Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
- Domain name to match part of the meta title. See [webmasterworld.com...]
- Have IBL's from authority sites including company name [ Quality sites and high PR sites ]
- Have unique content
- Age of site
- Comply with webmaster guidelines
My thoughts were that traffic doesn't come into it, since niche speciality doesn't necessarily attract traffic.
Has anyone seen info from Google or in the results, to support, or add to this?
Over the last two years my sites have been growing. New pages, new content. (Less lately than I like) There have been several discussions about how many new pages can be added w/o a fear of penalty. Common sense tells me not to add thousands of pages overnight, or even every week. My largest growth spurt was about 350 pages at once. Google seems to like what I'm doing.
traffic doesn't come into itNot so sure about this. I don't have really high traffic numbers, but I do get a considerable amount of AdWords traffic. Hmmm...
When you think of a person who is an authority, why is that person an authority?
That person would be referred to by many within the field, and they would be referenced for many different specific details. Both parts are required.
So with a site, it would need to be linked to by many in related fields, which is obvious, but they also have to be the authority for specific information, which is less obvious.
You need pages on your site that receive lots of deep links. That is why many .edu and .gov are considered authority. Consider the USDA and the Land Grant Universities, they are loaded up with all sorts of papers that apply to agriculture. They might even have more deep links to some ofthose papers than they do to their home pages.
e.g. NASA was an authority on outer space long before there was a search engine. When it built a web site, it provided plenty of content, which led to thousands of web sites to link to it. I'd guess that 100% of these links are unsolicited and I also guess that 99% of the world's small D "directories" do not contain a link to NASA. NASA's home page is PR10. Its links probably come from millions of schools, colleges, scientific and governmental institutions, its suppliers, and private individuals.
At a smaller level, a safe example of an Authority site is Webmasterworld. It has only half as many *displayed* backlinks in G as NASA and is PR7 on the home page. Yet its pages rank very high for many search terms. It is still an authority because we think so and many of us give unsolicited links to WW. To a small extent it will have links from the news media sites and possibly low-to-nil links from government sites.
Anyway, being an "authority site" is not a major ranking factor. We can all name some niche sites that rank for some noncompetitive phrase because it has that kind of content, not because it has dozens of backlinks.
You know an authority site when you visit it.
Having built/owned an "authority" site or two in my day, you generally have the best content.
Hands down.
Not just a "little" better, but remarkably better.
Build a site like that and you'll see people linking to you (perhaps not with the keywords you prefer) but they will link to you without asking.
Why?
Because you're the "authority" on that subject.
Generally, it's a labor of love, but not always.
The end goal might be money, but you had better over-deliver on every topic you write to get the kind of recognition and "natural" links(whatever that means) so that other "authority" sites will link to you without asking.
Edited to add. As mentioned above, if you already have "brand" recognition ie. Fortune 1000 that's another type of "authority"
Or Go to Zeal now.
In general, only top quality sites make it into Zeal.
Mainly because there's no major SEO benefits to "scam" into it.
hmm.. Zeal appears to have died permanently.. Go have a visit. Was curious.
Hmm yep. No money in it. No SEO benefits in it. Like Dmoz, searchers stopped going to general directories years ago.
Bookmarking's the wave of the future now. Seems Yahoo has figured that. What's that ancient dinosaur Google got? lol
If the end goal IS money, this becomes disturbing to see informational sites creep into the top spots. To my thinking they don't reflect the effort of someone who truly is an authority and who has taken the time to develop a proper website.
becomes disturbing to see informational sites creep into the top spots
What sort of sites should be in the top spots then? When I search the web I am almost always looking for information. What do you mean by a true authority site?
Webmasters may look at a specific topic and think it's thin or incomplete but for the general populace it's like Brittanica.(which was also convienent but not comprehensive on any particular subject)
Thereby garnering thousands of unsolicited links.
In fact, my mom told me she saw this great news report on wiki (even though she couldn't pronounce it right) and can barely use email.
Two recent examples for searches I was doing give good examples of two different "authority" sites.
The first was for <natural cures to specific cancer>. A very small site written by a doctor that was obviously just doing it out of his general kindness. Funny thing was it was nowhere to be found on Google(probably sandboxed):rollseyes:.
And if I owned any type of site that was even closely related to it, I would have linked to it.
The other search was for dreadlocks. #1 on G. Obviously this site was "selling" it's hair care products but you could tell the people who owned it went out of their way to provide the most comprehensive content as well.
How to's on creating, washing, maintaining, problems, etc.
Again, if "dreadlocks" were my thing I would have linked to this site in an instant and said "this is the AUTHORITY" on the subject.
The strong content and excellent copy "sold" their products without a hitch.
