As the world of organic traffic, blogging and SEO has evolved in search engines, with Google leading the way, the term website authority has been thrown around quite a lot and while there is a pretty self explanatory definition to it, after you read this article on the topic and use the tips from it, the results you’ll get from it will really help propel your website to reach new levels of traffic and the online riches that come from it.
My personal story of how my website achieved authority:
Many years ago, I had actually written up on this very same topic and it was actually during the time that my personal and main page was still “marinating” in the search engines, trying to get high rankings, traffic and so on and the tips I provided in that article, I made sure to follow through myself.
At the time I was actually just diving back into the SEO world which changed a lot and while the tips I listed there were given to me by the Wealthy Affiliate program which I still follow and recommend today, there was a sense of doubt that this wouldn’t work and my page would never get good traffic.
But I didn’t let those doubts get to me and continued to do the same things I listed in the article. And what happened was remarkable:
Now this same website which once was an unknown in it’s niche topic, which was making money online is today making me a full time income, thus proving what I was taught works. And this is something I’ve continued to grow across other websites I’ve built since.
Here is proof:
I’ll show you how to do this too, but before this is explained, let’s first define the following:
What is website authority?
It is a level of “respect” you get from search engines where the higher it is, the better your site will perform on the search engine (higher rankings).
An example of what website authority looks like:
Let us imagine 2 websites competing for high rankings, for the same niche topic, for the same keywords and so on. This will help to illustrate the definition.
- Website A has 100 articles averaging 1,000 words per article, 1,000’s of comments and shares.
- Website B has 20 articles, averaging 1,000 words too on each article and has a few dozen comments and shares.
Both websites have high quality content so readers who land on each site get an enjoyable experience, which is a Google ranking factor.
Now if someone were to be given these 2 websites and asked which has more website authority, even if that person doesn’t know anything about the term, what would be the obvious answer based on JUST the way the term sounds?
If you said website A, you would be absolutely right and it is for obvious reasons why I shouldn’t even have to explain (like I said, the very term is self explanatory). That is really not just an example but also a definition of what website authority is:
It is a website that has rich content in masses and the more it grows in this regard, the more it’s authority grows. It’s really a simple thing to understand.
How website authority leads to making a passive income:
Back in 2013 when I started this whole website, I had about a few dozen articles and was getting 5th page rankings and lower and it was taking me many months and even years to have some of my articles reach the first page ranks for keywords I was targeting. In short, back then, the website began with 0 authority.
That changed months into the site’s growth:
Because I continued building the content on the page, that nearly 5 years since, the dozens of articles I had, now turned into 100’s and my traffic grew proportionally and exponentially as a result and now whenever I write new articles, it is VERY common for MOST of them to land on the second page or even first page of Google’s search results (and then go up to first) and/or hit the first page rankings RIGHT AWAY, within a day sometimes.
Here is how this looks (notice the growth, this is what website authority looks like):
That is happening now because my page has matured with Google, it trusts it more and basically rewards it with more benefits, hence the results I am speaking about here.
And as for how much it earns, well you saw that above.
Now imagine if I keep going in this direction for another year, 5 years, 10 years or more. As long as Google continues to rewards sites with higher authority for doing the very same things it preaches about:
Creating rich quality content as often as possible and growing the page, then there’s no telling how successful my page will be, so long as I continue heading in that direction.
And I have to say, as the internet is evolving, there is no indication that this very thing I just mentioned that Google wants is going to end. They want more content. It’s always been this way.
But here’s what it means for you:
The lesson from my personal experiences for other bloggers reading this is that if you also keep doing this same thing with your pages, you are going to experience the same results. And it is because of the higher authority you will have from doing this that:
- You will get more traffic.
- You will get more first page rankings.
- You will get more comments.
- You will BEAT your competitors (this is why saturated markets don’t concern me).
- You will grow your page AND your business.
Is there a metric used to measure authority?
The short answer is no.
There was a time when Google used a thing called page rank to measure the value of a site, but that was quickly abused beyond belief and was thus done away with. Back then, there was actually a number given to a page and the higher it was, the higher rankings it would get.
Since it was done away with, the term website authority has replaced it (at least on the exterior, some say Google still uses page rank secretly), but unlike page rank, there is no number or particular grade that you get. In fact, it is something that is hidden from you by Google, but only their algorithm knows the answer and the only way you can determine if it’s going up or down is if you’re growing your content base and if:
- You see more rankings taking place with your page.
- You see more traffic coming to your page through organic means (searches on Google).
- You see a gradual increase of comments across your pages and articles you wrote a long time ago and even forgot about (it means those old posts are now ranking higher and attracting traffic).
These 3 things alone are a GREAT sign that your website authority is rising and with it, the rewards are HUGE.
There are programs to help you gauge your page’s progress though:
While website authority doesn’t have an official measurement, there are graphs on free programs to help you see if it’s increasing. 1 program in particular that will help you with this is Google Webmaster Tools.
If my Google webmaster account is showing me these kinds of charts:
Then I know I’m getting results. In the following case, this chart was provided to me by Webmaster Tools for a niche site I made on drones, in which I gradually grew the content base for several months.
The colors of the graph indicate things like clicks, impressions and keywords and as you can see, there is a gradual rise. Well for a lack of a better word, this is basically a sign of my website’s authority rising. It is slow, but it is rising.
Now if you’re wondering why I didn’t mention something like Google Analytics (another program that measures and records traffic numbers), the answer is that it’s numbers are a reflection of the visitors who come to your page, not how the search engine views it and Google Webmaster Tools is indeed the best program in my opinion on showing you how your website authority is doing.
My final thoughts: Do you want to get these results with your pages/blogs?
