You’ve heard of minisites, portals, content sites and maybe even virtual real estate – but there is another term that has taken on a buzz factor in the last few months and that’s called "Authority Sites"
So, what is an authority site? And most important, why should it matter to you?
"Authority" is a term that has been given to the way Google and other search engines are increasingly putting a ranking or value on sites based on their ability to provide the most complete, best information on a particular topic (typically categorized by keyword in terms of search engines).
Unlike sites of the past where you might place a one-page minisite or a 5-page content site on it’s own and then move on to another site – the emphasis on authority means you need to pay much more attention to building heavy information sites focused around a set of keywords representing a given market/topic.
What are some of the elements important to authority?
- Longevity – or the length of time your site has been up and active. There’s no known exact measurement for the impact of longevity, but we know from our own sites that 1-year old sites get ranked higher than 1-month old sites and 4-year-old sites get ranked higher than 1-year-old sites – all things considered.
- Number and relevancy of content. To be an authority on a given market or topic, the more original, quality content that is clearly related to your market and associated keywords, the better. Some may feel that 50-pages is allot, others 100 – fact is that you should have hundreds and hundreds of pages of content – so publishing must become a key part of your online marketing plans moving forward
- Inbound and Outbound Links – Building authority sites must involve relevant linking, both outbound and inbound. Outbound links should be highly relevant, associated with your content and it helps if they are also high authority sites. Inbound links should appear natural rather than belonging to schemes or purchased from less-than relevant link farms and so on…
- Multiple types of content – While this one doesn’t get mentioned much, and may not be a great factor today – it appears it will be in the future and that is to have a good mix of static, dynamic, multimedia content. Setting your site up with a mix of sales pages, static articles, ongoing newsletters or audio/videos plus dynamic content such as forums or a blog is a good idea.
Are you surprised by the concept of authority sites when everyone seems to have been telling you to build lots of small niche-market sites fast to make your money online?
You shouldn’t be – the authority concept has always been partially responsible for search engine rankings and from the search engine’s point of view, is the only way to keep it’s users confidently using it’s search services knowing they will discover quality content rather than crappy sales or directory sites.
So – what should you be doing to improve your authority?
- Get your site started – as history is important, the earlier you start, the better you will look on longevity in the near future
- Write, write, write – content, content, content – We talk about several methods over at InfoMarketer’s Zone that makes generating content dead-simple, especially for the non-writer. If you don’t know what else to do to market your business, write an article – blog posting – forum posting or other content each day, that will help you to gain authority 3-6 months down the road
- Focus on quality. Not every piece of content we write do we expect will get picked up by other authority sites, but each week we try and write something that is above-and-beyond targeting a very hot topic so that we can improve the chances that we will get picked up by authority sites. You can also use techniques such as Press Releases, book reviews, and answer questions on places like Yahoo Answers or Linked In to get your inbound links from authority sites up
- Learn to leverage the Web2.0 community. Add value, become involved in discussions, websites and applications that related to your target market – that way you will create a community within these different Web 2.0 sites (Myspace, Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, Amazon, etc…) to help you improve your overall topic authority
- Finally, change your approach – rather than trying to generate and maintain 20-smaller sites, focus on a few high-quality sites so that you can build authority rather than volume.
Building authority sites is crucial to your success running an online business – if you have questions, then post to the comments and we’ll be happy to share more of our findings on this very important topic.
Jeff
