of articles and subjects, and result from different kinds of outreach. 

Backlinks landed through HARO, guest posts, or PR outreach campaigns will all have one extra benefit in common: they are placed on sites that are relevant to your organization.

Targeted backlinks provide more value for your site, driving the right kind of traffic to your website, boosting brand awareness, and growing organic traffic overall.  

Important Metrics

Our team of in-house content specialists carefully reviews every single website we research before adding it to our portfolio of sites to reach out to about a possible link placement collaboration. 

Each site must meet our key minimum criteria to be considered a high authority website. 

First of all, each site must meet the minimum standard for Domain Rating. Every site we link to has a minimum DR ranking of 65. Sites must allow Do-follow link placements. 

The sites we link to must have a minimum of 5000 unique organic visitors to their website. A minimum search traffic requirement ensures that pursuing a link placement on that website will boost site traffic to your brand’s page. 

Another careful factor we look for is the ratio of inbound to outbound links featured in the content on a site’s page. Each website should have an optimal ratio of inbound to outbound links so that we can be certain the site doesn’t practice “link stuffing” to bulk out its articles.

This type of tactic would disqualify it from our standards, and we would remove an article like that from our high authority link building list. We are careful to avoid any sites that seem overly promotional or include obvious links that seem spammy. 

In addition to the metrics and ratings, we want to make sure that the sites we link to are truly worthy of the high authority description for our clients.

Not every high authority site will provide a high amount of value for every client; rather than lumping all high ranking sites into one category, we comb through all of our frequently contacted sites based on each client’s needs. 

We want to make 100% sure that the site in question offers high quality, authoritative, original content. And we want to match sites that are topically relevant to our client’s niche subjects.

Attracting relevant audiences is all about connecting with interested readers, so filtering our outreach to match to our individual client’s needs is of paramount importance.  

How We Do It: Our 5-Step High Authority Backlink Strategy

At Blue Tree, our dedicated in-house team of experts works closely with our clientele to determine which sites will be just the right fit for backlink placement. 

We employ a specific five-step plan that allows us to carefully craft high authority backlink placements for each client based on their specific needs and unique features. This plan creates measurable growth and helps give our clientele a powerful digital boost. 

Here is an overview of Blue Tree’s tried and true five-step strategy for landing high authority backlinks for our clients:

1. Targeted Site Research

Our first step on the journey of landing our clients high authority backlinks is to gain an understanding of our client’s goals and ambitions. Once we know what targets they are trying to reach, we shape a content strategy that will help them reach their aims.

We want to get an understanding of the particular details relevant to each client. What is their target audience? What is their niche subject and area of expertise?

Then, based directly on each client’s specific content strategy, we assemble a list of relevant publications to reach out to.

Each site must meet our minimum standards: it must be topically relevant to our client, produce high quality content, have a minimum DR rating of 65, and garner at least 5000 individual unique site visitors each month. 

Our team of researchers will vet and review every site to ensure that they are a good fit for our clients, providing value and relevance that will bring our clients closer to achieving their marketing goals.

The sites must fulfill the requirements that make them high authority sites, otherwise, we will leave them to the side for other endeavors. 

2. Outreach Time

After conducting thorough research to assemble a list of high authority sites to reach out to, it is time to begin the outreach process.

In this stage we make good use of our expansive network of over 300 highly reputable tech publications, sending out specific communications to open up conversations about link placement opportunities on behalf of our clients.

These sites will help our clients rank higher in the search engines and attract new customers. 

Using our years of experience in digital outreach, we craft professional, personal emails that include specific details about each particular site we reach out to.

We conduct follow-up emails to ensure that our messages do not get lost in a busy inbox, and we respond promptly to every message received.  

3. Pitching to Win

Once we have established an initial conversation with site editors, we pitch them with our link placement ideas. This step varies depending on the particular strategy we are trying to employ.

This can include suggesting a link placement in a pre-existing article, adding a relevant section with new research that links to our client’s page, or providing an entire guest post article, among other options. 

In this stage, our pitching team brainstorms 2-3 specific subjects for new guest post articles and our outreach specialist sends them to the editor.

We conduct continuous communication, negotiating the specific terms of the link placement and clarifying exactly what the site editors’ expectations will be, so there are no surprises.

