How Blogging Increases Website Authority | Simplemachine

Google uses several factors to determine where you rank on search engine result pages, and website authority is a significant one. This is a metric that measures how much web traffic you get with your website’s search engine pages ranking. Domain authority is scored from 0-100. The higher the score, the more authority your website has. This is Moz’s metric that tries to simulate Google algorithms. For this reason, it can be used to determine if you are putting enough effort into SEO and other website marketing strategies.

1.   Update Your Blog with Long-Form Content

Most blog owners avoid publishing long-form content because it is a ton of work. However, the benefits outweigh the effort you put into these articles. As a blogger, you need to put yourself in the consumers’ shoes. Website visitors want a site that offers comprehensive and reliable information. Long-form content is an excellent way of providing your readers with all the information they need.

When you anticipate the problems of your audience and offer practical solutions, you establish your blog as a reliable source of information. Long-form content not only increases website authority but also boosts your online visibility. As you prove your industry expertise, readers will be encouraged to share your articles on social media platforms.

As readers share your articles, other blogs will also link back to your articles. Content creators only link to articles that provide accurate and verified information. Long-form content gives you the platform to ensure your information is as accurate as possible. Ensure that each article you publish is well-researched so that high-authority blogs link back to you.

2.   Leverage ‘Top List’ Posts

List posts are creative ways of making your articles go viral. However, you have to know how to go about it first. Top list posts are blog articles in a list format that highlight specific items that have been carefully researched. This is a popular format among blogs because they are easy to go through. Readers can easily find what they are looking for and get the information they need. For this reason, other blogs are also likely to link back to such articles.

Before writing a list post, you have to decide on the number of items you want to include. Knowing the purpose behind the post will also help you decide on the route to take with the article. For huge resource lists, you can have as many as 100 items.

Consider rounded numbers like 5, 10, 15, or 50 because these give readers the impression that you are an authoritative source. What are the chances a consumer will go for a list article with 3 or 7 items and leave the one with 5 or 10? Very slim. People are drawn to rounded numbers, and using low list numbers give the impression that you don’t have enough information.

3.   Buy an Old Domain

If you want to start from scratch, it’s always advisable to buy an aged domain. This way, you get one that already has domain authority. Website authority takes time to build, especially in today’s competitive marketplace. Going with an old domain saves you months of SEO and website marketing effort. You could also point the old domain to your new website so that the new one gains authority from the old one.

However, you should note that having an old domain name does not save you from website marketing. Google ensures that it offers an even playing field for blogs to rank high on search engine result pages. It’s not uncommon to have new domains ranking high because it’s the effort that matters.

4.   Have a Highly Responsive Site

It doesn’t matter how well you package your blog; if consumers have to wait to access it, your success rate will suffer. Before you consider working on website authority through marketing strategies, you first need to build a highly responsive website. If readers wait longer than three seconds for your site to load, they are likely to hit the back button.

Moreover, did you know Google prioritizes sites that load in less than one second? Loading speed is an excellent way of increasing website authority. The faster your pages load, the better the user experience for every website visitor. A new site visitor is likely to come back if your page opened fast the first time they visited. Other blogs are also encouraged to link back to your site because your pages load quickly. After all, every blogger is looking to improve user experience.

5.   Eliminate Toxic Backlinks

Website authority boils down to linking, and toxic backlinks prevent you from growing website authority. You need a backlink checking tool to ensure all the links you include are legit. As a blogger, you need to work on your link profile by ensuring you get many relevant backlinks from high authority websites.

Just like a new website can gain authority from an old domain, so does your site gain more website authority from an authoritative site. Any backlink that uses an unnatural anchor text or is not indexed in Google should be removed.

An excellent way of getting suitable backlinks is doing a roundup post. These involve emailing significant players in your industry with the same question. Once they give a response, create a list post that highlights all of them.

Once the article is published, be sure to email all the players and ask them to share on their social media pages. The sites are likely to link back to your article as well. Anyone would like people to know that they’ve been ranked among top players.

6.   Optimize Your Internal Links

Aside from investing in getting quality external links, it would help if you also optimize your internal links. Unlike the case of backlinks, where you don’t have much authority, you have total control when it comes to internal links. With excellent internal linking, you not only increase website authority but also boost user experience.

Ensure that you include useful and relevant internal links to encourage readers to spend more time on your site. Providing comprehensive information on the topic at hand also builds credibility.

Remember to use natural anchor texts so that users smoothly flow through the text. Forcing an internal link in an article is a bad idea because it won’t make sense to the reader, and it’s likely to lower your credibility as well.

7.   Optimize On-Page Content

Since a website is made up of several pages, optimizing the content on these pages is critical for increasing website authority. Aside from the quality of content, also ensure you correctly incorporate images and title tags to optimize your site for search engines.

On-page optimization also includes creating linkable content. Remember that website authority is about how many blogs are confident enough to link back to your content. Finally, regularly publishing content ensures that blogs consider you as an authority and will provide a link back to your information.

Conclusion

Website authority is an important aspect every blog owner should consider when creating content. Having a purpose behind increasing your domain authority score ensures that your efforts don’t go in vain. Please contact Simplemachine for all of your web design, content marketing, and SEO needs!