As most SEOs know by now, a strong authoritative website does not need to be owned and operated by a large multimillion dollar corporation with an endless budget. With the strength in social networking, a website with very strong authority might only need to have the trust with the people in a certain niche. Now days, there are authoritative websites in every subject, from hair products to sports training. Understanding how to build authority to your site may require a bit of knowledge in internet marketing, but once you get the ball rolling in the right direction the possibilities are endless for your brand.

A website’s success can be measured by the amount of targeted visitors that it receives which can inevitably determine a site’s strength. To achieve the goal of an authoritative website, the site itself must rank highly for keywords that your targeted group is actually using to search (I know, it’s the chicken or the egg thing). The only way to enjoy a website’s continued triumphs is by maintaining the high number of targeted visitors on a persistent basis.

Aside from creating a visually enticing website, there are many helpful strategies that help keep visitors engaged and interested in coming back to the site. In no particular order, the following is what I would consider a “must have” list for building authority to your website:

Original Content

Probably one of the most valuable tactics you can use; updating the site multiple times a week with original quality content can drastically help drive authority.  Avoid the fluff; generate worthy blog posts or articles. Writing informative or interesting blog posts that people will want to share is an easy and effective way to spread your brand throughout the specific niche community.

Videos

Video productions can often scare off many small business owners because they believe it will cost too much money without direct, immediate profit. However if you purchase an inexpensive flip camera, or an easy to use webcam and record a few simple “how-to” videos. Grab the embed code from your video host of choice, create a webpage or blog post around it and you might notice a heavy increase in visitors and social interaction on your site.

Infographics

If you have an in-house graphic designer, or can find a freelance graphic artist; projecting valuable information in the form of fun, easy to read, and straight to the point infographics can be extremely helpful in building authority for your site (see below).  It’s also a great way to add “Share Buttons” to further promote your company.

Webinars

Organizing and producing a webinar on a topic in your niche can not only help acquire traffic to your site but can also generate promising leads in the form of viewers. You can also record your webinar and add it to your website or YouTube channel as another video directing toward your site.

Free Guides

By promoting a suitably written free guide or white paper, some of the most sought after traffic can come to your site by just writing 4 to 25 pages about something already in your expertise. Free guides generally contain information about your products or services, research, case studies, company opinions, or resource guides that list other top experts in your niche.

eBook

An eBook is significantly longer that a Free Guide. They take more energy and time to write, but when done correctly they can help push your business more into the mainstream, while at the same time, build your site’s authority. For a few hundred bucks you can even self publish and sell your eBook series on Amazon and Barnes & Noble too.

Get Involved and Be Personable

If you have seen my Profile Page, you know I aim to be as “real” as possible towards future leads and the community.  Establishing yourself and your brand in a truthful, down to earth fashion will help attract more targeted audiences. Visitors today have a sharp eye on what is automated, and what has depth with real opinions.  In a niche community, participate in forums and general discussions; add your input in as many relative discussions as possible to further your reputation as an expert.

Directories

This may sound fairly obvious, but industry directories and high authority directories will most likely have good Page Rank, and Domain Authority.  While avoiding free directories that place links for everyone; using specific, high ranking directories can be an easy way to raise your sites authority. Just be sure the position of the link on the directory is placed on the most relevant page possible, and check if the page has good Page Authority as well.

Link Building

Choosing the right link building campaigns can significantly influence your website’s authority. Contact the resource pages that link to content comparable to what you provide on your site and inquire about being added to the list. Pull the backlinks from your competitors and you might find sites that are already linking to a site similar to yours. This can generate further leads to go after and will eventually raise the authority of your site.

Developing quality inbound links can significantly improve the sites authority. Backlinks are still the backbone of the web and are the most important signal to search engines to determine your website’s strength.  As always, you want natural backlinks from as many different domains as possible. A useful link builder’s tip: Fix those broken links! While your website may still be live, those external links might not be. Use a tool to locate broken links or it’s suggested to manually check pages on your website every three months for any broken links.

Similar to broken links, broken pages can also send bad signals; make a list of the pages, fix them or 301 redirect them to the most suitable and appropriate live page. Most backlinks are acceptable, but the most beneficial ones clearly come from other highly trusted websites such as .gov domains, .edu domains, or even chief news sites. You should constantly be on the lookout for authority backlinks, because even a single solid link can considerably boost the authority of your website.

