Best advice for an authority site starting out...

The very first thing you can do is to write rich and unique content and try to increase the amount of your post. People love to visit the blog which is updated frequently. Do share your post in the Social Networking sites like Facebook, Twitter... Always remember a Good Content is always makes natural back links for you as user like your content and share it with others.

Yahoo has announced it will finally, officially shut down the Yahoo Directory on December 31, 2014.

Reverse engineer your competition. Don't reinvent the wheel. Your ace in the hole, though, is to focus on a subniche twist for each piece of content. This way you have a traffic BASE while you duke it out with your competitors in terms of social media outreach.

Guest posting might be a good idea to increase authority and get your website known by other already established websites.
Also, article syndication might be a good idea.

If you're trying to build an authority blog I highly suggest focusing on creating the best content you can and not worrying too much about SEO. Write awesome content and get active on social media. Worry more about branding and building an audience than your SEO

Obviously you need to get the attention of people who could potentially put out a link for you. And this in my opinion, is a very niche specific question as far as white hat is concerned.

As writeaway mentioned, probably the best "general advice" is to study what your competitors are doing. This is as simple as finding out the backlinks of your competitors, which need to be sorted in order of importance. Then you just go through them, and see what could be replicated or done better.

Coincidently, I am soon planning to release an incredible "Warrior Special Offer" for finding out your competitors backlinks.

I don't think there is any such thing as an 'authority site just starting out'. Your hope is to become an authority site, but that's not going to happen on day one. Also, authority site by who's standard; your own or Google's?

Why would you want SEO traffic to roll in?

If you listed 15 types of traffic in the order in which I'd like them to roll in, SEO traffic would be number 15 on the list. If you listed 30, it would probably be number 30.

Do these two posts/threads interest you at all? ...
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post8659398
http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post9581430

Publishing content just on your own site isn't a traffic-generation plan at all. Why would it be? The only traffic that's ever likely to attract, for you, is a little bit of gradual, eventual, search-engine traffic (and nobody's getting rich off that, quite apart from its precariousness and ephemeral nature).

If you need traffic to monetize, for your site/business, this may be a good place to start (but with "SEO traffic" at the bottom of the list): http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ffic-tips.html

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Inviting guest posts to your blog will get your site a lot of eyeballs.

Come to think of it, most if not all authority blogs are composed of guest posts from other blogs.

What is the second best directory behind Yahoo for SEO?

Yeah. "Just keep on writing quality content and Google will reward you." actually works!

I'm with Amanda on this one. Skeleton content is simply not enough. Be patient and focus on building the site with the best information you can come up with. Start a blog and do the same. It takes a bit of time, but building up your credibility is well worth the effort.

People will find your site and begin spreading the word.

We aren't preaching that great content is magic. It's pure fact that many people hop online to seek information about products, services, hobbies, news and anything that peaks their curiosity. Which means they are looking at content when they reach a site.

There's tons of mediocre content for sure. What we're advising is to focus on content that is above average in some way. The difference between good and great content is subjective. However, those that take the time to create content that is unique and helps people are going to reap more benefits than those that slap average content on their sites hoping it will do something.

Sure, social media and promotion is a component of getting noticed. But, backlinks, likes and posting on sites like Pinterest don't mean much if the content is not worth a visitor's time. Put content on a site that resonates strongly with people and they are more likely to share it with others. I've seen this happen with one of my own sites. People posted links on forums to my site, without me doing anything but posting articles. I only found out by looking at traffic stats.

You don't have to be a genius or anything, just have some real interest or passion about the topic and write engagingly.

I do just fine without creating many (if any) backlinks of my own. I write awesome content, I build an audience in social media, and I let them handle sharing my content around more. I do guest blogging from time to time but it's amazing what can happen if you just focus on building an audience that wants to consume your content over and over again.

Few things

Having an Aged domain
Blog network of web 2.0 pointing to your site
Relevant content from authority sites like articles pointing to your site
Quality backlinks and videos pointing to your site

and a good social media presence i.e. Paid advertising

I'm agreeing with everyone about content - push out good content and use social networks to push it.

Also, network. Look for other blogs and bloggers in the niche you're trying to become an authority on and get to know them. Comment on their articles, follow them on social media, and engage with them. Posting onto Twitter with a bunch of hashtags is one thing, talking to other creators and experts is another. It'll only benefit you in the long run.

If people start picking up your content and linking to it, the back links will build themselves.

Artikcle writing and building a mailing list is a good approach to getting started.

know your keywords to bring alot of relative traffic to your site. i made alot of mistakes building authority sites without related keywords.

One thing no one has mentioned is that you don't get to decide if you have an "authority" site. Other people do. Maybe it's just too obvious to mention?

So the question becomes "how do I create a site people are willing to treat as an authority site?"

You have the answers already.

> Quality content, and
> Social interaction (people commenting, sharing, linking, etc.)

Focus on those two things and the authority will accumulate over time.

As was just mentioned. You do not become an authority just because you write on the topic of your niche. You need to find niche specific readers. This is something I did and it isn't quick. You need to build your reader numbers by providing top notch content.

You need to find out who your target market of readers is so you can find out what they want to read. I've seen a lot of replys suggesting that you buy or pay for traffic. I suppose that's great for IMers...but in regards to your needs, you need people to keep coming back to your site for your content to be considered an authority in your niche.

The first step I would suggest is to find out who the competition is and find out who their audiences are. With this data, you can start putting together a legitimate pathway to becoming an authority figure.

-CG

Apparently the latest hot MMO trend is the self appointed gurus promoting the creation of authority sites. It's been going on for at least a year. You can tell when something like this is getting close to critical mass because people here start creating WSOs about it and new members are all over it.

Just like MMO solo ads have little in common with traditional (real) solo ads, MMO authority sites have almost nothing in common with real authority sites. For one, a real authority site has an aged domain. It's likely that alone disqualifies most of the so called authority sites you'll mind in the "IM niche."

Another thing that's both funny and sad is that people looking to jump on the authority site bandwagon do so with the same old tired appeal to Google.

If you really want to create an authority site you should do what real authority site webmasters do. Here are a few sites you might want to emulate if you're serious:

Facebook
Youtube
Yahoo
Baidu (not all authority sites speak English)
Wikipedia
Twitter
Drudge
Huffington
MSN
Amazon
LinkedIn
CNET
Warrior Forum

There are thousands of them out there. If you somehow managed to have 1/10 of what these sites have in the way of relevant content and traffic you'd be there. Good luck.