Authority and Content in Google
Some recent discussions in the office have turned towards identifying factors that are keeping some clients’ websites out of the first page of Google’s rankings. The pages may be saturated and optimized for the appropriate term, but something is still preventing that top 10 listing. A couple factors that may be influencing this are authority and content.
Google loves information, and it particularly loves information coming from so-called ‘authority sites.’ These are ones like Wikipedia, industry associations, educational domains, and non-profit websites. Whatever it may be (and it could even be a social networking site), an authority site will most often contain large amounts of information, most often around a particular theme, and have some domain age. These sites also generally have many inbound links and a few high quality outbound links. A few well chosen outbound links to sites with related content assist the search engines in establishing the theme of the website. The incoming links, again from relevant sites, show that other sites and Internet users regard the information on the site as being topical and useful.
In short, authority sites rank high in search results due to their focus on theme, quality link building, and established web presence. You can build your website into an authority site over time, but doing so will require a lot of investment in producing quality, informative content (separate from your content designed to sell a product or services) on your theme and a successful linking campaign that increases your visibility.
Google loves information. Google wants to give searchers using ‘research phase’ keywords (the short phrases like ‘cnc machining’ or ‘heart health’) informational sites. Google also likes finding updated and fresh content, the more frequent the better. If you’re looking to crack the first page, your site needs to have enough informational content and new content to pique the Google bots’ interest. Fresh content on a consistent basis encourages the bots to visit your site more frequently. As already mentioned, informational content will help Google determine what your site is about.
Of course, you may pull up the results for your keyword and see that besides some very recognizable authority sites and informational sites, the other pages seem to be your competitors who are selling a product. But take a closer look at those pages. What about their site is different from yours? What content does the landing page have? Have they built a lot of links? Even sites pushing a product can rank on the first page if they present information ahead of the pitch, because Google loves information.
There’s no magic formula to getting to the first page of Google’s results. Your industry and competitors will ultimately determine how best to design your website and content for successful results and conversions. It may take time to build a good SEO program for your website, but ultimately to benefits to you and your customers are worth it! And don’t forget, Google loves information.