What does Authority mean

Authority is a social indicator of how much a particular website or a particular web page is considered the source on a particular topic. Authority measures expertise, and more importantly, the acknowledgement of that expertise within your industry and outside as well. If you run a car accessories website and you have many other car sites linking to yours, it implies (to Google) that your website is considered a somewhat authoritative source on ‘car accessories’. And if you have non-car sites linking to you as well, this will further enhance your ‘authority’ status, although this is tempered by the fact that the opinion of sites within your niche holds a greater value (because they themselves are considered authorities on the subject). Here is a quick list of the types of links that will convey authority to your website – from least useful to the
most:

• Site with few backlinks and closely related to your site’s niche.
• Site with few backlinks and unrelated to your site’s niche.
• Site with many backlinks (some authority) and unrelated to your site’s topic.
• Site with many backlinks (some authority) and closely related to your site’s niche.

Authority links are a key part of the link building process hunting such links is an art as much as a science. Individual web pages can also have authority on the same lines as websites do which is why getting links to individual pages of your website (also known as deep linking) is a very important part of the link building process.