When you get invited to a breakfast presentation or seminar, you generally want to attend the event based on how relevant the topic is to your needs and how authoritative the presenter is.
Relevance and authority are also important topics to understand in relation to how Google ranks your website.
Although there are hundreds of things that impact your website’s ranking in Google, broadly speaking search engines aim to show websites in their search results that are the most relevant and authoritative.
How can you increase your website’s relevance and authority?
Let’s Start with Relevance
Going back to the breakfast presentation, you find out whether or not the event is relevant to your needs by the words that are used on the invite. If the words used in the heading capture your interest because they are relevant, you’re more likely to continue reading.
Similarly, adding new content to your website that is optimised for specific keywords makes your website more relevant to those keywords. Particularly if the keywords are used in the Page Title, Headline, URL and Link Text.
Including keywords in your web pages adds relevance for both the reader and for search engines.
So… if adding one page of content makes your website relevant, adding more pages optimised for similar keywords will make it even more relevant, right?
Right!
Here is an example of a website that uses clusters of content focused on a specific topic to successfully increase organic traffic.
- The What Can I Eat website provides delicious food options made by Australian manufacturers for people with food allergies and intolerances (as someone on a gluten-free diet, I love this website ?)
- Through an ongoing strategy to regularly add search engine optimised content, this website increased organic traffic by more than 255% in around six months. And, the number of different keywords driving traffic to the website increased by over 205%.
- This was achieved by adding web pages that are optimised for specific keywords and that link to articles and recipes that are optimised for related keywords. To help with Google ranking, the main keywords are also included on the home page.
- For example, the “Wheat Free Diet Support Pages” are optimised for the keyword phrase “wheat free” and related keywords such as “wheat free diet” and “wheat free ingredients”.
- In six months, 237 different keywords containing the word “wheat free” have driven organic traffic to the What Can I Eat website.
When adding new content to your website, always remember to use unique, high quality content that reads naturally and doesn’t suffer from keyword stuffing.
Now let’s look at Authority
Along with relevance, the authority of your website has an impact on where it shows up in search engine results.
1. Increase your website’s authority by building links from other websites
Having links from other websites to yours gives your website more authority. The more authoritative the website linking to you, the more authority is passed on via the link. Authoritative websites are those with authoritative domains, and those with a lot of authoritative links to their website.
.gov and .edu domains have a lot of authority so always say “yes please” if you get a chance to link from a government or education website.
The good news is that if you follow a strategy of regularly adding relevant, high quality content, then other website owners will be encouraged to link to you.
To maximise the potential for building links, let as many people as possible know about your new content by sharing it via social media like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Each new page of content makes your website bigger, and therefore more authoritative.
2. Increasing the Authority of your Domain
Building links as described above is one way to increase your domain authority. Time in existence (age) of your domain also has an impact, which is why it can sometimes be hard for a new website to rank well.
Read more and watch a video about Domain Name SEO
When you next plan updates to your website, prioritise them by considering whether they will make your website more relevant or more authoritative. Or ideally, both.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Melinda aka Mel is a Google Partner, Google Ads & Consultant, Speaker and Trainer and co-owner of Click-Winning Content.
Mel provides results-driven services to organisations around the world and is committed to never using an acronym without explaining it first. She also likes greyhounds as pets, grand slam tennis, cracked pepper and Melbourne sunsets.
Please connect at the links below.