If a fee is involved, we will liaise with our clients to determine whether or not the paid opportunity fits within their budget and preferences. 

We will continue pitching and suggesting ideas to site editors until we find that sweet spot of mutual agreement, an arrangement that both sides are happy with and that both sites will benefit from. 

4. Expert Content Creation

Step four is for backlinking via guest posts. Once we have had a topic formally approved for a guest post, we will bring the pitch to our team of in-house expert writers and editors.

They will craft a well-researched, high quality article, full of relevant statistics and well-cited information. 

In this article, we will include a naturally placed backlink anchor that links back to our client’s site.

The link will be surrounded by relevant context, and will usually cite a specific fact, figure, or statistic, to create a compelling do-follow anchor that will drive readers to visit our client’s site. 

Once we submit the article, we will work with site editors to complete any requested feedback or suggested edits. We want to make sure the content we create is of the best possible quality.

To this end, we will bring in our in-house team of expert SEO content creators, including writers, editors, and graphic designers, who will craft superior quality, highly shareable original content that includes exciting graphics and excellent text. 

5. Tracking the Links

The final stage of any backlink placement campaign is to follow up. We keep track of every link we have placed for six months after its initial placement to ensure that the link remains active and live, with the correct link text and destination address. 

If we discover any issue with the link, such as a “do-follow” link being replaced with a “no-follow” link, we will work with the site editor to ensure the mistake is fixed and the link is put back up correctly. If that is not possible we will negotiate to have the link replaced with a new active one. 

We follow up with our clients throughout the entire process, maintaining absolute transparency. Throughout our entire working relationship, we will share biweekly progress reports to keep you in the loop about updates to your campaigns. 

Our Results

When you work with Blue Tree for your link placement content strategy, you will receive a robust and diverse portfolio of high authority backlinks that will boost your search engine results rankings.

Working with Blue Tree’s team of expert content outreach specialists will help give you a necessary boost to your brand’s SEO and expand brand awareness to include new target audiences in relevant niche fields. 

Our team of experts has years of experience to bring to your content development strategy, and we carefully tailor each campaign to match your organization’s aims and targets. We are dedicated to building high quality backlinks and strong working relationships across media landscapes.

We ensure that every campaign produces real results for our clients, with measurable statistics that reveal the digital leaps and bounds that have resulted from the backlink placement strategies. 

Treating each client and campaign with the utmost care and attention to detail means taking the time to thoroughly research, vet the websites we work with, and provide top-tier service in terms of content creation and outreach.

Because we are determined to bring superior quality service to each client, we are also selective about who we take on as clientele.

We want to make sure that your needs and goals are a good fit for the types of service we provide, so we only take on clients whose aims are in line with our methods and approaches. 

We have worked with many clients such as Dooly, GetWeave, Freshbooks, and CreditDonkey to boost their site traffic and conversions. Our clients see an average of 160% site traffic increases as a result of working with us.

Some sites we have worked with have seen their organic site traffic grow to 361% of its original level as a result of our collaboration. Our backlink development services provide real concrete results, and our customers will be happy to confirm it. 

When you work with Blue Tree, you get a team of over 15 experienced B2B content writers and content creators who can craft expert-level content for guest posts and outreach campaigns.

We have a broad working network of publications across different subject areas; for example, you can check out our inventory which spans over 350 publications and counting. 

Blue Tree offers flexible partnerships. You can try working with us on a project-by-project basis, or sign on for a lasting professional partnership that can continue to grow your business for years into the future.

We offer a month-by-month contract with no strings attached, so clients have full transparency and flexibility when it comes to determining how long our collaboration will last. 

We provide our clients with 100% natural link placement, ensuring that every single backlink is editorially received and highly relevant to the article it is placed in. We craft content that naturally lends itself to the link within the context, which creates a link asset of lasting power for your brand.

Your high authority backlinks will continue to be placed in new contexts for years to come, providing compounding value far into the future and continuing to direct organic traffic to your site. 

Working with Blue Tree, you will enjoy boosts in brand awareness, higher SERP rankings, a huge boost in SEO, and the growth of organic traffic.

We are a team of dedicated experts ready to share all of our expertise and experience with your brand to create the best possible portfolio of high authority backlinks for your site.