Does Website Size Affect Ranking? Of course it does!

Google Central has issued an interesting video from Matt Cutts asking whether size of a website, number of pages affects Authority in Google.

Mr Cutts says with a wry smile ( he's not lying - he's just ignorant!) at the end of the video that the answer is no!



But here's why the answer is so obviously yes.

Authority is determined by Google by Pagerank which is basically Kansky's theory of nodal magnitude in action (a wisdom of crowds method of determinining rank).

It's not just about the number of links to a page that determines the authority of a page (and here's the IMPORTANT BIT)... for A KEYWORD....

But the accumulated link score of the pages linking ......for Each Keyword!

So Pagerank means nothing until it is chunked and broken down and applied to each individual set of keywords

Nobody sells a one keyword product!

There are usually hundreds of qualifiers that produce long tails for every product

Every one of these long tailed keywords should have it's own optimized page!

Therefore size DOES matter!

(and there is always the matter of the value of internal links counting as well!)

The more pages optimised for each individual keyword the wider your traffic funnel - The bigger the book the more knowledge and the more authority on the subject is given or attributed to the author - It's the same on the web - simple as that.

Website Size DOES matter - ask any girl!

Now I do have one page websites that top google for some pretty competitive keywords ( I should rephrase that to Keyword) but here is why...

1. The one page websites are as old as google itself
2. The websites are 2 word generic .com domain names with no hyphens
3. Each site (single page) has hundreds or thousands of backlinks to it for the keyword (domain name)
4. The Sites (page) are regularly refreshed with new content in the form of RSS feeds!

Beat The System

Twitter SEO and Viral link creation

There's a lot of noise on the forums at the moment and I've run across the same question from seasoned SEO pro's quite a lot this year, who all ask the same question

What the hell use is Twitter for SEO?

There are hundreds of valid answers to this, but many would not be understood by people who either don't get or don't use social web.

The main problem with SEO people or people who consider themselves to be good at SEO - don't, and can't be expected to understand Marketing

The also don't SEE the advancement of inter-personal communication as a means of diversifying and spreading information.

They also don't understand niche, and the human desire to aggregate and the collective forces of social collaboration - that are in play!

and on , and on ................

So here is a thought that they just might appreciate!

Say Ive got around 200 followers on Twitter.
Every Time I post a link it appears on 200 accounts.
Every time a SE Bot roams over twitter accounts (which it is doing constantly and multi-dimensionally!) for each post, I effectively have created 200 internal twitter links back to the link destination.
RT's etc introduce some viral link creation elements....
This gives me authority!
Imagine if I had a hundred 'keyword optimised' accounts all which had loads of followers!

Beat The System
Internet Marketing on Twitter

Is DMOZ.org dead - You've got to be kidding!

People still ask me 'Is it worth getting into The Open Directory?' or 'How do I get into DMOZ?'

Some of these people are seasoned professional webmasters!

For those of you who are not familiar DMOZ.org or the (not so) Open Directory is a multi-hand edited website directory, siloised by category, hierarchically within regional parameters. Each silo has its own human editor.

Google has used it amongst other things as a basis for Google Web Directory (not serps) for five or six years now. It can be considered to be a directory of authority sites.

Why does Google like it?

Simple! it's hand edited and can be used as a basis for trust and assigned authority!

An entry into DMOZ tells Google that you are exactly what it says on the tin. There's no Spam in the DMOZ superstore, except for perhaps the odd site owned by the rogue editor.

So here's my take on DMOZ.

A listing is essential to establish credibility and authority quickly.
A listing will give you at least a Google 1PR extra, or its SERPS link juice equivalent, if you are a small site.
A listing will get you

Here's the paradox! Don't expect lots of traffic!
Why? Because from my experience not that many people use DMOZ directly for search or anything else much from what I can see, except for stealing data (page sucking or using API's) to create new directories, or for submitting new sites.

Given that, DMOZ still has an Alexa traffic rank of 764 today, which puts it within the most visited and most important websites in the world.

So you definitely need to be in it!

But how do you get into the Open Directory?

Submission
It's basically a lottery and depends upon the availability or attitude of the scrutineer (editor) of the chosen category that you must personally visit and submit to.
WARNING: Never submit more than once or you will be moving you site to the bottom of the queue!
Don't wait around for results you could be reading War and Peace and growing a beard before you might get listed. Submit and forget!

Be warned! Long established commercial or product specific categories are particularly difficult to get a listing!

There are alternatives....

