Website Design and Development, Search Engine Optimizations

Few of my clients asked me that they are looking for “Authority website”, can I provide to them? I asked one of them what it is. He replied no, however he had read somewhere on the net. At that time I thought I might write few lines about the top “An Authority website”.  Therefore, here I am to put few words for readers of my blog.  

On the net I found one definition by Jason Dowdell of Global Promoter, he wrote:  “authority sites are sites that have been linked to and referenced on other web sites covering the same subject matter and they also will have hundreds if not thousands of pages covering that subject matter and nearly every facet of it.” 

While as per Google Research Scientists and Engineers Bharat and Mihaila, “We believe a page is an authority on the query topic if and only if some of the best experts on the query topic point to it. Of course in practice some expert pages may be experts on a broader or related topic. If so, only a subset of the hyperlinks on the expert page may be relevant.”

“In such cases the links being considered have to be carefully chosen to ensure that their qualifying text matches the query. By combining relevant out-links from many experts on the query topic we can find the pages that are most highly regarded by the community of pages related to the query topic. This is the basis of the high relevance that our algorithm delivers.”

And as per Miles Galliford “An Authority Site can be defined as a website that sets out to be a leading online source of information for a niche subject.”

From above definitions it is apparent that the Authority sites are content based websites because they are frequently updated with the latest news, features, reviews, case studies and stories. Also they have 100s of pages created naturally and most important they are related to the topics. Another feature of authority sites is that they are linked from 1000s related pages. Also the authority sites contains outbound links to the pages which are very related to the topics. The increasing numbers of sub-domains of a website also make it an authority site.

What you got? Answer is that an authority website is:

1. Which have lot of incoming and outgoing links to and from related pages, 
2. Frequently updated,
3.  All pages contains related and important information,
4.  Have lot of sub-domains; say each topic is on a separate sub-domain. 
5.  Each page contents, information and the pages are up-to-date.

Beside above factors you should consider following if you want to own an authority site:

•  You should have as many RSS feeds as you can muster to incorporate throughout your site. Your visitors need to be able to receive RSS feeds for any keyword, category or archive as well as create their own. One feed is no longer enough to satisfy your visitors,
• You should be engaging the minds of your visitors at all times using surveys, commenting and feedback. Make these features easy for your visitors and your site will grow exponentially. Why? Because they feel like you actually care about them. Interaction is a powerful tool and creates a sense of community on your site,
• You should post to your blog often and you should always provide quality and original content. That doesn’t mean you need to produce 800 word articles three times a week. You goal should be to become a news master. You need to be an “authority” on the news happening in your nicheNote:

Remember creating an authority site is not easy, however it is not impossible, but you should be patient and consistent.

An example of an authority website:     About.com