Of course you do. Like I said earlier, growing your content base is going to be one of the best ways to do this, but there are more specifics on this topic that I would recommend you get tips on from a great training program like this:
If you have any questions on a personal blog or page you’re running and perhaps you’re not seeing the kinds of rankings you’d like yet, ask me about it below. It may very well be that your page just hasn’t matured yet and thus just needs more time to get that authority level up and you already know what you need to do for that to happen.
If you need specific training, the program I linked above is the best there is for learning about this.
Hi Vitaliy,
This is one of the most comprehensive articles on website authority and content creation I have read in a long time. It is truly very inspiring and as an affiliate marketer, I’m ready to put much more effort into creating quality content. I believe this post has also inspired a lot of people like me to achieve better results in the search engines.
Thanks a lot!
I’m glad to hear this Nicolas! Many people who get into this business simply do not understand how important quality content is and how it affects their visitors/sales and so forth. When you truly understand it, you will want to aspire to provide it as best as possible! Good luck in your affiliate marketing journey!
Hi there! I was wondering if website authority also depends on how old my website already is?
Let´s say I invest a lot of time in building out a website with lots of content, can I decrease the amount of articles I publish after, let´s say one year, without losing my authority?
Thanks for your help!
Great question Manny! Yes, website authority is in part dependent on your website’s age, but that only has weight IF the website is filled with a lot of content. If it’s not, then the age won’t help the site rank well.
Now as for actively writing content for a year, then slowing down and how it will affect the site, here is my answer:
If you blog actively, you will absolutely see growing rankings, traffic and success, especially the longer you do it. But the question on slowing down ultimately depends on the niche topic and how much of a slowdown we’re talking about.
Let me give you my personal example:
From 2014-2016, I was blogging almost DAILY and had days where I reached 1,000 unique visits and this went on for quite awhile. In 2017, I blogged very little and got to about 90 articles in a single year. However, during 2017, I still had a lot of traffic coming in, despite the slow down in posting.
But then towards the end of 2017, my traffic went down gradually and remained that was until early 2018 when I started up again.
So the lesson I took from my experience was that slowing down on content production will reduce your rankings overtime and your site’s authority so you should continue to build it up. You should honestly look at it as a car that you’re driving and faster you drive it, the more success you’ll reach, so if you post less frequently, you’ll be driving slower and experiencing success slower. It can even destroy a site if you stop posting entirely.
So to finalize, you can slow down, just don’t slow down drastically. If you were posting once a day, post once every 2 days. If you can post more often than that, do it. It’s something you should aim to maintain at a high level because the more you do it, the more successful you’ll be, so why not?
That’s right! When a blogger or website owner focus on creating rich quality content as often as possible and growing the pages you own, the sky is the limit as to how successful your pages will be.
One thing I appreciate now, which I didn’t before, is just how important quality content is to Google. You can’t just throw anything at Google and see what sticks. You have to take the time to research, format and compile your material in such a way that your content is considered as relevant.
That’s why those article spinners are a joke and a complete waste of time. The content isn’t fresh, and in most cases not grammatically correct.
Ultimately, higher authority means higher deposits into your bank account.
Great Post!
I agree with everything you said Howard! I’ve also seen article spinners before and know the kind of garbage they deliver.
Hi, your website is very informative and it gives inspiration to write more. As I am reading your post, I am thinking when will Google rank my pages although most of them have already been indexed. The case studies presented in your website provide lots of insights to help readers think and apply those strategies presented. Thanks a lot for sharing.
Well your actual website authority impacts the ranking time frame. It can be anywhere from several months to days to get high rankings and obviously, the higher your authority, the faster it’ll be.
This is a great article to help me understand website authority. I have a site that is slowly gaining more traffic. However, I think I need to have more articles up. It is good to know that my authority in this niche is rising. How do you get that exact report from Webmaster Tools that you showed in the article?
Hi Cynthia, you first have to make a webmaster tools account, then you need to register your site with them. Once you do that, you can log into the account, click on your site, then select a period for which you wish to see the report (the longer the better, but they don’t go over 90 days), then I check the boxes in the program which say “queries, CTR, impressions, and clicks” and this will give you the same kind of chart I showed in the article.
One thing to note is that while your site is new, the reports may show as blank. If this happens, do not worry as it will eventually show as your site gets more rankings, indexes and traffic. In other words, the more authority you’ll get, the more active that chart will be and as long as you keep adding content, that chart will show a rise in all parameters (which is great!).
Hey Vitaliy:
Your conclusions in this post make a lot of sense to me. Continuing to create and share useful information in a particular niche until you’ve built up a large body of work that is helpful to people seems to me to be the way to earn “website authority.”
It makes sense that if you want to be recognized as an “expert”, you have to keep learning more and more about your subject (or niche) until other people recognize that you do, indeed, know a lot about it.
Hi Netta, this is indeed very true! I find myself always learning something new about niche market I enter. It is simply impossible to know all of the things inside a niche topic because any popular niche and the info in it evolves, which changes previous things you may have known.
But a major upside to this is that it provides NEW content ideas to keep building up the authority on your site.
Interesting post! The key message I get from your words is that consistency is key. If one keeps working at their website then they’ll be rewarded by google. This is also why so many people fail, they give up and don’t allow their site to grow and gain authority.
How many times a week would you recommend posting? Does google take post consistency into account? If I were to post, say, 12 times in a month and then 2 the next month, would google punish me?
Google doesn’t really “punish” you for posting inconsistently Stephen. More than anything if you publish say once a day which is GREAT, then in another month publish once a week, it’s not exactly good, but your progress will be slower in the rankings as a result. Consistent content posting is noticed by Google and it makes their spiders crawl your site more.
More over, this speeds up your authority growth and if you keep doing this, you can expect faster rankings and higher rankings as a result. This has been my experience when I was posting consistently for long period of time (months).