The days of creating a small five page mini site on a niche product and raking in the dollars are gone. You’ve probably held the cries from above that building an authority site is the now the way to go. Which is all well and good, but what the heck is an authority site, and how do you build one?
Well never fear dear reader, because this article should help you get closer to what Google wants but more important what your BUYER wants.
Yes, hopefully by the end of reading this, you’ll be able to build a USEFUL website that has the potential to become an authority in its niche.
But before I get to the ‘how to’, you first need to understand that you can’t build a site to make money if you want to make money. If you really want to make money then you need to focus on your buyer, and what THEY want. You can’t think about what you want, you need to think about what THEY want.
Generally there will be three types of visitors that will visit your site.
#1 People looking for either entertainment or information.
These people do not usually buy. However that doesn’t mean you can ignore them. In fact, you probably are going to have to create about 50% of your content around the site to satisfy them (and Google).
Let’s say your site’s primary objective is to sell food dehydrators.
That means you will need to add articles about How to Dehydrate Pineapple, How to Clean Your Food Dehydrator and How Long Does Dehydrated Food Last. These need to be useful articles too – not just quickly written, spun or copied articles. The longer that you can make these the better. 1,000+ words is good if you can do it. And it goes without saying that they must be original. If you can make them entertaining too – so much the better!
Plus you want to think about anything that will make the article better than anything else on the web. Pictures are usually a must. Video is really good too – especially for how-to articles. Have a look on youtube to see if there is anything useful there – or even better create your own video’s if you can.
Do not try to sell anything in these articles. Your customer will find the relevant pages they want when they are ready to. The less salesy and the more informative your articles are, the more likely you’ll get some natural links to them (yes people still do link naturally to sites they like – shock hey!).
Oh and add a facebook like button to the end of these posts (some good wordpress plugin’s do this and it does bring in some extra traffic and links).
#2 People researching different models and looking for comparisons
About 30% of your visitors are thinking about buying but are not quite ready to do so yet. They are in the 2nd stage of the buying cycle. They are looking for comparisons of different models, prices, features, and any other information they can about the products they are interested in.
Some of these people will buy, but many will not. However you still need to create some of your site’s content to these visitors.
Creating graphs and tables are usually good with these articles. Arrange three or so similar products together and compare different features including prices (or just price ranges if you don’t want to have to update the prices all the time) of the different models in the range.
Add new posts when sites like Amazon are having sales on some of the models so that customers are aware of the specials. These quick posts can be short, but the comparison posts should be as detailed as you can make them.
Don’t be afraid to tell your customer other places that stock these products even if you won’t get a commission there – you want to create a USEFUL site. Remember this site is for your customer, not for you.
I don’t even add aff links to these pages, but rather link to the individual posts about the particular product. Whether you include aff links on the research/comparison pages is up to you. If you do though, think about WHY you are doing it. Is it to help the customer or you?
#3 People Ready To Buy
Finally we come to the visitors that have their credit card in their hands and are ready to buy. They are in the 3rd stage of the buying cycle. About 20% (or less) of your visitors will be the ones that are ready to buy and will make you a commission. Here is where you create pages for specific products, with original (and USEFUL) information about that product.
And yes, on this page you include your affiliate links. And don’t be shy about adding your links and images up high (above the fold) to make it easier for your buyer to get to Amazon (or wherever).
The old 80/20 rule usually applies to authority sites – 80% of your income will come from only 20% of your visitors.
I know it can be tempting to skip all the information articles and the product comparison posts and skip directly to the ‘money’ posts. And many ‘money-chasers’ do just that. But you won’t be rewarded for it. In fact it’s likely that you won’t be able to rank a site for long that is all take take take.
You need to give first.
So there you go. THAT is how to create an authority site. It’s not about how many pages you have. It’s about your content and how USEFUL it is to visitors.
Oh and of course the backlinks .. but that’s another post …
“In fact it’s likely that you won’t be able to rank a site for long that is all take take take.
You need to give first.”
Hi Tracey,
Sounds like echoes of Bob Proctor/Raymond Holliwell…
You’re absolutely spot on with saying you have to give something before you start taking with a website if you want it to make money for you. In fact you reminded me as I’ve been getting lazy lately and building more product pages than info ones.
Its extra work to add all the info articles, but its worth the trouble for the extra love Google gives for your trouble.
You sow, you reap!
Hi Terry, Yes I agree it can be hard work – especially when you don’t see any immediate reward for those info articles – but they really do help rankings and giving your site more credibility which will help in the long run. Good to hear from you. Tracey
Hi Tracey and Terry
We use this method with great success. Our main sites have lots of information keyword pages compared to buying keywords. However, you can turn the info seekers into buyers once they’re on your site.
If you’re going after a competitive niche it makes sense to include info keywords because it keeps people on your site. This will help you rank because you are helping Google do their job – to return on-topic relevant sites to search queries.
That being said we still build small (thinnish) satelite sites to support the larger sites and we have no problem ranking them or making sales from them. So I agree, build large sites that have the end user in mind but those thin sites can still perform especially if you have a decent EMD.
