20 Ways to Build Website Authority
This is a guest post from Gino Orlandi. It is part of The 2nd annual “Bad Ass” SEO Guest Blogging Contest.
Today, ranking high in the search engines is all about trust. Now that may sound simple, but there are many signals that search engines look for to determine how trustworthy a website is.
The more good signals you send, the more authority you will have, and the easier it will be for you to dominate your target keywords. Here is a list of 20 things you can start doing right now to make your website a trusted authority in its niche.
- Build a Brand – Google loves brands because they command trust. The added benefit of building a strong brand is that people naturally talk about brands, and brands get social votes, backlinks, etc. The stronger and more respected your brand, the more authority it brings you. Building a strong brand may very well be the single most important thing you can do. It won’t bring immediate results, but if you invest in branding, it will help ensure long-term success.
- Domain Age – The length of time your website has been live and indexed plays a big role in rankings. Search engines trust old domains because it means they have stood the test of time. If you plan to launch new sites in the future, get the domains now, and set them up with some content. You will thank yourself years from now.
- Site Structure – A well-structured site is not only important for visitors, but it’s important if you want to make it easy for search engine spiders to crawl your site. Plus, a well-built site tells search engines you took the effort to make a great website, which builds authority.
- Website Validation – Hopefully the last item on the list inspired you to re-examine your site structure. While you are working on your site, make sure you validate the HTML and CSS for good measure. This tells search engines your website is up on the latest Web standards and that it’s easily accessible on various platforms such as mobile.
- Sign up for Google Analytics – If you need a reason to use Google Analytics—aside from the fact that it is the best analytics software out there—adding Google Analytics to your website adds a layer of trust between you and Google. In addition, the data is priceless for helping you to improve your site and further improve your authority.
- Sign up for Google Webmaster Tools – If you have a Google Analytics account, you will definitely want to link your website to Google Webmaster Tools as well. Again, this adds another trust level between you and Google. Bing also has its own webmaster tools program. Sign up for that one too. These tools will provide you with important information on how you can fix your site.
- Claim Your Google Places Page – Right now, “local” is a huge part of SEO and will continue to grow in importance. Claiming your Google Places page is an easy way to tell Google you are legitimate, with a real location and contact details. The added benefit is you will get free local traffic!
- Get on Google Plus – Google Plus is the hot social network right now, so that means that you must get on it! Social votes are beginning to have a direct impact on keyword rankings, and you can bet that Google is going to use its own social network to help decide which sites to trust and which not to trust. You also want to make sure you are very active on other important social sites such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.
- Create an About Page – This is easy to do but important. I see a lot of websites that don’t have an “About” page, and if they do, it often has very little info. This page is a core page that most people and the search engines expect to find. Add your company or personal history, contact details, location and anything else important to your business. Link to it from your footer and/or main navigation.
- Create a Privacy Policy and TOS page – These pages are extremely important. Every website should have a custom privacy policy and a “Terms of Service” page based on the purpose of the website, how it functions, how it collects data and how it uses data. These pages can help protect you legally, as well. Consider adding a “Disclosure” page and a “Disclaimer” page, if necessary; and use a lawyer to create these, when possible.
- Create a Contact Page – Similar to the “About” page, a “Contact” page with several contact methods and a working contact form is a must. It should be easy to find the “Contact” page, because hiding it or not having one can send bad signals to search engines and site visitors. If you get a lot of traffic, you may want to direct people to a support section first, to cut down on support calls or emails.
- Fix Broken Links – We often add links to content, publish and then never pay attention to them again. While your website may still be live, those external links might not be. Use a tool to find broken links or manually check pages on your website every three months for any broken links. You may want to add some deep links back to other content on your site, as well.
- Redirect 404 Errors – Similar to broken links, broken pages can also send bad signals. If you signed up for Google Webmaster Tools, you should be able to see which pages are showing errors. Make a list of the pages, and fix them or 301 redirect them to the most appropriate and relevant live page.
- Get Backlinks – Backlinks are the backbone of the web and are currently the most important signal to search engines in terms of whether your site is an authority and what it is about. You want natural backlinks from as many different domains as possible. If you can manage to get backlinks with your target keyword text, even better. Always keep your backlink profile as natural as possible.
- Get Authority Backlinks – Most backlinks are good, but the really valuable ones come from other highly trusted websites such as .gov domains, .edu domains, major news sites and exceptional sources such as Wikipedia. Always be on the lookout for authority backlinks because even one can dramatically increase the authority of your website in the eyes of search engines.
- Get Social Votes – Backlinks may be the backbone of building authority now, but the new trend is moving towards social votes. This means you need to be active on all social sites and you must actively interact with people to get them to mention your website on their own social profiles. Just remember, like websites and links, some social profiles will have more authority than others.
- Start a Blog – It can be hard to get social votes, but one thing that makes it easier is starting a blog. Blogs make publishing great content easier and it makes connecting with your visitors easier. Use your blog to promote your brand and to become an industry leader in your niche. If you build a great blog, the links and social votes will come.
- Improve Site Loading Speed – A while back, site loading speed was officially announced as a ranking factor. While this might be a small signal, it’s still important to the overall authority of your site and goes back to why you need to have a well-coded and well-structured website.
- Improve Bounce Rate – Like loading speed, bounces rates and other user data are also thought to be used to determine rankings for websites. The better your user stats the more authority you will have. Always try to improve stats like these and monitor your Google Analytics closely.
