All the major search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! and MSN, place a very high importance on inbound links from authority websites.

The fastest way for a new niche website to get in all the major search engine indexes is to acquire links from ‘expert’ websites. Links from relevant authority websites can get your site in the Big Three indexes literally overnight.

Although, asking those sites for links is almost pointless, you can provide an article or participate in the site’s forum and embed a link to your website into your article byline or forum signature, that is a common practice. Be unique, have something worth saying.

But how to find authority websites for your niche?

Myriad Search Authority Finder is a relatively new meta search engine by Aaron Wall (SEO Book) designed primarily to help find authoritative websites for your keywords. Want to know which websites rank well for your niche key phrase? Myriad Search will show you, presenting search results with their relative rankings from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com.

The output of Authority Finder is in %. For a site to have 100% authority it would need to rank #1 in all four engines. You can then use these results to locate sites consistently rated as authorative across search engines, based on the keyword string being searched for.

Let’s jump right in and find out the most valuable websites for keyword phrase ‘dog training’ as an example of using the Myriad Search.

If you have the Virtual Real Estate Toolbar installed, simply enter ‘dog training’ into the toolbar’s search box. If you don’t have the VRE Toolbar installed, go to the Myriad website (http://www.myriadsearch.com), enter the phrase into the search box and press Search.

Wait a moment while it scans the search engines, and now you have a list of ‘expert’ websites to work with. You can save the search results in a CSV (comma separated values) file.

Let’s analyze the Myriad results for ‘dog training’.

#1 is www.uwsp.edu/psych/dog/dog.htm. This site is #1 in Google, #6 in Yahoo! and #3 in Ask.com. A valuable .edu website, that has links to commercial products. If you have a quality relevant product, you can try to acquire a link from them.

#2 is www.dogpatch.org/obed. They are #7 in Google, #10 in Yahoo! and #1 in Ask.com. There are forums you can participate in. There are links to websites with dog training related articles.

#3 is www.dogtrainingbasics.com – #2 in Yahoo! and #2 in MSN – you can submit your article in their Articles section.

#4 is www.dogproblems.com – #3 in Google and #2 in Ask.com – has a forum; has links to other dog training products and websites.

#5 is www.apdt.com – #8 in Google, #18 in Yahoo! and #6 in Ask.com – has an e-mail discussion list and news bulletins for members.
As you can see, there is an opportunity to get one-way links from authority websites for your niche. And the Myriad Search Authority Finder is a great tool to identify those expert websites.