Review & override authority links

This page covers the Authority step in detail — how to evaluate the sources Structura proposes, how to find better ones for your niche, and how to maintain the list over time. For the shorter primer, see Authority links — why posts cite them.

When to open this page

During campaign creation, on the Authority step.
Any time after, from Campaigns → [your campaign] → Edit → the Authority section.

What you see

A list of authority-source rows, each with:

The site name and URL.
Structura’s note on why it picked this source.
A delete control on the row.

At the bottom: an input to add a source by URL, and a Re-discover button to re-run the research.

Evaluating a proposed source

For each entry, ask yourself:

Do I recognise it? If yes, skip to the next check. If no, open the URL and read a recent post. Reputable publications in your niche should be obvious within a minute; if you can’t tell what the site is, it’s probably not the authority Structura thinks it is.

Is it reputable in my space? A big-name general publisher isn’t automatically the right source for a niche. A specialist trade publication often beats a generalist one for industry-specific topics.

Is it still active? Some sources that used to be authoritative go stale. If the latest post on the cited site is from 2022, consider removing it.

Does it have a paywall? A hard paywall means some readers can’t follow the citation. Structura will still link to it, but the link is less useful if half your audience can’t read the target page. Prefer sources with accessible content when possible.

Adding sources manually

Paste a URL into the Add source field and press Enter. Structura resolves the URL, extracts the site name, and adds the source to your list.

Pick the right URL depth.

A specific page (e.g., a flagship article, a research landing page) is usually a better citation target than a homepage.
If the site has a topic-specific section that fits your niche, link to that section root rather than the whole domain.

Good candidate sources:

Trade publications that your actual industry reads.
Research institutions (universities, NGOs, government agencies).
Professional bodies that set standards in your field.
The canonical-source blog for a specific tool or platform you cover.
Long-standing independent authorities (people who’ve been writing in this space consistently for years).

Avoid:

Competitors’ blogs. (Obviously — you don’t want to send your readers to them.)
Sites with aggressive advertising or SEO gimmicks that contradict what you’re trying to be.
Temporary promotions or press releases that’ll become dead links.
Your own site. Use internal linking instead; Structura handles that separately.

The “Re-discover” button

Use it when:

Most of the proposed sources aren’t appropriate for your niche.
You’ve radically changed the campaign’s Strategy and want sources that match the new direction.
You want to compare two rounds of research.

Don’t use it when you’ve already curated the list the way you want — Re-discover starts over.

Maintaining the list over time

Sources go stale. A list you built 18 months ago probably has at least one source that’s no longer active, or that’s had a credibility hit. A quick practice:

Once a quarter, open the Authority list on each active campaign and scan it.
Remove anything you no longer recognise or trust.
Add anything new that’s become important in your space.

This takes about five minutes per campaign and keeps your posts citing current, credible sources.

How a post decides which sources to cite

Structura’s draft for a specific topic doesn’t cite every source in your list. It picks the ones most relevant to that post’s topic and draws from 2–4 of them. Sources you’ve listed that don’t fit this post’s topic stay dormant and are available for future posts.