Search engine optimization consists of three components: technical aspects, content, and authority. Authority is an important but challenging factor in SEO. The higher your SEO authority, the higher you rank in Google.
In this article, we’ll explain what SEO authority is and give you practical tips on how to boost your authority.
Your website’s SEO authority indicates how important and trustworthy your website is in Google’s eyes.
The higher your authority, the higher you’ll rank in search results. Authority is therefore a very important factor for your website.
Google calculates SEO authority based on three areas:
Only Google knows how much authority your domain name, pages, or incoming backlinks have.
As an online marketer, you naturally want to know what your authority is.
Tools like Majestic and Moz can help you get an estimate of your authority.
Below, we’ll take a closer look at the three areas of SEO authority:
Your website’s domain name builds authority with Google.
The authority of this is determined by:
As a general rule, older domain names tend to rank higher than newer ones.
After all, when you have a new domain name, you’re starting from scratch—you have few or no backlinks, no authority yet on certain topics, and very little content.
To build authority for your domain name, relevant and reliable backlinks are important; you can obtain backlinks by engaging in link building.
It’s also important that you build authority on topics relevant to your website by writing and publishing high-quality content.
That way, Google knows that you have expertise in those topics and therefore deserve higher rankings.
In addition to your domain name, each page on your website is also assigned an individual authority score.
The higher the authority of an individual page, the easier it is for your page to rank highly in search results.
The authority of your pages is determined by:
Just as with your domain authority, older pages rank more easily in search results than pages that are brand new.
Research by Ahrefs has shown that, on average, it takes 2 to 3 years for a page to reach the number 1 position in Google.
Your page must contain high-quality, reliable content. This is because Google looks at factors such as the bounce rate on your pages.
In addition to the credibility of your content, the credibility and quality of your backlinks are also important for individual page authority.
Pages with high-quality inbound backlinks will rank higher in Google more easily than pages that don’t have them.
If you have several high-quality pages on your website, it’s also important to keep them up to date.
Google knows when your page was last updated, and this factor also plays a role in determining a page’s authority.
The backlinks pointing to your website are a hugely important factor in determining your SEO authority.
They affect the authority of your domain name and your pages.
Backlinks also have a certain level of authority. This authority is determined based on:
Every backlink passes on SEO authority (unless it has a nofollow attribute), so backlinks are an ideal way to build more authority.
The authority of a backlink is crucial to the amount of authority it passes on to your website.
The backlinks you receive must be reliable, high-quality, and relevant.
If you receive low-quality backlinks, this can lower your SEO authority—and therefore your rankings—and you don’t want that.
Furthermore, the location of the backlink is very important. A backlink in the footer conveys little or no authority and can even be harmful.
A page should also not contain too many backlinks. After all, SEO authority is distributed across all the links on that page.
Building SEO authority takes time, but there are several things you can do to build it faster.
Google considers factors such as page load speed, mobile-friendliness, and user-friendliness to be very important.
This means that your website’s technical SEO must be excellent.
No one wants to wait for a slow website or run into 404 errors.
Make sure your website’s backend is in top shape.
Not just for Google, but also for the visitor.
Because backlinks have a major impact on your authority, obtaining backlinks is very important.
The process of acquiring backlinks is also known as link building.
Link building increases your website’s authority and, as a result, its search rankings.
Be sure to obtain only relevant, reliable, and high-quality backlinks.
With our tips for acquiring high-quality backlinks, you can get started with link building right away.
Google prefers to show its users user-friendly websites.
Therefore, make sure you have not only a good menu structure but also a good internal link structure.
Include internal links within the content of a page to other relevant pages on your own website.
This will help visitors navigate your website more easily.
In addition, internal links help pass on page authority, which improves your search rankings.
Another benefit of internal links is that they show Google which topics are relevant, helping you establish yourself as an authority on those topics.
When you start writing content, it’s important to use the right search terms and topics.
If you write content that no one is looking for, you’ll never establish authority, and as a result, you won’t get any visitors to your website.
With the Google Keyword Planner and alternatives to the Google Keyword Planner, you can easily find the right keywords.
You can then incorporate these keywords into your text, HTML headings, titles, meta descriptions, and alt tags.
There is a big difference between content and valuable content.
A lot of content is written solely for Google, based on a single search term.
However, Google is getting smarter all the time and looks at more than just the search terms in your content.
Your content should be informative and demonstrate that you are the expert in your field.
When you write good content, your visitors will read it, click through, and convert.
So, only write content that is useful to visitors.
SEO isn’t a one-day wonder. You can’t just boost your SEO authority overnight.
It’s an ongoing process, so you won’t reach the number-one spot in search results in just one month.
Google rewards you if you continue to build your authority.
Therefore, always check your website’s technical aspects, build external links through link building, create high-quality content, and keep updating it.
With a passion for SEO and an unmatched drive for results, Jarik Oosting is the driving force behind SmartRanking. With over 15 years of experience in the field, he has built an extensive body of knowledge spanning technical SEO to complex site migrations. As the founder of SmartRanking, he has assembled a team of like-minded SEO specialists who help businesses achieve sustainable online growth.
His academic background in information science at the University of Groningen, with a specialization in natural language processing, gives him a unique perspective on the world of SEO. For Jarik, it’s not just about visibility in search engines, it’s about sharing knowledge and guiding businesses toward sustainable online success. That mission also led him to write a Dutch book about GEO.