Five Ways to Increase Your Website’s Authority
It makes sense that the popular websites get the majority of search traffic. They’re popular because they’re considered to be authorities within their niches. They’re considered authorities because they’re popular. It’s a vicious circle of visibility, and it’s a hard cycle to crack.
Becoming an authority on any subject takes time. You can’t start your blog and expect to be considered an expert after the first month, or even after the first year for that matter. It will take dedication to keep producing quality content and time for the wisdom of your words to spread to the far reaches of cyberspace.
However, this doesn’t mean that you should just sit back and wait. I’ve put together a list of things you can do that will help increase your authority:
Build Quality Backlinks
Most popular websites are considered authorities in their respective fields. Their popularity is measured by many ways, but the big metric that is used by search engines is backlinks. Basically, a search engine will count the number of links if finds to your website. The more there are, the more popular your website. Backlinks mean people are interested in your content and are sharing it on other websites.
It’s important to know that not all backlinks are counted and some will even harm your rankings. Only quality backlinks are counted. Links obtained through any kind of spam and most pay-per-link services are worthless and might count against you.
Only create relevant backlinks to your content on related sites. Focus on other sites with higher PageRank. Those backlinks are the best.
Improve Author Rank
Having a high Author Rank, like a high PageRank, will put you on the fast path to webpage authority. A high Author Rank means that you have a proven track record of creating great content. Great content tends to spread organically, increasing traffic which increases popularity.
Increase Website Traffic
Website popularity is also measured by traffic. The more page views your site gets, the more popular it becomes. Like backlinks, only quality traffic will count. Avoid cheap traffic from outside your niche. Focus instead on attracting traffic that is relevant to your site.
Spread Through Social Media
Social media had the ability to accomplish a number of things all at the same time. By staying active on social media, you’re constantly creating quality backlinks to your site, you’re interacting with other authors and readers in your niche and your generating good traffic for your website. There aren’t many alternatives that can accomplishes all three things at the same time.
Get Social Votes
It doesn’t matter if you collect Facebook Likes or Google +1s. In fact, you should be collecting both, and any other social votes you can find. These are instant signals that your content is being read and appreciated. It’s a sure-fire way to speed up your voyage to website authority.
In the world of websites, authority is synonymous with popularity. Build one and you’ll benefit from the other. Build them both at the same time, you’ll get there twice as fast.