1. If you offer a unique or unusual service where there is little competition you stand a fair schance of getting an entry by product or service category - as long as you submit to the right generic category!

2. Go Local!
Say you own a nationwide car insurance business but cannot get it listed under Insurance > Motor >.....
If your business is located in Swansea Wales try entering it under regional > Uk > Wales West Glamorgan > local business or whatever....

Any entry in DMOZ is worthwhile because even if you are not in your chosen preferential category, local listings will get you into the mix for the searches carried out over the DMOZ database for your keywords; assuming you've done the Directory entry bit right from an SEO point of view.
This includes searches by Google!

One of the major reasons that DMOZ is pure link gold is because many many directory builders and so called spammers, now suck data straight out of DMOZ and your links get spread all over the place - for free!

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The Dawn of the Marketron - The New Media Model Army of Expert Authority

Authors and Authority - think about that connection for a moment!

Cyberteers, Marketrons call them what you want!

They are out there and this is no episode of Dr Who or The X-Files

My last post about aliases got me thinking.

Probably a third of the authors, experts, and web personalities are made up personas. Yep they don't exist!

My take on it is this.

The art of the Internet Marketer is to promote websites to positions of authority.
One quite accepted method of doing this is to create information silos.

Another quick method is to promote yourself into a position of authority for a particular subject (set of keywords!).

The problem is this. Information and knowledge is 'silo'd as well and an expert in his field is just that - in his field!

To get around this it is necessary to create multiple personas.
In other words experteeism is silo'd!

here's how you do it

Get a name that hasn't been taken at Twitter, Facebook, Myspace etc etc - Grab those web 2.0 properties.
Invent a personal profile and stick to it.
Invent a glossy career in your chosen profession
List all your keywords as interests
Get a picture of yourself or a mate or someone from the public who is not famous and looks like they might be an expert in that field!

Write articles and post away in the buzz belt to your hearts content. Post RSS feeds from all your content and twitter etc to a personal blog and web 2.0 properties. Bookmark and ping all your posts and tweets!

Soon your new marketron will be the worlds leading expert in his field. Yummy yummy keyword rich link juice will be at your disposal!!


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Killer Article Marketing Tactics

Articles are just as an important element of the marketing system as any other element, and if you want to be No.1 on Google for your chosen keywords then you have to engage seriously in the art of article marketing.
They are a method of publishing your content with embedded links on an authority site, which gives you loads of High value links juice.

There are two types of article directory :
1. The article authority site.
Those with very strict rules of submission, quality guidelines and human intervention. Silo'd organised quality google food!

2. FFA article directories
Large containers of generally poorer quality content, often spammy with categories unorganised.

My advice to you is only submit articles to the first type. Dont spin or reuse content and keep quality in mind at all times.

TIP - Place two keyword links in the author resource box. one to the homepage url and one deeplink to the subject landing page. Vary your resource box per article!

There are only three places that you really need to worry about -
EzineArticles, GoArticles and Articlesbase.

Ezine is Zeus and all your superior material should be posted here!
God likes articles that are between 500 and 800 words long and contain quality, content written with authority!
Always let God know first!

The other two have excellent RSS distribution and you will find your article reappearing on other article sites, usually complete with your backlinks!

Getting authority, most views, author status etc then becomes just a matter of syndication and republishing! All these sites provide RSS feeds for the articles!

Tip: Promote yourself as an author as well by taking the RSS feeds for your author profile and republishing these! (i've got an army of made up people at the top of G**g for their names!! (wisdom of crowds my arse! tee hee!)).

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Death of the Newspaper - Arise Sir RSS - The Birth of Peoples Journalism

In case you haven't noticed there's not so much rubbish on your doormat these days!
Thanks to the green revolution of paper free news - The Internet! - our letterboxes are far less full of spam and junk, whether they are local FreeAds style newspapers or national celebrity milking rags, like the British Gutterpress.

Hurrah! Bye bye bad old media with your introverted political claptrap and stories about nobodies being outed for doing the things that 'everyone' does! ....

Hello world!

Yep! in case you haven't noticed - and there are many 'local' niche papers that will survive the current ' transformation' in information (news) delivery...

The old 'bastions' of news, those deciders of what we want to hear! the free press, the fourth estate - are going bust!

Bye Bye! the death of another hierarchical structure should not be mourned! it is a move towards wisdom of crowds! More better diversified information of size!

Here's an interesting view from Two old farts who have lost their Industry - The old press - journalism

Bow down all ye and gaze upon the New News of the World in AWE - Shock and AWE!