With the above strategies, you can start to build your site’s authority, and enhance your business’s success. Building your sites authority in any niche is a matter of making that website popular and growing its network through any and all means available. You want engaging, quality content that will keep users on the site, and persuade them to share the content through social avenues. By branching out the types of content you create, you’re sure to find an approach that appeals to your audience and that can assist in the quest of building authority to your site. All combined efforts create a working representation for how you can strive in building website authority. There isn’t a fast way to website recognition, but rather deliberate planning, long hours, and time.

Know of any other great examples of building a niche site into an authority?  Let us know in the comments below.

It’s DoFollow Thursday and we invite all of you out there to leave a comment. If it adds real value, we will approve it, and you get a “DoFollow” link to your site. How’s that for an easy link? All we ask is you include your real name in the “name” field. We will just delete stupid, irrelevant, spammy stuff – only truly useful comments will be allowed.  Be sure to subscribe so you never miss a DoFollow Thursday!

Brad Kuenn

Brad provides support to Vertical Measures senior staff and project managers in the areas of online research, blog posts, content editing, link building and research for content development. He has a passion for writing as well as art, which shines through in his work for clients. His creativity and attention to detail makes him a valuable asset to our online marketing staff as we are constantly seeking out new and innovative ideas.

Website – Twitter – More Posts

Related posts:

1. Infographic: The Authority Building Machine
2. Building Authority Through Regular Guest Blogging
3. How to Use Forum Link Building to Build Authority for Your Site

Google announced an update to their algorithm which penalizes excessive “above-the-fold” advertising on websites. The change is intended to downgrade web pages where the content the user is after is given very low or small placement relative to ad content.

As announced on the Webmaster Central Blog:

Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change. If you click on a website and the part of the website you see first either doesn’t have a lot of visible content above the fold or dedicates a large fraction of the site’s initial screen real estate to ads, that’s not a very good user experience. Such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

Google assures that the change will affect “less than 1%” of searches, and that websites who use above-the-fold ads “to a normal degree” should not be affected. The ads in question refer to persistent, on-page advertisements, not pop-ups or overlay ads that you can click through to reach the content (although I personally find those far more intrusive).

What Is a Normal Amount of Ads?

Google is characteristically elusive on hard guidelines regarding how much ad real estate is too much. They do, however, point to various screen resolution plugins that let you view sites at varying resolutions to see how the content appears for users. This is useful for gauging where the fold would fall on your website on various displays, from iPads to desktops.

Perhaps more useful is the Google Labs Browser Size tool, which superimposes the varying browser sizes of Google users over your website. This way you can see what percentage of searchers can see a given piece of content when they first hit your site. The fewer visitors that can see a piece of content when a site first loads, the more likely it will be considered below the fold.

For example, taking a page from eHow that came up when I searched for making lampshades:

Now here’s how it appears in Browser Size:

Based on Google’s superimposed stats, 10% of visitors won’t be able to see much more than the article heading, and 70% of visitors won’t even see the first content paragraph in its entirety. It’s not clear if this example would be egregious enough to suffer the penalty for above-the-fold content from Google. While more clarification may come in the future, Google’s Matt Cutts has suggested that it’s not about the number of above-the-fold ads, but more about the real estate they take up. In a Google Hangout/video chat reported on by WebProNews, Cutts suggest that the size equivalent of two Post-Its grouped atop a 8.5″ x 11″ paper might be considered excessive on a web page.

Some have levied accusations of hypocrisy given Google’s often ad-heavy results pages:

What’s the End Result?

Google’s personal exceptionalism aside, it’s clear that their emphasis is on usability. Even users who are very understanding of websites monetizing their content don’t want to scroll past a wall of ads to find the nugget of information they were seeking. This is particularly true when the ads themselves may appear like the content you were searching for, or otherwise confuse or obscure content.

Websites that are hit with the layout penalty can reduce their above-the-fold ad load and the search bot will process the changes the next time it crawls the site. However, as Google’s post notes, it may take “several weeks” to see the penalty lifted.

