An overall SEO strategy should integrate various link acquisition strategies at a moments notice, at any given period of time. A number of these strategies are moderately easy while others are difficult. The links that are the hardest to obtain are those that drive traffic to a website, and increase Search Engine Results Page(s) (SERPS).
You might be in the pursuit of obtaining links but before pushing yourself to such acts, you should be able to identify an authoritative link. Here are several ways to find them:
Website Value Factors
If you are assessing a website that you desire to get a link from, you have to check whether the website provides value to their visitors. A blog that is solely meant for affiliate marketing or a blog just created for Adsense does not provide real value to their users. Although it can still be considered a link, this might affect the way the search engines look at your blog/site.
Website Quality Inbound Links
You should check the backlink profile before obtaining links from a website. The backlinks should not come from paid links as this might be affected by the next Google algorithm update.
Website Quality Outbound Links
Websites can also be checked whether they have authoritative links through their outbound links. Websites should link to external websites that are associated with their niche. It is a bad sign for a website to link to sites that promote casinos, porn, or pills. Associating with these type of websites will make Google think that you are spammy, as this will open up the chance for possible penalties. There are several tools you can utilize to complete these tasks. Many of them are paid. Raven tools is a prime example.
Website Traffic
Since you desire to obtain traffic, you should link to websites that obtains high levels of traffic. You cannot check their analytics since it is not your blog, but you can check their sociability levels across the Web, and get a pretty good idea about the quality of their website traffic.
Engaging Website Content
Another great method for determining authoritative links is learning how websites engage humans with their content. If the blog postings have healthy comments, then its usually a good sign. You have to check how their social shares work. If there are lots of people who engage, then the blog more than likely relevant, and the links are usually prominent as well. Checking the health of a website is paramount. You should make sure that the blog is active and that the blog/site publishes content regularly. Having a decent page rank, and being completely indexed by Google, Bing, Yahoo are great factors to consider.
Do not jump into the bandwagon of obtaining links here and there. You have to check the characteristics whether a link is authoritative or not. This way you can obtain a valuable link profile compared to building a great number of low quality links. Over time, you will be glad you did.