- Improve Traffic – Big sites get big benefits. The bigger your site the more flex you have with search engines. That’s also why having a big brand can be a great benefit. Big brands naturally get a lot of traffic to their official website. The more quality and relevant traffic your website gets the more important it will become in the eyes of the search engines—simple as that.
Keep these tips in mind, and you will become a trusted friend of Google and the other major search engines, which will translate into more visitors, more revenue and more success on the web. What trust building methods do you find important? Let us know in the comments below.
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21 Comments
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Hi Gino, nice to meet you as part of this contest. Great advice you’re giving here and I have a question about #7. Do you have a link or another post with details and directions for claiming a Google places page? It’s one thing that I’m lacking from your list so I might as well get started with it now. Thanks in advance!
Ileane recently posted..Introducing The Bad A$$ SEO Guest Blogging Contest
Thanks Ileane! I don’t, but I can give you some important tips here to get your started.
1. Here is the link to signup http://www.google.com/places/
2. When you signup make sure you use a local number that matches your address
3. Fill out EVERYTHING you can, photos, categories, tags, description, etc.
4. Just use your business name as your places page title, don’t try and jam local keywords in there.
4. Most importantly, get reviews. Good reviews on your places page make all the difference.
Let me know if you have any other questions, good luck!
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Gino Orlandi recently posted..2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest
Yep. Some good tips in here. Add to that creating some truly unique content that big-name blogs and media sites will want to link to and that people will want to share on Twitter, FaceBook, Google Plus One and StumbleUpon.
David Leonhardt recently posted..Can You Survive the Blog?
I agree, content is always king and will always be important. The only thing that really changes is how we find it and how it is displayed to us. Try creating white papers, studies, take polls, create a free guide, infographs etc., and be sure to actively promote your content or no one will be able to share it.
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Gino Orlandi recently posted..2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest
Great tips, Gino.
Starting a blog and getting involved in social media has played the biggest role in my business being a success.
Henry Jones recently posted..Inspiring Typography and Color Schemes from Beverage Bottles
Thanks Henry,
It’s hard to look back and think of how we managed to promote websites before blogging and social media! It really has opened a lot of doors for many people working online.
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Gino Orlandi recently posted..2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest
Good pointers. I have personally noticed domain age is a surprisingly strong ranking element, similar to how powerful exact match domains used to be.
Yeah, exact match domains used to be really strong but Google nerfed them a bit recently due to abuse. They still carry some weight, but the only ones worthwhile anymore are premium 1-2 keyword exact match domains with a good amount of local monthly search traffic.
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Gino Orlandi recently posted..2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest
Hey Gino!
You have an awesome tips. But there is one thing that confused me, what is the different between Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools?
Commenter recently posted..Flexispy iPhone Review
Well, Google Analytics is mainly about your visitors and traffic sources. It gathers tons of data such as visitors per months, pageviews, browsers used, location, bounce rate and more. By far the best free analytics program available. You can also setup goals to track conversions and see exactly what organic and paid traffic keywords made a conversion.
Google Webmaster Tools is more about issues with your website such as crawling, malware, sitemaps and the newly added google +1 metrics which will be very important to track.
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Gino Orlandi recently posted..2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest
Nice compendium, succinctly presented. Did not know about bounce rate affecting ranking. Makes perfect sense, though. Makes sense that anything Google measures is going to feed into the formula. I’ll bet parameters like repeat visitors makes some kind of difference.
AstroGremlin recently posted..Can You Deal with your Alexa Rank?
Yes, Google has mentioned they have over 200 ranking factors and are always adding new factors in. The big thing now is social votes, especially on Google +1.
If you have a high quality site and your marketing methods are targeted, you should naturally have pretty good user stats such as a low bounce rate. But, you really need to look at your bounce rates from each individual traffic source.
Stumbleupon.com traffic for example, has a naturally high bounce rate which is normal. I would worry more about high bounce rates from organic traffic directly from Google for your target search terms and how you can improve that.
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Gino Orlandi recently posted..2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest
Hello Gino. I must commend you on this powerful post. This is definitely worth a bookmark to return to often.
Ivin recently posted..New User? The 411 on Blog Engage
Thanks Ivin glad you found it useful!
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Gino Orlandi recently posted..2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest
Yes I believe they do and as I mentioned they provide you with critical data that can help you further improve your site which makes your website more trusted.
Are you referring to the Google author tag or having a Google + account? The author tag is still pretty new and not used much yet, but I highly recommend being active on Google +. They are really pushing this service and the + buttons.
I just got an email saying they are now incorporating the + button into Google Adsense.
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Gino Orlandi recently posted..2nd Annual Bad Ass SEO Guest Blogging Contest
Solid tips. Google + and social votes are going to be extremely important in 2012.
Thanks Carlos, yes Google + will be very important start expanding your circles and sharing your blog posts etc. on there. I would also put a Google + button on your site so people can vote up your home page in addition to blog posts and articles.
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Gino recently posted..11 SEO Tips for 2011
Nothing beats great backlinks. Getting linked to from major news sites is always very helpful, and also partnering with non profits can be a good way to get some authority links
Backlinks from any major new site would be awesome. Local would prob be your best bet. You mentioned non profits which can be a good way to get a local news mention. It’s also important to learn who the journalist and press contacts are so you have a better shot at getting your news mentioned.
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Gino Orlandi recently posted..11 SEO Tips for 2011
[...] PR can be equated to more domain authority in the eyes of Google. The more authority a site has, the higher quality the links coming from that [...]
On the internet, you start wiht 0 trust. I think that with Google it is actually worse than that. The good thing is that if you are willing to play by Google’s rules, you can actually out perform many of your competitors.