The Importance of "Authority" in Attraction Marketing

When trying to build a presence online, most online marketers are not aware of the importance of “authority.”  Authority is huge in Google’s books.  Quite simply, Google ranks sites considered by the Internet public as authoritative, much higher than it does sites that reflect little authority.  This statement begs the question, “What do you mean by authority in the context of Google and search engine optimization?”

To answer this question let’s consider a couple of quotes by Google’s founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page.  Sergey is often quoted as once saying, “We believed we could build a better search.  We had a simple idea, that not all pages are created equal.  Some are more important (than others).”
On another occasion, Google co-founder Larry Page stated, “It’s quite complicated and sounds circular, but we’ve worked out a way of calculating a web site’s importance.”  The keyword here friends is “importance.”

Matt Cutts, Head of Google Web Spam Team, once advised . . . “To rank well, build a site so fantastic that it makes you an authority in your niche.”

Having an online presence with a personal website or blog offers one of the greatest attraction marketing opportunities one can create.  However, the majority of website and blog owners don’t realize that web marketing and search engine rankings have evolved to a whole new paradigm that rewards the most authoritative websites.

Once again, “What do we mean by authority?”   Quite simply, websites that exhibit qualities of authority are as Google’s Matt Cutts pointed out, websites that can make you “an authority in your niche.”  You may or may not already be an expert in your field.  But I can assure you of one thing, if you don’t go about the business of building your website or blog “regularly, consistently and persistently,” it’s hard to sustain any authority you might achieve online.

Sure, people who might know you to be an expert in your field might come to your website regularly, but for you to build an ever-growing presence online, made up of  a steady growing stream of new site visitors each day, you will need to achieve high search engine rankings.  To achieve, AND KEEP, high search engine rankings you must build a website that is perceived by Google’s mathematical algorithms as “authoritative in nature.”

Why?  Because websites that exhibit authority become popular places people like to go online, and when searching on Google, Google wants you to be pleased with its search results by sending you to a website that is considered an authority or useful to others regarding the subject you searched for on Google.
So how does one build a website or blog that exhibits “authority?’  Quite simple, by adding great and useful content regularly.  For you see, Google has learned and trained its spiders (by regularly updating its algorithms) how to electronically recognize websites that exhibit authority.

To understand how Google does this, we first must know a little about human behavior and consider ways that Google can measure human behavior via electronic means.  First, it stands to reason that if you’re publishing content people find useful and meaningful, they will begin to mention something you’ve said and/or link to you from their websites or blogs.  Google has ways of knowing how many incoming links are pointed to your website.  As this number grows you are considered more popular by Google’s search engine.  Thus, popularity is an excellent measure of authority in Google’s books.  In essence, the greater authority you become in your subject, the more people will write and talk about you online, and the more often they will link to your website.

But Google has other ways of measuring authority (and popularity).  If you’re a user of Google’s email program Gmail, have the Google Toolbar installed on your web browser, use Google Reader, Google Analytics, Feedburner or a host of other Google owned tools, then Google has many eyes watching where you’re going online or who’s viewing our website online.  Google’s regularly recording and dissecting this information and determining just how well your website is perceived as a place of authority.

In a nutshell, people follow and respond to people they perceive to be more important others  (i.e., people in authority).  And consequently, Google has invented ways to discover who the Internet public perceives as “important people” and ranks important web pages and websites higher than others.

Now you can see why I refer to search engine marketing as a whole new paradigm from what it used to be just a few short years ago.  And although the contents of what I’ve revealed in this blog post will discourage many, those that have come to realize what they’re up against online and will take my advice and begin creating good content regularly will ultimately become the authoritative websites in the electronic eyes of the search engine, and will begin “attracting” an ever-growing crowd of followers.  As you build more content you’ll begin to have more pages rank high in Google (and other search engines), and with an ever-growing number of high ranking pages in the search engine listings, you’ll have an ever-growing stream of traffic, followers and customers.

Isn’t that the true essence of attraction marketing after all?

 

Always wishing you Health, Wealth and Wisdom!
Monique Bradford - The WifeyMommyPreneur~