The Authoritative Guide To Authority

When it comes to creating web content with search engine optimisation (SEO), it will not take long to establish that there are many aspects that you need to take into account.

Not only is SEO about keywords, but a whole host of other elements that each play a part in determining the ranking of content. Some of this is not even part of the content itself, but aspects like the user experience, with mobile friendliness and fast page uploads.

Authority is an element of SEO that needs to be understood. Not only is it an important factor in determining a ranking, but it is an element that grows over time, a key reason why, even with the best SEO practices being applied by an SEO agency in Yorkshire, it can take six months or more to go from scratch to page one on the search rankings.

Simply defined, authority is a qualitative element of SEO that is built up with every good, relevant article you produce. You want to be seen to be an authoritative voice on the topic your firm’s business relates to, which is also what the search engine crawlers are looking for. 

Keywords will be a part of this, but not the whole; spamming or stuffing is bad for SEO and no substitute for good articles that people will want to read.

To begin with, therefore, it is important to know what you are talking about when it comes to your topic. If not, those who visit your page will soon end their visit, which means your bounce rate will be high, a clear sign of low authority or other faults (such as slow load-up speed).  

By contrast, by building up trust, you will get more visits, with those visitors moving onto other pages once they have been persuaded that you are reliable.

Indeed, it is worth noting that if you can show yourself to be ahead of the rest when it comes to knowledge and understanding of your topic, this will do more than just boost your SEO. It will create a level of trust more likely to translate into actual custom.

These aspects - age (the older the better), relevance and popularity all provide what is known as domain authority. But there are other kinds of authority too. Page authority is also about relevance but also includes the value gained from links; if you get backlinked to by others, this is highly valuable in boosting your ranking.

Further to this is link authority, which is derived from the authority of a page that contains a link to your article. Elements of this include link location, with higher scores for a link in the text and not the footer, as well as the page authority of the page linking out. 

All this shows that authority dies not just come with what you write, or even the keywords you use, but backlinks, extra links garnered from guest blog posts and from factors sometimes beyond your total control, such as whether someone else chooses to link to you.

Nonetheless, good content that can be relied on should prove popular and, as you keep on producing it, your authority will grow, helping push you higher up the search rankings towards the promised land of page one.