Article Discussion: Authority Sites and Necessary Content

What is an authority site? Why would anyone want to have one? How much content do I need to have to make my site an authority site? These and other questions are answered in the following article by veteran SEO author Wayne Hurlbert.


Read the full article here: Authority Sites and Necessary Content

It's a well-organized and well-written artcile. But your definition of content is sort of narrow. Authority Sites (I prefer "popular sites") don't have to be content sites. And content doesn't have to be text or articles. Is Google an authority site?

Unless we are able to classify websites by characteristics properly, the answers to many SEM questions tend to be ambiguous.

You are correct. I appreciate your close reading of the article. My definition of content was narrow, and restricted to the on page type of content, generally associated with important websites.

There could be another article entirely, on the wider definition of content, that you discuss in your post. To have gone off the main topic here, my article would have been much longer.

SEO Chat, Thanks a bunch for all of these fantastic readings!

Thanks for the article Wayne. Nice work!

It has me thinking about a few things.

Thanks EGOL, and to everyone else who enjoys my articles. I'm glad you find them helpful and informative.

I appreciate the support. :smile:

Good article :-)
It follows my own research on authority which I wrote about a while ago. (http://forums.seochat.com/t8151/s.h...overing+florida)
Size matters a lot (and I am talking about site size :-) )
There are a couple of more options for increasing site size. Consider a glossary, Forum (as well as blog) and an FAQ as well as breaking down larger pages so to create more smaller pages and "more details" pages as mentioned. For myself, the most powerful thing for achieving authority status I did was to create a search engine friendly forum which has grown big time since launch around 18 months ago (German language). There are sites with fewer indexed pages than there competitors that are sitting on the top, but these commonly cpmpensate with have more incoming links or exact keyword in as the domain name. I'm working on a "authority factor" calculation that takes the No. of indexed pages and incoming links into account. Got a new tool coming out this month some time for that.

It isnt a coincidence that so many hubs and portals dominate so many serps. They are normally huge and the internal linking power is of course also very high. It isnt so much the number of internal pages as to the number of internal links with the ideal link text.

Alan

Webby,

I went the glossary route quite a long time ago. The glossary outranks (pr6) my index page (pr5). Without the glossary my site would be considered relatively small because we generate on-demand database driven financial reports that, if listed, would be in the many thousands of pages. My question is, at what point would our glossary be considered an authority site, or is it now? We rank #1 in G for: accounting dictionary, accounting terms, and accounting glossary and have for many many months. Effectively we "own" those search phrases with Google. Googlebot also crawls our site 40-60 times daily. Being #1 for so long and visited by googlebot so often, would we be considered an authority site?

SEO_AM....

Congratulations on the very nice glossary. I checked it out and you have done a really complete job. It is earning you lots of good .edu links.

I need to think about building a resource like that.

Keep up the good work.

Egol, thank you for the kudos. A long time ago we developed the strategy to use the glossary as the hook into the academic community and accounting/financial/business students/professionals. We are just now going into phase II, which is the marketing of the analysis section online (we currently place top 5 in most or our search terms), then directly to our primary markets. Think it will work out pretty good. Thanks again.

You are most definitely an authority SEO_AM :-)
If you are top 20 with anythin glike a competitive term then you have authority status. Those with highly optimized pages that got bumped at Florida/Austin/Brandy and have yet to recover have generally not increased their site size, link popularity and are still struggling. You know when youve reached the authority threshold if you were previously ranked say on the 4 or 5th page and there occurs a large leap in rankings. It isnt normally gradual. There is no finite number as to indexed pages and links. It is keyword dependant. Many uncompetitive terms escape the filters and will rank well without being authorities. This is another reason why many pages that cover many keywords, particularly keyword phrases of 3 words plus, will see an increase in traffic. Glossarys are absolutely ideal as you have found out yourself. You can focus each page on the word in question. They are however a lot of work. I want to get my own search engine marketing glossary up and running but simply dont have the time to research and write one :-/
For competitive fields, site size can be upwards of 50,000 pages indexed. Many are in the plus 100,000 mark. The travel, insurance, casino areas are where the need for thousands of pages is nigh on a necessity, unless there is substantial compensation in a great deal of incoming links.

Alan

Alan,

:smile: Thank you! :smile: Thought maybe so, but was always too afraid to believe it. Now I have to figure out how to take advantage of it. :smile:

When it comes to discussions of Authority Sites, Alan Webb is the authority. :smile:

SEO AM, your glossary is certainly a powerful authority vehicle. Gaining those .edu incoming links really gave you some power in Google, and they can propel a site to authority status by their endorsement.

What you need to do now, is promote that glossary. Perhaps you could take steps toward marketing it to other businesses and academic institutions in your field. It will get more site visitors and more incoming links at the very least.

Thanks Wayne, although the glosssary is not our bread and butter, been focusing on ALL university libraries within the U.S. with a personalized email campaign. Within the next couple of months we will be offering a downloadable/prinatable version at a fee (have received many requests). We look at the glossary as one but significant piece of the marketing puzzle to sell our other services.