What is an Authority Site?
Google will try to return the most relevant results it can for a query, An Authority Site will have all these bases covered…
- looks professional, business-like & is up-to-date
- has Clear Navigation for the visitors
- has a SILO structure for Google to use
- has a sitemap XML in place
- has a TOC (table of contents )
- articles are laid out so visitors can read it all or skim
- it covers all aspects of the subject
- goes into the subject in depth
- well written, with good grammar and spell checked
- have diagrams, images, and videos to back up the information
- have references, to back up the facts
- will rank highly in Google’s Index occupying one of the top spots on PAGE ONE
The Phases of Website development
- Initial Phase: write posts to start ranking
- Mid Phase: Build up clusters of content and SILO heading “Pillar” posts to help establishment as an authority
- Authority Phase: Expansion in coverage and depth
There are three main ways to drive traffic to a website
- SEO or Organic traffic from a search engine
- Ads
- Social Media Posts
To rank well our site will need all of these fully working. You will therefore need a substantial budget to fund the Ads. Another to outsource the writing of posts when you get to the expansion stage.
To speed up the process, introduce affiliate products and invest the earnings back in outsourcing material and Ads
1. Some SEO Ranking Basics When Article Writing
Keep the following in mind: The most valuable space on a page – Above the Fold
Be fanatical about ranking your initial posts at the top position, the distribution of clicks from No 1 spot, will pay you back – see Who Gets the Clicks below.
Build links to your pages. Despite all the SEO changes over the years, the number and quality of links to your page is still the main factor in ranking
Above the Fold
A term dating back to newspapers, but still very relevant today
“Above the Fold” refers to the Headline and the first article on the page, specifically the text you can read without scrolling down. This is the MOST valuable space on any page.
If you can get your message there, the battle is won.
Not only on the web page itself, but on Googles results pages. When the user typed in a query, If your site is listed in the top 4 or 5 of page ONE of Google’s results ( SERPs ) , which is usually space ‘Above The Fold’, then you stand a very good chance of being chosen and clicked on. If you’re searching Google on a mobile device, it is even more biased, as the screen is so small, probably only the top 3 results will appear before you need to scroll down.
so – it is super important to RANK in the top 10 results, preferably in the top 3 or 4.
Statistical Distribution – Who gets the Clicks
The site that ranks at the number one spot gets the lions share of the clicks. 33% of total clicks go to that number one site. Just 16% to the number 2 and so on. If you rank on page 2, you may as well not bother.
In the following descriptions I use the free MOZ toolbar, this can be downloaded for the Chrome browser and will help you make decisions. The Moz bar displays :
- PA page authority
- DA domain authority
- Links
How to Get the Number One Spot
For a newcomer to get past all the top sites for a given search is difficult. The top sites have Authority and are trusted by Google. Google (and other search engines) aim to give the most useful and relevant results to their users. You have to earn your reputation. If CNN are in the top spot, New York Times in number 2 and Wikipedia in number 3 , plus other well known sites occupy the rest…. its going to be very difficult. Note that I did not say impossible.
If your long term strategy is to eventually rank for a very big traffic term like “lose weight”, which brought up 1,240,000,000 … YES 1.2 BILLION results, then do build a page about it. Then proceed with lower traffic terms, building up a (large) profile of pages on these sub-topics making sure to link to your “lose weight” page. With a lot of articles this can actually be done. You gradually build up your page authority.
Here is the first page of Googles serps for “lose weight” . Note the DA domain authority and PA page authority numbers and number of links to the top results
The Key to Ranking is in the Query
Trying to rank for ” weight loss ” isn’t going to work if your site has zero authority, is brand new, has very few relevant articles and no links pointing at it.
So start a bit lower down with a “long tail ” keyword search like “losing weight for women”
To be honest even that is almost impossible
How about ” losing weight for women over forty”
Still Difficult, still lots of BIG sites in the top ten results
Ranking Well Over a Period of Time
Your strategy would be to rank many long-tail term articles, related to the main term, making sure they are more up to date, more relevant, in more depth and have more authority than any of the competing articles listed top-ten.
At some point your main-term article will start to gain traction. Keep updating everything and you will eventually succeed.
2. Driving Traffic with Ads
This is the second part of Getting Traffic to your Site. It will be covered in the Monetization Methods group of articles