Cheers
Bern
Hi Bern,
Great to hear you are having success with building up your larger sites. I agree that you still can rank the smaller sites, but I’ve found they just don’t have the longevity of the main sites anymore. It will be interesting to see how they go in the future though now that G is talking about reducing the value of EMD’s in favor of social behavious (facebook likes, +1 likes etc).
Love the name of your blog too!
t
We have kept away from using facebook and twitter for our niches. We tested it a year or so back and the effort and coversions were very poor. Now G and to a lesser extent others may start placing more relevance to them both it will be something we will revisit. But we do just fine without them
Cheers
Hi Bern,
I’m another dinosaur when it comes to social sites and SEO. My way has always been to build a legit, content rich main site with as many smaller satellites as I can manage. It does work. Trying to work the social angle is just too time consuming and it still doesn’t sit right with me.
I’m not convinced about how G is going to use FB and +1 in a way that the spammers won’t be able to game to skew the serps. A bubble is being blown up that will surely burst spectacularly.
In fact, I can’t wait to see if G will even survive with merely a lot of egg on its face from the carnage that will undoubtedly ensue LMAO!
Hi Terry
I agree but will adapt if neccessary – Jason and I love testing as it keeps things interesting. However, because of the ‘gaming’ potential, in my opinion this can only form part of a much larger algo score, so good ‘o’ fashioned SEO will continue to be effective…
One point to note is by incorporating the tried and tested SEO strategies mixed with a bit of mommas home cooking has never done us any harm – Our sites are still number 1 after each of the last few updates.
Cheers
Hey Tracey,
Hmm…I am not that good at writing “how to’s”. What do you think of this plan? Set up product review/core pages of your own and then, put the site on a guest blogging system like Postrunner to take in helpful guest articles. Over a long period of time, the massive content should add up. Will this turn the 5 pager into an authority site?
Thanks!!
Hi Ken,
Creating a site with content from others can work, but because you can’t control the type/subject matter of articles that are on your site, then you would be working more as an article directory rather than an authority site. You still can make money from an article site, but it wouldn’t have the same ranking power that an authority site would.
t
Turns out I was building niche sites before they were cool. Focusing on the niche, educating, and providing for an active community took my site from selling ad space for date-money to having a full time shop (http://shop.fencing.net/) with full and part time employers.
Tracy:
Do you give much attention to LSI keywords when writing your articles for backlinks to your main product page?
Thanks
Stephanie
I used to, but then found it didn’t seem to matter much in how the pages ranked. I think good keywords come up naturally as you write anyway. What I did find that seems to affect ranking is the length of the article – longer articles definately rank better than shorter ones in my experience.
Tracey
I think a lot of the authority “trust” is based off relevant linking from sites in ur niche/industry. This can be difficult when alot of those sites are probably competition. That’s why relationships are becoming more and more important for SEO. Guest writing for those sites u need links from is an excellent way to build high quality backlinks and acquire more followers/readers. But for this you need to offer high quality information/consulting/opinions etc.
Do you outsource any of the work in creating your websites…I think if you are going to have a slew of mini sites and authority sites you’ll be spreading yourself to thinly. I think that’s the biggest problem for many solopreneurs…they have so many “good ideas” but not enough resources to turn the idea into a reality.
Sometimes I outsource articles for promotion, but for my sites I pretty much do all the work myself. I’m a bit of a control freak like that
Great information, Question though?
I’ve been told to write longer articles as high as 1500 words in order to start getting love as a authority site. I was told that everyone is doing 500 word articles so google gives extra lovin for the longer articles. What is your thoughts on this?
Hi Shane,
Longer articles do fare better in picking up more long tail search traffic (which makes sense since there are more words on the page) so without any further work then yes they’ll send you more traffic than shorter articles.
However (there is always a however *wink*) I’ve seen absolutely no difference in rankings from short or long articles for specific keywords. If you are targeting a specific keyword then it’s good on page optimization and quality backlinks that will help your page move up in the rankings regardless of how many words you write.
And don’t forget about internal linking which counts as a quality backlink in ranking as well.
Definitely write longer articles if you can to ‘cast the net’ for those extra long tail keywords but don’t think that you have to. An article really should be as long as it needs to be to say what you want it to say and no more.
Tracey
Hello Tracy,
This is quite an embarrassing newbie question. I see the word “article” many times in this post. Do you actually mean writing articles for your main site or writing articles for article directories to get backlinks from them?
I usually write a good article about my niche but I am split whether to put in on my authority site or submit it to article directories. TIY. God Bless
Hi Eddy,
I meant writing articles or blog posts for your own site. You want your site to look like a really great resource for your topic so that it becomes an ‘authority’.
I don’t send many articles to article directories at all, usually just a handful and that’s it. I’d rather spend the time building up the content on my own site.
If you interlink your articles on your own site you can still get some ‘link juice’ of your own.
Hope that helps!
Tracey
I’d come to the same conclusions as you already, but thanks for articulating them so well! My only question is, how much material is needed to build an “authority site”? My flamenco site has less than 20,000 words all told, but frankly I’ve run out of things to write about flamenco dresses!
LOL, I know what you mean sometimes I wonder what else I can say on a topic. But if it does cover everything then it IS an authority already.
Happy New Year!
Tracey