RSS will provide people with their choice of news from their trusted authorities.

Similarly RSS will be used to construct websites of authority and distribute - syndicate to be more precise, content to other hubs worldwide!

RSS is the lifeblood of content driven marketing and the Social Web!

Now what's the fuss about those old 33rpm's

Why Wisdom of Crowds Network Structures Can Be Abused - think NAZI!

The problem of defining truth by adopting the proven maxim of the Wisdom of Crowds as used by Google for data sorting, is that the whole theory falls down in one major way - which is also proven.

It fails to address the individual, in particular individual creativity and innovation at a node (or person).

The collective can never be the origin of truth or overall AUTHORITY because any ideas that a set of people have must have originated from one of the individual members or nodes of that set ............

Here's an interesting view! Derren Brown on Wisdom of Crowds (another wizard of sorts)

Therefore, thank god the wisdom of the crowd lies with the knowledge of the individual.

The other way is the gate to hell.........

More on Google and the Wisdom of the Crowd -In Search of the Truth

If you have been following our posts on Google and the Wisdom of the Crowd, the theory of he who spreads his ideas or links the furthest and loudest becomes the Authority and therefore the truth - hasn't escaped the backroom boys at Google - who in fact the sort of admit (because they do not know but suspect from their assignment briefs) that Googles algo incorporates the wisdom of the crowd......in a recent post that they have cared to rank top for Google Wisdom of the Crowd

Heres the Google post http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/putting-crowd-wisdom-to-work.html

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Why What Howie Schwartz teaches works

were now going to show you exactly why what howie teaches works

it's fairly simple really but you need to understand order to understand the system

O - Omega (The Last!)

Click on this link to a basic network diagram

Look at example C in relation to the others

Within C - all those with the order of 1 are authority sites

Oh wow - yours has 5!

If you look at the network diagram you will also see that you can have wrong linking structures - ones that actually do you damage in the SERPS! (In network flow terms these are links that take too long a path to the moneysite for the kew=yword tem and effectively - dilute the message!

You can also have TOO many links that are inefficiently channelling the juice to the wrong places!!

When we release The System we will show you how to build the optimal link structure for SERPS.
When you've built your optimal network structure, we will show you how to leverage all your content for viral syndication, getting you thousands of free links from around the globe instantly.
The system then shows you how to channel massive amounts of web 2.0 propety link juice to your money site!

And it's White Hat!

keep reading!!

Beat The System

Web 2.0 Authority sites by traffic

This is a great place to start to find authority sites for web 2.0 Internet marketing.

Google feeds on all these sites (look at their caches!) and those that are being weighed into by online marketeers seen mto be the flavour of the moment for Googles taste. The reason for this is simple - link generation, website physical magnitutude and buzz!

Check this out for starters - top sites

A good trick for finding out where the Web 2.0 action currently is is to search for highly competitive keywords like Viagra or car insurance and see where the marketeers are piling in!

Beat The System

Google is lying about Page Rank and Linking! The Truth is out there!

Somewhere on the Google webmaster (sic) tools section, I can't care to or remember exactly where it says this, but you'll also find many online repetitions of the unending LIE

"A website cannot affect another websites rankings by linking to it"

LIE LIE LIE!

Google invented Page Rank!

LIE LIE LIE!

If you read just the words of the above statements and listen to the little bits of disinformation that Google puts out through channels and mouthpieces such as Matt Cutts, you could possible argue that the semantics of the statements were true!

However underneath it all it is one BIG LIE!

And here is why!



Lets look at the second big lie that Google invented Page Rank first.

Here's what really happened when Google was just a functional specification!

A couple of young Stamford students were looking for a ranking algorithm to describe the order of objects located in cyberspace, so they could present them on a web page described as search results.
They turned to a much more older and VERY unknown discipline for ordering the importance of objects in space, which evolved in the 1950's as a sub sub branch of (Geographical) Mathematics in this sub order:

Mathematics - Topology - Graph theory - Set theory - Spatial Analysis



In 1963 a young Geographer named Kansky from Cambridge UK, invented the network theory that is now known in its Internet manifestation as Page Rank

What he described is a formula for ordering the importance of nodes (vertices) in a network not just based upon the volume of links (connections) between them (the method defined in topological theory), but defining the node as being a product of the power of the links that are linking to it!

ring any bells?

The power assigned to each link is derived by carrying out multi-variate analysis over the attributes that each node posseses (Googles so called 200+ variable PR dataset colected by spiders!)

OK this is the underlying Maths that Google CANNOT change!

