What Makes an Authority Site?

One of the main characteristics of an authority site is it has more content or pages than any other site in that niche. The search engines love content, so if we give them more content to crawl all over, then they will look more favorably on your blog. Lots of content that has good formatting with proper headings and html tags are an important for the search engines to crawl successfully over your content.

The real secret behind ranking well and becoming an authority in your niche is backlinks. When search engines see one site linking to another they look at this as a vote for the site. Each “vote” is not weighted equally however, because the more links the first site has going to it, the more that site’s vote will count.

How Do You Establish Your Site as an Authority?

One of the easiest ways to begin this is to add more content. The more useful information you can provide to your readers, the more people will naturally link to your posts. If you continuously think of your readers first and search engines second, you will dominate the rankings.

Do some homework and find out what your competitors are talking about. This is a common practice, but the key to doing this well is presenting the information in a new way or perhaps going further in depth. It’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel, just repackage it or make it better.

Now that you know the topics you need to cover, it’s time to create more pages. If you are like most people, then patience is not a strong virtue of yours. You do have other alternatives such as giving the task to someone else or you can hire someone to do it.

How Can My Content Make Me an Authority?

When you write, be mindful of the posts you have already written, and link to helpful posts. This will point your readers further into your site, and the search engines love a site that links to itself. Writing a series of posts on a particular subject will keep your readers engaged and will give you great credibility with the search engines.

When writing your new posts, remember to link out to others in your niche. Not only will they possibly link back to you (giving you that extra vote), but it will also once again point your readers to useful content. It may seem ridiculous to link to your competitors; however the search engines will put more weight on a vote from a page that is related to your page. This is also a great way to build a relationship with your fellow bloggers.

Becoming an authority blog or site takes some time and forethought. With some calculated steps, such as the ones I’ve outlined, you will one day become an authority site. Remember the cliche is true “Content is King”. If you want to be #1, then you have to earn it with top of the line content.

If the content you write in your blog is relevant, informative, and helpful, your chance of getting back links rises considerably.

Four Important Blogging Rules

1. Write your blog posts just like you would any other article. The temptation is to stuff your keywords in your posts and overdo it. Google is looking for quality sites maintained by real people. Blogs have been abused so much in the past that it’s a very important you post your own content that you’ve created. I don’t recommend using free content that’s so widely available or even private label content.

2. You need to offer something of value to anyone who visits your site. Remember that you’re the expert on your topic. Not everyone knows what you know about shoes, landscaping, or whatever else you’re writing about. A good technique is to review other products or websites and offer something of value that can help someone in a pre-purchase decision. I also don’t recommend putting RSS feeds in your posts since this is a common technique that blog spammers have used in the past.

3. You need to make your blog unique. Give somebody visiting for the first time a reason to come back. Make sure you have a way for readers to subscribe to your content. This is usually done with an RSS reader button somewhere on your page. This is also a great place to put an opt in newsletter box where people can sign up and get free articles or free e-books.

4. Whatever you do, don’t neglect your blog. If you keep your blog updated and offer new posts on a semi regular basis, you will increase your back links and visitors to your site. The worst thing you can do is start strong and simply let your blog die out. We’ve all seen the blogs with 4 or 5 consecutive posts on successive days only to have ZERO posts the last few months, or years! This can actually hurt you in the long run. If visitors see that you can’t maintain your own blog, they might assume that you can’t provide a good product or service. So make sure once you start your blog that you continue to maintain it.

Getting Links

Getting back links from a blog is a natural process. You can put links from your blog to your own website. Make sure you don’t put links that only point to your website. Add resources, information, and other directories and sites where people can go to if they come to your website.

The natural progression is that somebody will visit your blog read your article and hopefully click a link to go your website. Or even better, someone will like your post and link to your post or link directly to your website. The benefit to blogs is that your posts will be syndicated to other sites and directories almost immediately. While syndication is a benefit, it also means your content will become stale faster.

Be very careful about what types of information you’re writing about on your blog. If you’re doing a review, don’t use an affiliate link to another site. Using affiliate links is the fastest way to discredit your blog. If you do any linking at all, link directly to the site you’re reviewing or referencing. Don’t lose credibility for the sake of a few extra bucks.

It’s also okay to put a resource box at the end of each post. Just make sure you’re not trying to sell anything or offer “special deals”. People want to know they’re getting high quality information with no strings attached. Let your information speak for itself and if someone is still interested they will naturally follow your link.

Blogging is a simple and highly effective way to get back links

Blogging can get you the back links that you desire if done correctly. It’s easy, doesn’t take a lot of time, and will help you in your ongoing linking strategies.

If you are at all interested in using this technique, you can sign up with blogger.com today. You don’t have to have your own domain name or even your own web host. That’s why it’s so important to add blogging to your linking toolkit. It’s just too easy.

Blogging, along with article and directory submissions, is a powerful combination that will help you get ranked well for your search terms in all the major search engines. Use liberally.