ranking

Site authority (with alternative terms like domain authority, or page authority) refers to the quality of a website online and the amount of authority, trust, or gain it has in the rankings. In other words, it’s a big deal for marketers looking to boost their web presence. Think: higher site authority = more traffic + high rank in Google’s SERPs. Site authority itself based on several different factors. As a general rule, the stronger those factors are, the stronger your site is likely to be. And guess what ties in? Fundamentally, good content. We’re about to discuss all the major tips and tricks you need to know to maintain, boost and grow your overall site authority, so keep reading. A Guide To Boosting Your Site Authority If you’re looking to boost your site authority in 2016, here’s what you need to know. Let’s delve in! Defining Site Authority Site authority is a ranking metric that determines how authoritative and trustworthy your site is. Site authority is based on a variety of factors, including link profiles (how many links point to your site and how well-known and respected those links are), content strength, page design, and other trust factors. And, site authority can be improved or damaged as a result of changes to these factors. The main term for this, domain authority, was actually developed by Moz as part of their MozBar DA algorithm, and is a metric using their algorithm from 1-100 that says how strong your website authority is. Here’s an example of the Moz DA in action, calculating the DA of a YouTube video for “boxer training tips.” Incidentially, it calculates YouTube itself, so the DA is a whopping 100. Have you seen Google’s recent 160-page doc released November of 2015 that defines search guidelines? I broke it down in our major blog post here, as well. 6 Key Steps to Improving Your Site Authority As I mentioned earlier, site authority is not something that is rigid and unmovable. Google is constantly evaluating a site’s authority levels, so it’s not uncommon for these rankings to fluctuate based upon improvements or decreases in a site. Like a brain that constantly works, Google is continually updating and working, always keeping an eye on your site and overall quality. So there are many things you can and should do to bring up your site authority. Follow our key six steps for better site authority rankings now and in the future. Step #1: Publish fresh content Fresh content is a powerful tool in the world of SEO. This is true for several reasons. For one, every fresh page you publish is one more that Google can index. This provides you more opportunities to get your content in front of viewers and rank well in Google’s SERPs. Additionally, Google loves fresh content and has been displaying a blatant bias toward fresh content for years now. This is because Google knows that its users crave fresh content and, as such, the search engine giant is happy to rank sites that publish ample amounts of fresh content higher than those that go without updates for months. In fact, HubSpot has found that companies that publish more than 16 blog posts each month earn an average of 3.5x as much traffic as companies that publish between 0-4 blog posts each month. (I mean, I could have told you that. I’ve blogged over 600 times on our site and see a huge amount of growing traffic.) Also, those results hold true for both B2B companies and B2C companies. To freshen up your content, you can do a few things: First (and most obviously) you can publish new content. To do this effectively, you’ll want to focus on targeting keywords that provide fresh results or writing about hyper-current events in your industry. The second option is to update older content. This is a common go-to for many SEOs and, when done correctly, can help you get the most out of your existing material. Maybe your old content used to rank in the top two or three SERP spots but now it’s stuck in the lower half of the page. In cases like this, a simple update will commonly solve the problem. There are many guides on how to update old content, but as a general rule, you’ll want to add new details, update anything that’s no longer factual, and seek to make it relevant to today’s readers. Finally, you may consider publishing a regularly updated series if your content focuses on industries that change constantly, like sports. Because sports news changes on a daily or weekly basis, a page that isn’t being updated continually is nearly useless. For this reason, sites that focus on these types of topics can easily increase their site authority by offering regular, real-time updates on the industry. While fresh content is all well and good, there are some things you’ll have to remember. The first is that publishing fresh content does not mean simply publishing the same content (or even very similar content) over and over again. This places you at huge risk of being down-ranked by Google’s algorithms and failing to truly meet your users’ needs. With that in mind, focus on providing valuable information and helping users answer questions or solve problems every time you publish fresh content. You should also keep in mind that creating and publishing expert content (as per Google’s recently released Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines) can help you gain increased site authority. While it seems simple, this step will go a long way toward increasing your site authority. Step #2: Create landing pages Landing pages do exactly what they promise: they give readers a place to land. While landing pages are used for a variety of purposes, you’ll commonly see them used to offer specific information, simplify complex concepts (a promotion, for example), or provide a one-stop shop that allows audiences to gain the information they need to convert. Landing pages are especially important for marketers who use PPC ads, affiliate links, or a variety of channels to produce and … Read more