Relevant backlinks
Links from sites that share topical ground with the page being linked to, not simply sites with a high third-party score.
Authority growth
More credible sources pointing at you, from more of the places that matter.
Authority growth means increasing the quantity and quality of credible third-party websites that reference, mention, cite or link to your brand. That is the whole definition. Everything else is implementation.
Sources
Authority comes from more places than a link.
A program that only counts backlinks will miss most of what actually establishes a brand as a credible source, particularly for answer engines that weigh mentions and citations alongside links.
Publisher mentions
Being named in the body of an article, with or without a link, on a publication that covers your category.
Editorial coverage
Articles a publication chose to write, which tend to be referenced and repeated by other sources afterwards.
Industry resources
Curated lists, tool directories and reference pages that practitioners in your category actually use.
Trade publications
The specialist press your buyers read and your competitors are already quoted in.
Associations
Membership listings, certification directories and professional bodies that carry independent credibility.
Local authority
For multi-location and franchise brands, the regional and municipal sources that establish presence in a specific market.
Reclaimed links
Authority you already earned and lost: unlinked mentions, broken links and references orphaned by a migration.
An honest note on scores
There is no official Google authority score.
Third-party tools publish their own authority metrics. They are useful for comparison and triage. They are not a Google metric, they are not a ranking factor, and a program that optimizes primarily for one of them is optimizing for a vendor rather than for your customers.
We use those metrics as one input among several. What we manage toward is relevance, credibility, a sensible authority mix and actual movement in search and AI visibility.
What we manage toward
- Topical relevance between the source and the target page
- Editorial credibility of the publication
- A natural mix of placement types and authority levels
- Referring domain growth, not repeat links from the same sites
- Measured movement in search visibility
- Measured movement in AI mentions and citations
The outreach ledger
One website. One outcome. One record.
Our outreach ledger records the actual outcome for every website we touch. A site is not contacted twice because a second campaign forgot it had already been approached. A delivery is not recorded before it exists. A placement is not counted until it is live and verified.
Outreach state
- Discovered
- Reviewed
- Approved
- Contacted
- Responded
- Negotiating
- Confirmed
- Verified
What your report shows
- Qualified targets
- Outreach completed
- Response rate
- Opportunities identified
- Confirmed placements
- Live URLs
- Target pages
- Placement type
- Paid opportunities approved and denied
- Authority and traffic information
- Date verified
- Full campaign history
Every line is traceable to a live URL you can open. If it is not verified, it is not on the report.
Where is your authority thin?
Usually it is one or two page types carrying most of the commercial weight with almost nothing pointing at them. That is a solvable problem and the first thing we look for.