But even for sites that aren’t affected by the penalty this can be a useful reminder that, with ever-increasing smartphone and tablet browsing, your content will not always be served up on a luxurious 21″ monitor. This can help you gauge the visibility and effectiveness of your content, calls to action and, yes, ads.

Is Google improving results for users or hurting monetization for web owners? Share your thoughts below!

David Gould

David comes to the Vertical Measures team with over a decade of experience in online development. As the Web & Design Strategist, David is responsible for the look and functionality of the Vertical Measures website, blog and online applications. His programming skills allow him to complement form with function: with a strong technical background, he is able to combine innovative design with dynamic programming. David developed and maintains Vertical Measures’ proprietary project management software, EDWARD, and contributes to the design of the company’s visual branding materials.

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With Google’s recent announcement of Search Plus Your World, there seems to be conflicting view points on whether or not the social network is worth our time. It’s clear that at the moment, that the network is not as big as the hype surrounding it. Nonetheless, we know from watching Facebook and Twitter grow that these things take time. In Arnie Kuenn’s post, he concludes that even though Google’s new social updates may not affect each of our search results immediately, they eventually will. This is why it is critical that businesses get their foot in the door, and make their social presence known on Google Plus now. This means not only setting up a profile, but optimizing it properly to ensure higher search engine rankings. This post will discuss all of the key components necessary to do so. Please refer to the Vertical Measure’s Google+ profile at any time during the post when you need an example.

Title

Google will recognize your name as your page’s title tag. Your name should simply be the name of your business or brand. We do not recommend keyword stuffing here, as this will be used as your name when leaving comments on posts.

Description

The field beneath your business’ name is your page’s description. In Google search results, it will be displayed as properly written meta descriptions often are. To ensure this, your description should describe your brand in less than 85 characters. It should be appealing as to attract clicks from searchers, but also include your primary keywords.

Introduction

The introduction should be optimized for your primary keywords, but do not over do it. It needs to read naturally and be appealing enough that potential customers will stay on the page to continue learning about your company. In this section you have the ability to use both paragraph and bullet point formats. When you do use one of your keywords, be sure to hyperlink it with a link back to the specific page on your site where people can find information about that product or service. Additionally, you may use rich text formatting such as bold and italics to help your primary keywords stand out.

Upload Photos

You may not consider photos as content in the traditional sense, but to Google they are. First and foremost, make sure you have a profile photo of your brand’s logo. Next up is to upload a minimum of five additional photos to fill up the scrapbook slots. These are the photos to the right of your profile photo, and directly under your description. Remember, these are the first five photos people will see when they visit your site. Before you upload any photos, however, you need to make sure they are optimized. You can do this by renaming the photo files to not only describe the subjects in the picture, but also to include keywords when applicable. Finally, don’t forget to tag your photos to increase their visibility.

Recommended Links

To the right of the introduction you will find the recommended links section. This is your opportunity to connect people to your other social profiles such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This is also a great place to insert a link to your blog, if you haven’t done so yet. As far as anchor text optimization, a simple link with the anchor text of “Blog” will have more success with click-throughs than if you were to keyword stuff it and confuse people about where the link actually leads.

Keep it Active

By now, we all know Google loves fresh content. Updating your Google+ profile with new content daily is necessary to sustain and increase your profile’s visibility in the search engine rankings. Don’t worry though; it is not necessary to post a new update every day. You can also keep your profile up to date by updating your profile’s About section, adding new people to your circles, and uploading new photos or videos.

Promotion and Social links

Take advantage of your other social accounts, such as Twitter and Facebook, to get the word out about your new Google+ profile. If people follow you on twitter and like you on Facebook, there’s a good chance they will also be interested in adding you to their Google+ circles. Updates like “Have you added us to your Google+ circle yet?” can get the ball rolling. On top of all of this new exposure, you will also be creating social back links to your Google+ profile. You may also want to consider adding a link to your Google+ Profile in your email signature.

Badges, Buttons, and Authorization

In addition to promoting your profile on your social networks, you should also add a Google+ badge to your website. The best place for it is right next to your other social badges, preferably on your homepage. The badge has two important purposes. The first is to allow your fans to navigate easily from your website to your Google+ profile. The secondary purpose of this badge is to let Google know that this is your official Google+ profile page. Follow the directions from Google on their badge page. You will also need to paste the following HTML code on your site.

