What Is Website Authority?
Website authority is a measure of the overall strength of your site or domain. Strong sites tend to show up higher in the search results and have traits that include, but certainly aren’t limited to:
- Comprehensive coverage of the topics surrounding relevant keywords
- High-quality content—both in terms of technical aspects, such as grammar, and engagement aspects, such as how easily audience attention is captured by the content
- Demonstrated expertise and authority about the topics at hand
- Strong internal and external linking strategies
- High numbers of backlinks
Many SEO companies and other sites offer ways to measure website authority. You can use a website authority checker to get an idea of how your website authority scores in relation to competitors. You can also use tools provided by SEO companies such as Moz or Semrush.
How Do You Create Website Authority?
If you aren’t happy with how your site scores or you’re starting from scratch and want to build a site with ample authority, we’ve got a number of tips for doing so. Start with these seven ways to build authority on your website.
1. Pay Attention to User Experience
When considering the authority of their site, many people only think about content. But the way that content is presented to your audience and how your pages function are huge parts of whether or not your site is seen as authoritative.
Imagine this scenario: Your child has a sore throat and you turn to Google to find out how serious it might be and what you can do to make her feel better. You search with a related phrase or question and click on two of the results.
The first page you click has a bright orange background, flashing fonts, pictures someone loaded from their smartphone and a number of ads for unrelated products.
The second page you click on has a cream-colored background, standard fonts, professional images and layout and no ads—or only professional, relevant ads.
Even if the content on both sites is the same, which one are you more likely to trust regarding your child’s sore throat? As you can see, user experience matters, so work to ensure your site functions well on all devices and presents information in a way that is expected for the audience, niche and topic.
2. Create High-Quality, Comprehensive Content
The content on your pages matters too, obviously. Start with keyword research that supports a content strategy for your site. Then move on to content optimization, including:
- Creating comprehensive, semantically complete content about the keyword or topic. In other words, ask yourself “What are all the things my audience wants or needs to know about this topic?” and then ensure your content covers it all.
- Ensure your content is well-written. Find and work with experienced SEO content writers, and use proofreading and editing services when necessary to ensure content makes sense and is grammatically correct.
- Fact-check content to ensure it’s accurate. Ask writers to cite sources for statistics and facts they use in content so you can double-check the accuracy. For niche or technical topics, consider hiring a subject-matter expert who can ensure the content is accurate.
- Create unique content. Don’t just rehash (or spin) competing content. Find ways to add unique value by adding your own information or opinion.
3. Leverage Real Experts
Think about the example where a child has a sore throat. If you turn to the internet for some answers, which of the following pages will you take most seriously?
- A site with no about us page or attribution—just random content that includes, among other things, an article about sore throats
- A blog post from a mommy blogger who has five kids and leads into her advice with some stories about how many sore throats she’s dealt with in the past
- A page on a medical clinic site that is bylined by a nurse or doctor that works for the clinic, indicating that—at the very least—the content was reviewed by a clinician before it was published
For most people, those three examples are listed in order from least authority to most authority. You’re likely going to take the information signed off on by a clinician more seriously than the anonymous information.
When possible, work with content creators and reviewers who can add authority to your content because they are real experts.
4. Use Structured Data to Support E-E-A-T
People aren’t the only entities you must convince of your authority. For Google to rank your page high in the search engine results, it has to believe you have authority for the keywords and topics. Google uses guidelines such as E-E-A-T to help determine website authority for this purpose.
Obviously, search engine evaluations and rankings are highly programmatic—meaning computer programs do the work of ranking pages. You can boost your success with these programs by “feeding” them your content via structured data. Structured data refers to site coding that helps search engine bots understand the parts of your content and how they work together.
5. Claim and Optimize Your Knowledge Panel
Google automatically generates knowledge panels for the search engine pages. These small snippets of information are designed to provide searchers with quick answers to questions or overviews that point them in the right direction to more in-depth information.
If you, your site or your business are the subject of a knowledge panel, you may be able to claim it. Once you claim it, you can suggest changes for it and use those changes to further optimize it to support your site and authority.
6. Bolster Your About Us and Author Pages
Take time to ensure you have compelling, comprehensive about us and author pages. Some helpful content for about us pages includes:
- A history of the company or site
- Pictures and bios of your team to humanize your site
- Lists of experience and credentials that help position your team as experts
- Discussions of your mission and vision
If your team, freelancers or other experts contribute to your site’s blog, use a byline structure that identifies the author of each post. Link that byline to an author page that demonstrates the authority of the author via a bio and list of credentials.
7. Pay Attention to Your External Links
Backing up claims, statistics and facts you use in your content with quality external links can help improve your website authority. However, do pay attention to which sites you’re linking to. Linking to low-quality sites without authority can negatively impact your own authority.
Look for government and education (.gov and .edu) sites you can link to. You can also link to high-quality news sites, blogs from experts or any other site that provides authoritative, quality content.
Get Help Boosting Website Authority
Crowd Content can help you create high-quality SEO and thought-leadership content that boosts the authority of your pages. Reach out to find out how we can help or open a marketplace account and start ordering content from experienced freelancers today.
