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One of the most common traps that people fall into when they start developing their link network is to think that the more links they can create the better.

This is simply not true.

When it comes down to quality versus quantity, in many cases, having a small number of relevant, high authority backlinks can have more impact on your ranking than having a large number of low authority backlinks.

In this video, I’d like to show you a few options for obtaining high authority backlinks that can have a significant impact on your site’s ranking.

The options we’ll be looking at are:

(1) The Dmoz Directory
(2) The Yahoo Directory
(3) .edu and .gov domains

So let’s take a look at each of these in more detail.

The Dmoz directory which you can find at www.dmoz.org is the largest human-edited directory of the web.

What this means is that every website listed in the directory has been reviewed and approved by a real person. The aim of this human review process is to eliminate low quality sites and to highlight only the best content.

Before submitting your website for review by a dmoz editor, you should spend some time adding good quality content to your blog in order to have a better chance of approval.

When you’re happy with the content of your site, you can access the submission page from Market Samurai. All you have to do is go to the promotion module...

...and come up here and click on the DMOZ Submission button.

Market Samurai will then open a browser and take you to a page which describes the submission process.

The approval process can take several weeks but if your website is approved, and you get a listing in the directory, the link from the dmoz directory to your website can help improve your ranking because Google views the dmoz directory as a high authority website.

The Yahoo Directory is another high authority directory that can have an impact on your ranking in Google.

The main consideration with the Yahoo Directory is that it is a paid directory. A listing currently costs US$299 per year.
So this is probably not something you’d do if you’re just starting out.

However, if you have a website that’s producing regular income, having a listing in the Yahoo directory may have an impact on your sites ranking because the link from the Yahoo Directory to your website will be viewed as a high authority link.

Another source of high quality backlinks are websites that have a .edu or .gov domain.

These domains often have a higher level of authority and therefore links from these website can be more valuable than links from regular domains.

So let’s take a look at how to use Market Samurai to find sites that may be able to provide you with a high quality backlink.

Here I am again in the promotion module and you’ll notice that I’m looking for sites relevant to the example keyword ‘piano for beginners’.

To look for blogs or forums from a .edu or .gov domain, all I have to do is come up here and click the Google blog (edu/gov) option and the Wordpress (edu/gov) option.

And in the forum section, I’ll click the phpBB(edu/gov) option and the vBulletin(edu/gov) option.

Now I can click the Find Backlinks button.

And as you can see, there are no blogs or forums that are relevant to my micro niche keyword ‘piano for beginners’, and in actual fact I’ve done this on purpose in order to illustrate an important point.

Often if you are using a longer tail keyword, you won’t be able to find any relevant blogs or forums.

What you should do in this case is to move up the keyword hierarchy and broaden your search to a more general keyword.

For example, instead of using ‘piano for beginners’, I’ll add a new keyword...

...and this time I’ll use the more general term ‘piano’ to try and find relevant websites.

So once again, I’ll come down to the Promotion module.

I’ll then select the Google Blog (edu/gov), Wordpress (edu/gov), phpBB (edu/gov), and vBulletin (edu/gov) options...

...and then I’ll come down here and click the Find Backlinks button.

And as you can see, by using a more general term I can often find some sites to explore.

To analyze these websites I’ll just come down here and click the Analyze All button.

Now what I’d really like to find are websites that use ‘do follow’ links and have a high level of authority as indicated by a high Page Rank value.

So the first thing I’ll do is come up here and click on the PR column heading.

Now I can go through this list and try and find a relevant website where I can make an appropriate comment.

In a previous video I mentioned the importance of writing good quality comments that add genuine value to a blog post or forum.

This is an even more important consideration when dealing with .edu and .gov websites.

Often these sites are moderated and all submissions are reviewed before being accepted.

So if you’re going to add a comment to a .edu or .gov blog or forum, make sure that you take the time to write a good quality comment that adds value to the website. This will maximise your chances of having your comment accepted.

So just to recap, in this video we’ve seen that when it comes to developing your link network. The idea of “The more links the better” is not necessarily true.

We’ve discovered that a small number of high authority backlinks can have more impact on your sites ranking than a high number of low authority links.

And finally we saw that the dmoz directory, the yahoo directory and .edu and .gov websites can provide you with opportunities to obtain higher authority backlinks.