Simply the basic of over-delivering, which almost inevitably leads to the "sale"
[edited by: whitenight at 5:20 am (utc) on May 30, 2006]
But - that shouldn't make it an authority site. The fundamental nature of wikipedia should rule it out from that category, along with all other wikis.
For that reason I doubt that wikipedia links are important for ranking - even if they deliver natural traffic directly.
What sort of sites should be in the top spots then
A: someone who truly is an authority and who has taken the time to develop a proper website
But, the discussion is about what makes a site an authority. I'm suggesting that from an SE point of view, there are algos to consider - and what factors do they consider?. So, if someone truly is an authority, and builds a good site, they may still have stiff competition with some cookie cutter sites.
[edited by: grandpa at 5:29 am (utc) on May 30, 2006]
I can think of tens of authority sites that never come up for searches but are always bookmarked for particular subjects.
And when it comes to many competitive "money" words, "authority" can be nearly irrelevant.
"Autos" and "cars" don't bring up the major car makers. (Although oddly Jaguar and Volvo come up)
I know this isn't a part of Google's idea of an authority site but it seems to me an authority site should include documented references with it's articles. It should go beyond just opinion.
I shudder to think that wikipedia is an authority site. It is full of misinformation. An encyclopedia at least strives for accurate information. But if 'authority' means popular with a lot of inbound links I guess wikipedia is an authority site.
Of course, I'm still waiting on that for Amazon and Answers.com coming up for every term under the sun.
Forget the guidelines and things like site design.BigDave, I beg to disagree.
The OP listed several items as a suggested list of things that may help spell authority. Of those, the last 3 items are consistent with my own efforts and results. My only advantage going into this was the age of the site and unique, but stale content. There were many other design problems and lack of guidance with the site. I sought an authoritative site for website help, and landed here. Then I began to learn how to make that happen for my site, for my particular keywords. At one time I ranked below the fold for every money word, with an otherwise established site. That is no longer true, and I attribute that to good design and guidelines/standards application.
Cookie cutter sites may always become popular for any group of users, and thier growth can be so expansive as to flood the serps. To me, that still doesn't always pass the sniff test as an authority, particularly over a wide swath of the web. So, as webmasters, we may have to contend with arguably-authorive sites in our realm until a group of engineers hears our wailing. But what are those engineers looking at? Do they accept the IBL's and traffic figures, do they consider the popularity? Among other things, probably so.
I said forget the guidelines and site design as defining authority. I said nothing about anything else on his list as it would relate to being na authority, nor did I say anything about whether those were important when it comes to ranking in general.
Following the webmaster guidelines and good site design ARE important for ranking. They just aren't important for your site's authority-like score.
There are loads of pages out there on non-authority sites that will regularly rank higher than those on sites with high authority-like scores. In fact, you may well do better getting links from that authority site than owning that site. If an authority site says that one of your pages is worth reading, then that must be a really good page.
And of course unique content and age of the site contribute to its authority status, but only if there is actual authority to that unique content.
I used to go to a beach where "Crystal George" would tell you about the paper he wrote explaining the significance of the angles in the crystals as it relates to the healing harmoics they release. He would even show you this paper. It was 3 pages of lined paper written longhand. It had been written years earlier. It was unique and it was old. Personally I don't think that it would get a high authority-like score in the world of crystallology even if it is unique and old.
This topic has been talked to death.
So what? Some of us don't live on WW 24x7 and there is this possibility that Google's algorithm could change now and then. :)
It is interesting to see someone who thinks Wikipedia is terribly authoritative. Currently there is a published opinion (don't have a URL) suggesting that Wikipedia is dead. If Wikipedia is considered an authority by Google, there would need to be a complex algorithm just to rate the quality of its outbound links. e.g. a page with contributions from many people (or edits by many people) might be more authoritative than a single self-promotional page that hasn't been picked by by the W community as link spam.
It seems there is some confusion on what "authority" means. In the context of the thread it has nothing to do with how good a site is. All it has to do with is how many links the site has and the quality. Google does not make informed decisions based on experience. It is just a computer program that decides that a site is an authority because it matches some sort of algo.
Chicken before the egg?
An authority site is authoritative well before the algos pick up on it.
How can it be any other way?
Other quality sites rarely give unsolicited links to so-so sites.
Sure there are handful of sites that fall under "authority" label strictly due to popularity and not content but the same rules apply.
Amazon and Wiki have a uniqueness that gives them authority status.
Amazon = first big time retailer offering affiliate payments
Wiki = first "user-generated" online encyclopedia.
In a perfect world such a site would have many unsolicited links to it and would naturally rise to the top in the serps.
The question is if Google can really identify such a site.
