If you have a blog or website, you may have heard about the concept of “website authority” before. But what exactly is it, and why should you care?
Website authority is a SEO concept that refers to how credible and trustworthy search engines like Google determine your site to be. It’s an important factor in determining your website’s search engine ranking and visibility.
Some of the main things that influence your site’s authority include:
Higher authority scores tend to correlate strongly with better search engine rankings. As Google sees your site as increasingly trustworthy over time, you’ll likely move up in results for your target keywords.
“More specifically:
So it pays dividends to improve authority – which is a long-term game with patience required!”
There are some SEO tools that assign numerical authority scores to websites, like the Moz “Domain Authority” metric or Ahrefs “Domain Rating” or SEMrush “Authority Score”. But Google has their own complex algorithms emphasizing quality above all else.
“With the above tools we can get an approximate “authority” ranking, it’s usually based on the number of backlinks and the authority of the domains you get backlinks. SEMrush also uses a combination of organic traffic to your site. Here is how to get the authority rankings in each tool:
You can use the SEMrush Domain Overview to see the authority score.
You can use the Ahrefs Website “authority” checker for free without signing up.
To discuss how content marketing can transform your marketing performance, request a demo or start your free StoryChief trial. Our team would be happy to give you a walkthrough.
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Want to learn more about how content marketing and how writing high quality blog posts + social media posts can help? Continue reading our guides:
– The quality of your content – Well-researched, useful content signals expertise and trust.
– External websites linking to you – Referring links act as “votes” of confidence.
– Visitor engagement metrics – Do people spend time reading your content? More engagement indicates higher quality.
– Increases traffic from organic search
– Helps you rank for more competitive keywords
– Attracts more engaged visitors who trust top results”