GOOGLE did not invent this! They just applied it to cyberspatial objects!

In 1978 a young geographer from the University of Wales in Swansea took Kansky's Theorem of Nodal Magnitude to the next level by adding a concept of nodal inheritance, and if you care to visit the Earth Sciences Library building in Swansea University, you will find deep in the dust covered canyons of forgotten student dissertations, formulas and a conceptual framework for quantifying the nodal order of any network! . It's located (or used to be) just a stones throw from one of the oldest nodes on the Internet - The computer building that was part of the JANET network and housed this massive mainframe Hitachi or ICL mainframe computer the size of a condominium! Anyway I digress..

The second lie

Think on this!

I have a site that is No.1 on Google for whatever keyword or set of keywords

The reason it is No 1 is because it has 100,000+ links from a variety of Authority sites (Authority sites are sites that are ranked in the higher quartile once you apply Kanskys theorum).

Think on this

What do you think would happen if I owned all those authority sites and overnight I removed the 100000+ links?

ITS ALL LIES GOOGLE!

You heard from the worlds leading and probably one of the oldest authorities on Spatial analysis right here at THE SYSTEM.

Comments from current Geography Students, Mathmeticians and epidemiologists are more than welcome! PM.

P.S Get Connected!

Is Yahoo Directory Submission worth the Money?

We are often asked, even by experienced pros in the SEO and Internet Marketing industry, whether we think that Yahoo is worth bothering with or more specifically -

"Do you know if there is any benefit to sumbitting websites to yahoo
directory @$299 per year?"

So whats the answer? The bottom line is whether you think that the Yahoo listings are going to return you more value than the GBP200 or $300 that you have to spend initially?

Heres our take:

You will never rank on the first page of Google until you establish authority

The easiest way to achieve this is to obtain links from authority sites.

The Alexa rank for Yahoo (a better rank of authority as it measures usage) is No.2 in the world!

Point proved?

Furthermore about a month before this post was written Google and Yahoo search got into bed with each other again. It's a bit of a soap (geedit?) opera (geddit?)but maybe Yahoo offers google some real latent semantic and/or human editing options!!

The System teaches you to look at the bigger picture!

Beat The System

Google: No Brand No Ranky - For Now

The 'Buzz' on the SEO wires at the moment is sudden awareness by many so called Guru's that Brand is the all important factor in securing a top rank spot. A lot of so called 'thin affiliates' are running scared because their spammy content free sites are targetted for extinction.

They have been for a while actually!

Where have they been?

If like us you follow the ups and downs for the most important keywords in your chosen sector, in our case financial services and insurance, you couldn't have failed to notice that the strong offline brands were floating to the top for all the most competitive keywords.
For the last two years SEO without a strong brand has proved to be pretty ineffective for the top keywords while retaining good results for the long tail keywords.
A large percentage of the conversion is in the long tail so the emergence of brand as the most dominant factor in obtaining high page rank for key words such as car insurance, has left the back door open for the more niche and long tail seo merchants.

So is it still possible to compete with the massive brands and get top rankings for holy grails such as 'car insurance'

We believe it is POSSIBLE and if anything it will probably become easier for a lot of good Seoers once they understand the forces in play that allow you to attack keywords with modern google loving links, create buzz, brand enhancement and authority building - as opposed to those methods that have led to the old established brands floating to the top.

There is the one caveat of - you do need resources that cost, but the payback is tenfold!

You have many advantages and yes - the Internet has never been a level playing field!

Megaliths are slow to respond like dinosaurs, there is usually nobody at the helm, the marketing department doesn't talk to or communicate ideas to the IT department enough.

You need to take advantage of their inability, unwillingless, inertia or large scale arrrogance that stops them being leaders in 'creating buzz' and being market drivers.

In the time it takes you to write say ten articles for blogs, article distribution, squidoo lenses , etc, hypermoneycomparer.com will have to have meetings upon meetings to implement some small change - move swiftly to exploit this weakness and keep abreast and ahead in creating social media buzz and links from the most Gooogly loved places.

These megaliths don't usually know how to create buzz or conciuosly even try to using social media, although many of them have always engaged in dubious SEO practices, they are often so big it that when they commit misdemenours, it usually doesn't hurt them. (There are a couple of famous cases of where companies such as BMW and GoCompare got penalised - it made Googly rethink its algo)

This is what you are up against:

Megaliths will create buzz naturally through their size and established affiliate programs and link network.

These brands are often household names through their TV advertising.

