How to Boost Your Business Using Authority Websites

Whether you like it or not, the fact is that Google favors authority websites. You can try to rank for any keyword, but if a magazine like Forbes, Inc or a similar one with high authority wrote an article targeting those same keywords then chances are they’re going to outrank you. You can keep building links and hope to outrank them or you can make use of those authority sites to give a boost to your business. Below is my favorite list of authority sites that will boost your business.

Slideshare

Slideshare is my favorite authority website to publish content for many reasons. It has a huge audience so even if your presentation didn’t rank in search engines you’ll still get a decent amount of traffic. If you can come up with a great presentation then it can reach thousands of users.

Also you can easily make use of already existing content to create presentations. Because the formats are different you’re forced to redo the content and you won’t suffer from any duplicate penalties either.

If you start to do really well in Slideshare you can upgrade to premium which will give you more detailed stats about your visitors and also a way to capture leads. One of my favorite authority websites with huge traffic potential.

Pinterest

One of the fasters growing websites in the world, it would be unwise to ignore Pinterest. Like Slideshare Pinterest also has its own dedicated audience so you will get visitors even if your pins or boards didn’t rank well in search engines. However Pinterest images rank very well in image search giving you more chances to reach your potential users.

In Pinterest also you can easily reuse your existing content. One of the best approaches to take is to convert your blog posts into info-graphics and upload them to Pinterest. If that is too much work then you can share more simple images that you usually include in your blog posts.

In some cases you can convert the whole blog post to a specific board. For example take this SWOT analysis templates blog post. I’ve converted it to a Pinterest board and also to a Slide show. I’m increasing my reach by re-purposing the same content.

Depending on your business and the time available to you can explore other image sharing services like Instagram and Flickr. So far I’ve had most success with Pinterest, but no harm in giving others a try.

Quora

Quora is a question and answer site similar to Yahoo answers. And it ranks very well for question type queries. Because it’s well curated and because many famous people are actively using the service Quora has a very engaged user base.

This makes it the perfect place to show your expertise and get leads/clients to your business. Look for questions related to your niche and go and answer them. Make sure to use all the tools available to you when answering a question. For example see if you can you add an image to the answers or whether you can improve the answer by adding a relevant link etc. If you’re answering the relevant questions then you’ll have a good chance of adding your link as well.

Scribd

Scribd is another high authority site with a large audience. You can upload documents of various formats to this site. For example you can upload the slideshows you created for Slideshare. But to get the best out of your site it’s much better to upload them as PDF’s. And creating a PDF from your existing content is not that difficult.

For example if you’re running a WordPress blog then there are plugins which allows you to export your blog posts and PDF files. You can select some of your popular posts, export them as PDF files and upload to Scribd. You can even add a nice cover image to make it more like a booklet or a report.

Listed above are some sites I personally use to gain exposure for my clients. These sites command their own audience so even if you don’t rank well in search engines using these sites you’re bound to get some traffic through them. However if you choose your keywords wisely then these sites can provide you with long lasting traffic and exposure to your business.

How to Boost Your Business Using Authority Websites