This goes in the header:

<link href=”https://plus.google.com/YourGoogle+IDNumberGoesHere” ” rel=”publisher” />

Next, the code generated when you create your badge can be placed anywhere on your site.

Last but not least, you will also want to include a button on your blog for people to give you a +1 directly from the post.

Expand your Circles

As a business, you cannot add people to your circles unless they add you first. This is where the badge and social promotion mentioned above will come in handy. You can, however, add other businesses to your circle. Try to add businesses that are related to your own. For example, if you are like us and your business is related to internet marketing, Point Blank recently did a post on their recommendations of the top 50 people and pages to add to your circles. This will not only build authority for your page, but will also expose you to new networks.

Encourage +1′s

With social search in place and here to stay, it is clear that +1′s will have an effect on ranking factors. Asking your Twitter followers to give you a +1 on Google Plus if they like your latest post is one example of how to encourage people in your circle to engage with your posts. Another way to encourage +1′s is by simply giving +1′s out to posts you think deserve them. Many people will follow the rule of reciprocity. If you are writing about similar topics and give them enough +1′s, they will most likely return the favor. Speaking of that, we would appreciate you giving this post a +1 below if it helped you optimize your Google Plus Profile.

On the other hand, if you would you rather someone else set up and optimize your business’ Google Plus profile then ask us how we can help.

Sarah Schager

Sarah Schager is an internet marketing strategist at Vertical Measures who specializes in organic search engine optimization. Some of her specialties include social media strategy, link acquisition, local search and content development management.
+SarahSchager

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Fixing your web presence is a lot like getting your car tuned up. You really have to make a diagnosis prior to getting your problems fixed.

I recently listened to a radio show where the host was talking about how consumers often self-diagnose their car problems. The announcer related a story where a customer brought his car into the shop and told them to “Give me a tune-up and align the front end because I keep hearing noises when I drive.”  Based on these instructions, the service shop did the tune-up and front end alignment.

The customer paid for the repairs and then got in his car and drove away. But, he came back in just a few minutes, fuming. He asked for the manager and said that he should go for a quick drive with him. The manager agreed and they started to drive away. Once they were on the road, the customer said, “I asked you to tune-up my car and listen this noise is still here.” The manager said, “We did tune-up your car,” and he then reached over and turned off the air conditioning fan; the noise immediately went away. The service manager said, “You should have asked us to fix this fan instead of asking for a tune up if you wanted this noise to go away.”

Then the customer said, that rumbling noise is still here and I asked you to align my front end. The manager said the noise isn’t coming from the front end, it sounds like it’s coming from the back. They drove back to the service station and sure enough, the customer had a badly worn rear tire that was causing the noise and vibration.

The customer paid for the additional repairs as suggested by the manager and drove away a happy camper, although with a much lighter bank account. He paid for repairs that he really didn’t need.

Many of our clients and potential clients come to us with the same approach. They self-diagnose their problems and come to us asking to build links, add content or manage their social media without having spent the time to diagnose the real problem. Our recommendation is to always determine the problem before throwing services at a perceived issue.

Many businesses are still trying to figure out the “why” of Panda. They think it’s duplicate content, thin content, stale content, not enough social proof or maybe it’s not enough links. Unless they take the time, they will just be guessing and like the customer in the illustration above, they will be throwing away good money at problems that may not exist.

Here are 3 things to consider before deploying any tactics to build web site traffic.

1. Make sure you understand the problem.

Clearly identify the problem. Is your traffic down?  Is it conversions you want improved?  Is it your SERPs you want improved?  Clearly identifying the problem will help you in creating an internet marketing strategy and the tactics needed to solve your problem.

Another thing to consider as you identify the problem; make sure you are solving the right problem. Often times, the problem is really just a symptom and we rush to fix the symptom instead of the actual problem. Careful consideration is the key. Take the time and spend the money to get to the root of the problem. We can do an in-depth analysis of your site and as long as you have analytics, can identify why you were affected by the Panda update and then help you take steps to get re-indexed and back in the game.