These brands are good generic domain names, for example

Money Supermarket - Noun / Noun
Compare the Market - Verb / Noun
Go Compare - Verb / Verb

Which combination do you think has been the most successful?

Steps to take to compete on the old terms:
Here's how not to do it :

Buy links especially from as many blogs as you can - most of your hypermoneycomparer.com sites do this consistently!

Create a large affiliate program promtoting brand

Spend lots of money on Google Adwords

Alternatively stay lean and mean and ahead of the game - follow the advice in The System and it is possible to establish yourself as a leading brand in a very short period of time.

Remember these brands were small once, I personally know a lot of the guys that founded these monsters - every one of them was built on Brand promotion - concentrating on the old skool offline way and it has worked!

At no time were any of them leaders or possessed any particular special quality in the deliverance of financial and insurance comparison products - many of them were just plagarism well executed or not - but they all managed to deliver the brand message and like in the real world - thats the only thing that wins out big time in the end!

Apparently Google now reflects This

Does Adwords spend play are role? - Yes in exposure and brand deliverence to a large audience whether they click or not.

Some of these megalith brands now spend millions every week in Adwords.
It now appears that whatever misdemenours they may commit on the SEO front, they tend not to get punished in the SERPS any more, mostly because of the power and size of their adwords spend and the relationships that are built up when account managers communicate with Google over hundreds of keywords across the board.

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY and time trying to increase visibility using these PPC schemes. there are other more effective ways to spend your budget.

Brand does not equal quality. Just because its a big name it does not by definiton equal quality, unless quality is the thing it markets. Major brands can be attacked by specialised niche offerings with punch, that deliver exactly what is says on the label!

Authority Sites - How to gain trust through Links

Authority comes with time and trust and newer sites are subject to more filters from Google than older established ones.

The more trust your website gains with Google the less it becomes filtered & the easier you’ll find it to rank.

Many believe Google has added the TrustMark Algorithm to it’s SERP algo.

Many also believe that Google has a ‘Sandbox’ to test new domains and pages.
This may or may not be the case because if you follow the system methods you will rank high in record times Sandbox free!

There are 2 basic ways to beat or avoid these filters & rank your site higher and quicker in Google.
1. Build natural strong links from relevant authority sites in a naturally growing continual pattern
2. Buy an aged domain or website with authority already and develop it one step beyond. This method has much more rapid results and ROI on aged domain name investment.

The starting point of the Trust algorithm is the categorisation by hand of certain long established and trusted websites and pages, that are then scored by a team of quality control users.
Three to four years ago Google started employing students and others from all around the globe to establish a quality team that referenced pages by hand.
It's results were first noticeable to those running the Google Adsense program, many of whom sites came under human scrutiny and subsequently came under fire in Google updates such as Florida and Jagger.
Similarly all the top ranking pages for high paying Adwords Keywords such as ‘Car Insurance’ and ‘Mortgages’ at $50+ per click, were looked at by a team and classified under the Google version of the Trustmark Algo.
These sites and pages became the foundation of trust for Google and was incorporated into the main SERP algo and PR algo.

Trust like PR can be transferred to other website or page by linking to it. Trust is spreading throughout the net in the same way as PageRank has, and is consequently effected in the SERPS as spammy sites are ignored and quality authority established.

The more links you can get from established authority sites which carry trust the richer your pickings……

How to steal PR from Authority Websites - legally!

Don't think you've got Authority!

So how do you get authority for your website?

Well we touched upon this in previous posts and the simplest solution is to get lots of Authority sites linking to you.
To do this successfully and to take advantage of the types of authority site outlined in the post Authority Sites.

You will also need to invest in automated tools that conform to good submission principles.

More importantly you will need to think out of the box.

Here's an example blueprint for taking authority from an authority site, and channelling it to become a larger authority than the original authority site.

This can be done for commercial sites in any niche, however for this example we are going to a commercial niche product and a .org charity site.

OK lets assume you are selling Pet Insurance - thats a pretty competitive keyword that returns around 12 million pages indexed in Google.

IN ORDER TO GET LINKS FROM AN AUTHORITY SITE YOU NEED TO THINK WIN - WIN!!

1. Check out all the National animal charites that you can think of and see if they have local website.
2. Take say Cats Protection and go along to your local branch and offer to make them a website for free.
3. Set them up a website using a great generic domain name and blog software so they can easily post and update it and you avoid any maintainance problems. You could also set up a catchall email for them.
4. Make an interesting blogroll for them on te hsite with links to the national organisations and other interesting charities and sites that they might suggest etc. Be sure to include a nice pet insurance link to your money site within the blogroll.

