How To Give Your Content Authority

If you are producing content with the aim of achieving high SEO rankings and thus attracting visitors to your site, you will need to focus on a range of factors. These include not just keywords, relevance and having a user-friendly site to boost your technical SEO, but also what is known as ‘authority’.

That term may seem rather vague. After all, what makes someone an authority on a subject? How is it measured? And how can what seems a subjective measure be assessed by a search engine algorithm, especially in an age when every scrap of ‘truth’ seems to be disputed by someone?

In fact, there are several measurable areas where content can be judged, with one of the most important being domain authority. This is based on the kind of links your content has. To put it in simple terms, if you are linking to a source that is well-known, established and respected as a reliable source of good information about a topic, then this will rank higher.

Google devised a method called Page Rank to establish this kind of measurement, with the basic principle being that your content can be trusted if the basis of what you are telling the reader is drawn from an individual, company or organisation that has a strong knowledge and understanding on a subject.

Age and trust also matter, however; you won’t get to the first page of the rankings even with outstanding content for several months, because the search engine needs to be able to see evidence that any good content you have is not just a one-off. Quite simply, the more high-quality content you produce and the longer you produce it over, the higher your authority - and ranking - will be.

This is particularly important to recognise because SEO never stands still. If you do find yourself on page one, you will have achieved your initial aim. But, like the leaders in any field of life, there will be others looking to displace you. That means you have to work hard to stay there.

To do this, you will need to carry on producing authoritative work, with the added issue that if you are getting lots of hits, problems like a high bounce rate will count against you.

This happens if you let your standards slip. If you suddenly become less authoritative, for example by citing weaker sources and producing lower quality articles, this will drive traffic away. Therefore, keeping bounce rate low is also important in showing yourself to be authoritative.

In short, you need people to trust what you are writing. If, for example, you are providing advice that the readers put to use and find beneficial, then they are likely to keep coming back, with that extra engagement and traffic demonstrating trust. Moreover, you may find others link your site to their articles, which boosts your own domain authority.

Nor should it be forgotten what the end game is; good SEO means more web visibility and more visitors to your site. If people see you as authoritative on the basis of your content, they will be more likely to become your customers.

If you want help in optimising your content, speak to an SEO consultant in Yorkshire today.