How to boost site authority. As soon as you start to learn about search engine optimization, you’ll hear about site authority. Usually right after you learn about keywords. And for good reasons. It is one of the big factors of how well you will rank for anything on your entire site. Let’s look at what you can do to boost your website’s authority.
Internal And External Links
The most basic sign of authority is the one that was first implemented in the birth days of Google. The idea was that as people find high-quality and helpful content and link to it the cream will rise to the top.
While things have changed since then and a lot of safety measures are in place so you can’t scam your way to the top by buying links, your site authority is still largely determined by the quality of natural, high quality incoming links.
Using relevant internal and external links on your site will ultimately improve the search visibility and rank of your website.
How do you get those? By sharing great content and getting the ball rolling by telling your target audience about it. How do you do that? Social media is a great option, which also brings us to my next point.
Social Signals How To Boost Site Authority
Once you start to get the ball rolling on social media sites, others will start to share your content. Guess what. That gives you incoming links and it sends what are called “social signals”. As your post about your latest blog post or article get shared around and liked, your content and with it your site gain authority. This will build over time, as will the last thing we’ll talk about.
Website Age
Age will also help you as time goes on. The best time to have registered a domain was ten years ago. The next best time is today. Get started, get high quality content up, start sharing it with the right audience and your authority will start to grow as time goes by. A thriving business feeds on generating engagement.
During this time of uncertainty, it is absolutely crucial for businesses to connect with consumers and stay relevant. Don’t obsess or worry over the age factor. It is what it is. Building search engine traffic takes time and not just because of the age factor. Instead, continue to work on your site, knowing that ranking will become easier as time goes by. This is in part because of your website’s age and authority, but also because you have more content on your site that will rank for a variety of keywords, and as you grow your audience they will help you spread the word, creating more social signals and incoming links for you.
This is not an extensive list of what improves site authority. There are lots of different factors involved in it in addition to this. Search engines are deliberately vague about what moves the needle at any given time. That said, these are the ones that are most in your control and what I have found to help most.
How To Boost Site Authority
Large websites (think Wikipedia) and those that have been around for a long time, often have a leg up in the competition for the top search result spots in your favorite search engines. That doesn’t mean you don’t have a shot though. In an effort to bring their customers – the people that type in the search – the best results possible, search engines like Google are weighing relevancy quite heavily. And that’s what you can use to your advantage even as a small guy. Here’s how:
Be Specific Go After The Long Tail And Niche Down
Don’t go after a top keyword for your niche. Let’s say you’re selling blue widgets. Don’t go after the term “blue widgets”. Yes, it gets the highest search volume, but not everyone searching will be ready to buy blue widgets from you. Maybe they are looking for blue widget images because they are curious what they look like. Maybe they are looking for instructions on making their own blue widgets, or they want to find someone who can manufacture a lot of these blue widgets for their own shop.
Instead, go after the long tail. Use key phrases like “where to buy blue widgets online” or “best place to buy blue widgets in Springfield”. Even better, find a way to set yourself apart from the competition by becoming the place that sells blue widgets for bicycles. Make yourself the expert
Stay On Topic How To Boost Site Authority
Relevancy is all about staying on topic. A small website dedicated to share great content exclusively on one topic will rank higher than larger sites that share everything. That’s why despite its huge authority, Wikipedia doesn’t rank for everything. Even though there’s a page on just about everything on that site. Let’s say you decide to build a site about gardening. Pick a niche within that and stick to it. That’s how you may become one of the authority sites about something like rose gardening, or building a year-round herb garden.
Each time you work on a new piece of content ask yourself if it is on topic. Don’t try to be everything to everyone. Relevancy matters.
Go Local Where It Makes Sense
I touched on this earlier, but it’s an important topic, so let’s dive a little deeper. Where it makes sense, it can be very beneficial to make your content local. Instead of becoming one more seller of yellow widgets online, you could become the seller of yellow widgets for your state or your town and rake in the profits.
Of course this doesn’t make sense for everyone. But let’s say you are great at email marketing. Instead of putting up yet another site and offer yet another course to everyone in the English speaking world on the topic, go after the small businesses in your area. Become the expert for email marketing in Springfield. Not only will it be much easier to rank for this longer tail keyword, it also opens up all sorts of new options for local marketing. And don’t forget about higher priced products and services that you can offer locally like in-person workshops and consultations.
Final Thoughts
Whether you start big or small, your presence on the internet…your website authority should be your initial focal point of getting your website noticed. Local presence, staying on topic, being specific and everything and anything in between. Learning how to improve your online presence will take your business to new heights and start providing to you the monetary goals you have been working towards.
Be Blessed…Stay Safe!