TIP - make sure you use the tag rel="nofollow" for all links apart from the link to your moneysite! This way all Page Rank is channelled to your site!

SPARK IT UP!

5. Get them to email the national organisation requesting a link to the local website! (or do it yourself using a catchall email - they won't know!)

BINGO you've got a PR6 page linking to a new page linking to established websites (including your moneysite).

BUILD UP MORE AUTHORITY FOR THE INTERMEDIATE NEW CATS PROTECTION WEBSITE!

6. Post the new website location to forums, blogs, articles etc using the keyword Cats Protection.
Make some cutie kitty videos and post with your link and the Cats protection link.
Bookmark the website like mad using automated tools. (See Labels)
Spread the RSS about!

RINSE AND REPEAT FOR CATS PROTECION IN THE NEXT TOWN! - Dominate the Market!
Interlink as many cats protection sites as you can build for people around the country if you need to build a mini network (See Labels)
Make sure you get links from the central Charity to each new website.
Use a template to save yourself loads of time when building new sites.

To everyone on the outside you appear to be a generous cat philanphropist! It's a win-win thing!!

Lesson One in becoming a magician, never be what you appear to be! You must fly over or under the radar!

Authority Sites Unmasked

We bet you've often been told to get as many one way inbound links as possible from authority sites - and whoever told you was right, but do you really know what an authority site is, and even if you think you do then ask yourself the question 'Am I really going to get links from these great authority sites?'
Be honest are you? Why would Wikipedia give your website an entry? What about bbc.co.uk ? Not much chance really is there?

Well if you believe the above you are oh so totally on the wrong track.

The System believes that where there's a wall there's a way.

Here's our take on authority sites, you need to apply this vision to your own niche area of Internet Marketing to open up doors you thought were hurdles to your marketing development view.

What is authority?
Authority is trust. Trust is established over time.
Authority is content. Content that can be trusted.
Authority is respect. Respect has to be earned.
Authority is radical. Ideas and content continually flow and grow.
Authority is backward links. In many cases this may be the case however you can guarantee the website employing this tactic has a lot to say about the subject and can be deemed to be an authority.
Authority is connectivity and visibility. Web 2.0 has dramatically changed the way that search engine marketing engineers such as ourselves, can manipulate the SERPs.

So what have you learnt from the above?
How old is a website / domain name?
Content is King so how good is yours?
Authority sites that link to you are valuable as a mark of respect, how many respect you?
Is your content interesting, informed, new, up to date? Try Blogging and Video to deliver the message.
Do you have enough backward links? Keep reading The System for simple effective solutions to this one!

When was it invented?
To our eyes authority has always been around and really nothings changed that much since Tim Berners Lee invented the hypertext transfer protocol in 1993.
In fact Authority sites existed on the Internet way before the invention of the WWW.
Stepping back in time, the few first hop diallup ISPs that provided everything such as Compuserve and later AOL were early examples of authority through agglomeration.
Going back further you'll find massive authority sites on USENET and many other little known comms protocol mini-networks that have been buzzing out there since time immemorial (in cyber terms!).
You'll always hear the Americans exclaim the value of links from .EDU's (.ac.uk) or .GOVs (.gov.uk) or .ORGs.
Well there's a very good reason for this, but you have to step back even further in time to the creation of the objects that now form the backbone (ultimate authority) of the present day Internet to understand this god given authority.
The current Internet is an evolution out of the academic backbones that have connected all the Universities with mainframes since the late 1950's. These days its coupled with the simultaneously evolved military structure originally called ARPANET to provide a bomb proof - message always delivered supernet structure. Hence the power of the .GOV.
(We have some tools that let you see how your website sits in 3D internet linkage terms - it'll make you want to up your campains!! Keep reading )

So looking out for authority sites always look at the domain to help evaluate its perceived authority.

Identifying Authority sites
The simplest thing to do is to type your most desirable keyword into the Open Directory and look at the results. These are some of the highest authorites for that keyword and have a long term good relationship with both the hand edited DMOZ and Google which has always populated its directory from here.

Common types of sites that automatically carry some authority on a keyword or set of words:

Hubs
social networks
directories
article hubs
video hubs
bookmarking hubs
niche market directories and review sites
specialised websites and networks
blogs
webpages
webpage object e.g. a video or document

Anyway that's enough for today - look out for the next post on Authority Sites when we'll explain to you how easy it is to identify authorities that you haven't even thought of yet, and how easy it is to get them to link to you!