2. Make sure you have enough of a budget to fix the problem.

I have a background in advertising. Many of the companies I worked with would often “flight” their commercials. That is, they would run a heavy schedule followed by being dormant and then another heavy schedule. They realized they didn’t have a large enough budget to advertise weekly and they also realized if they spread their budget to last the month, it wouldn’t be significant enough to move the needle. Visualize a large boulder that you need to move and all you have is a steel rod to use for leverage. The longer the rod the better the leverage. Think of your budget like it’s the rod: more is better.

Often times our customers will come to us with a limited budget and want the moon… oh, and the stars and the sun. We often recommend to prospective clients to save their money and like an advertiser, wait until they have enough of a budget to make a difference.

For example, one of our customers with a limited budget requested that we focus on 20+ keywords. Think about it. With a small budget we would attack all these keywords and not be very successful in moving them up in the rankings. A limited budget might get you from a ranking of 25 all the way up to 19 —  yet, still no one would find you.

You need to attack a problem with enough leverage to make an impact. Just spending a small amount will not give you the leverage you need to make an impact. Focus on a smaller subset of your problem and make an impact with whatever your size budget.

3. Think about attacking the problem from a number of angles.

Internet marketing works best when you take a holistic approach. Like in our advertising example above, many companies focus on campaigns involving a variety of advertising platforms that have detailed schedules with predicted outcomes. That is, attack your problem from a number of angles to give you the very best leverage and have in mind an outcome.

• Site Structure

  First fix anything on-site issues you have. Page load times, canonical issues, landing pages and page architecture should come first. Once you have this handled attack your traffic from a number of angles for the best result.

• Content

  Add great content. Give your users a reason to come to your site and a reason to come back. Focus on core content (keywords) but also broaden your topics to capture more long-tail keywords. Make your content so compelling that other sites will want to link to it. You can do this by creating info graphics, white-papers, e-books and video.

• Link Building

  If you write great content, you’ll naturally get links but you may want to acquire them quicker. Many of our clients work with us because we deliver quality links. We spend the time researching and accumulating lists of great websites. We often times create great content that is easily accepted by web masters as it improves their site and allows us a link back.

• Analysis

  The only way to identify your problem is through analysis and the only way to constantly improve is to constantly monitor your results and to tweak your actions along the way. But remember, it’s not just analysis, it’s creating action steps based on the data. Analysis without action is worthless.

Don’t be like our car service customer, diagnosing your own problems. Let the professionals take a look and make their best recommendations. Remember, they’re the ones that have seen and heard it all before. They can quickly determine the problem and through years of experience and lessons-learned, help you to improve your website presence in the most efficient manner possible.

Mike Huber

As the Director of Client Services at Vertical Measures, Mike Huber is in charge of developing efficient processes in order to improve overall productivity and quality of client services including; link building, social media marketing and content development.

Mike has a wealth of experience in marketing and advertising. Starting out in newspaper advertising, he has seen the transformation of print to digital. For the past 15 years, he has been involved in online marketing, developing extensive PPC programs and organic SEO tactics, resulting in a significant growth, traffic, and revenue for clients.

Mike is an accomplished public speaker and presents frequently on advertising and online marketing topics.

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This Internet marketing infographic guides you through the key tactics that can be used to build authority for your website. These tactics fall into three major categories; link building, social media marketing and content marketing.

The Authority Building Machine also warns against using black hat practices that could land a website in search engine jail, a place that is not easy to escape. So stay on track and have fun!

Embed This Infographic On Your Site:

<a href="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/search-optimization/infographic-the-authority-building-machine/"><img title="Infographic: The Authority Building Machine" src="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/The-Authority-Building-Machine-Infographic.jpg" alt="Infographic: The Authority Building Machine" width="670" height="2590" /></a><br /><a href="http://www.verticalmeasures.com/search-optimization/infographic-the-authority-building-machine/">Internet Marketing Infographic</a> by <a href="http://www.verticalmeasures.com">Vertical Measures</a>

Daniel Dannenberg

Daniel Dannenberg is a Graphic Designer at Vertical Measures and provides the company with his design knowledge with branding, illustration, and information graphics.
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