When it comes to their content marketing campaigns, did you know that 70% of marketers and companies fail to have a proper strategy in place?
When this happens, you will not be able to reap the full benefits of the content that you are producing. One of those benefits is Content Authority.
Although plenty of marketers and businesses continue to fill their websites with overly keyword-stuffed content in the hopes that it will send their websites to the top of Google search engine results, the key to gaining visibility with Google is establishing yourself as an industry leader.
In order to be successful in this big ocean of fish where there are literally billions of people looking for content to read — your content to read — you must be ready to distinguish yourself.
But how do you do this? It all comes down to your authority and the power of your content. Here’s what you’ll learn:
What is Content Authority?
Anyone can write content and put it on the web, but that doesn’t mean that they are an expert in their field or that they’re passionate about what they’re writing.
It also doesn’t mean that they’re going to find their way to the top of Google’s search engine results.
Content Authority is a matter of passion and practice in curating high-quality content and presenting it to your target audience in a useful, relevant, and consistent manner.
You have taken the time to research your topic well, curate first-rate content, and potentially reference authoritative web resources.
When visitors read your content, they know they are reading some of the best content on the web. Because of that, they will share your content with others, generating traffic to your site.
The more traffic that comes to your site, the more reliable and valuable your content appears to Google. Thus, your content will become more visible on search engines, external sites and social media.
Keep in mind that it isn’t about quantity here. Instead, it is about quality and also consistency.
Why? Because you are trying to put yourself forward as a person/business of authority on a particular topic.
Therefore, you are better off releasing fantastic content that means something once per month, as opposed to subpar content every single day.
Ultimately, you are no longer producing content just to satisfy Google. You are also producing content to satisfy the concerns of your current and prospective customers.
Why Content Authority is so Important?
Now that you know what content authority is, you are probably wondering why it is truly that important.
Here are some of the benefits you’ll reap when you focus on Content Authority in your overall content marketing campaign:
Fewer Page Bounces/More Time on Page
If a user who visits your website feels that you are not credible or authoritative through your content, there is a very high chance that they will stop reading your content immediately and leave your website.
Leg Up on Your Competition
Consider this: why would someone decide to read your content instead of one of your competitors? Do they have a reason to?
If you have Content Authority on a particular subject, then it is literally a no-brainer why they would come to you for information instead of your competition.
More Links and Traffic
When you are considered an authority on any given subject, you will automatically start earning more links.
These links will send increased referral traffic towards your website. As a result, you will see your position on the search engine results pages (SERPs) steadily jumping.
Increased Customer Loyalty
As soon as your target audience realizes just how authoritative you have become, you can expect them to start coming back for more content.
And customer loyalty is more important nowadays than ever before.
How can Content Authority Be Improved?
When it comes to improving your Content Authority, you may be freaking out a bit. Don’t fret, though. It’s all manageable, even if you need to break it all up into small tasks.
However, it is important to understand that building your Content Authority involves aligning both short and long-term content goals.
You must be ready to produce well-written content that provides value to your audience.
And it will take some planning so you can ensure your content aligns with what your audience is looking for.
Here is what you can do to improve your Content Authority so you can experience the benefits mentioned previously as well as many more.
#1: Perform a Content Audit
The first thing you need to do is take a look at any existing content you have on your website.
This should be done before you ever start developing new content. Otherwise, you will be doing extra work.
Performing a content audit on your existing content allows you to measure its performance and ensure it is doing what you need it to do.
Create an Excel spreadsheet with the titles of your content and their corresponding URLs. Next, categorize your content by the stages they serve in the funnel, such as Awareness, Consideration, and Decision.
Measure the effectiveness of each piece of content based on its rankings, traffic, bounce rate, conversion rate, etc.
Now, consider your buyer personas that you are trying to target. Match your content to buyer persona profiles.
Identify the pieces of content that don’t link up to a buyer persona and aren’t performing as well as you hoped. These pieces need to be reworked.
#2: Tailor Your Content to Your Keyword Strategy
Once you’ve taken a look at your existing content, you need to tailor it to your keyword strategy. This will also be something you need to do for any new content that you produce.
Make sure you know what main keywords you want to rank for per page, and incorporate two to three of them into the content.
This can be done on your web content pages for your website as well as your content for your blog.
Make sure that you are placing these keywords into your content as naturally as possible. They should only appear within the content a few times.
The main keyword should also appear in the title, meta description, and H1. This ensures you are clear in your intent to search engines in creating quality content for your target keywords.
#3: Be Consistent in Your Posting Schedule
One way to improve your Content Authority and become noticed by your target audience as an authoritative figure with content is to ensure you are consistent in posting great content.
When you have a busy schedule, it can be difficult to do this. We know.
However, it is actually really easy to get yourself on a regular posting schedule so you can be seen as both consistent and authoritative with your audience.
Your posting schedule can be streamlined by creating an editorial calendar that is linked with a regular posting schedule, but you must stick to this calendar once it is created.
This calendar will work great for you regardless of whether you are posting blog articles, video content, special offers, or something else entirely.
#4: Take Advantage of Influencer Opportunities
Engagement is key to Content Authority, and one way to keep your engagement high is to mix up what you share with your audience.
If you continue to share the same thing over and over, your audience will get bored. This is why you need to make sure that you are keeping things fresh.
There are a few different ways you can do this. You can start by incorporating links and references into your content to outside influential content.
However, you can also reach out to some influencers in your industry who have some valuable insights to share with your audience.
The information they can share can simply build onto the content that you have already provided your audience.
Alternatively, you can collaborate with an industry influencer to create their very own series of content for your blog to serve as future content.
This would allow you to get fresh new content for your blog without having to produce anything at all.
Wrap Up
The aforementioned are only a few of the ways in which you can build Content Authority. We have literally only touched the tip of the iceberg here.
The important thing you must remember is that you should focus on building the authority of your brand with any content that you create.
Your goal is to develop a relationship of trust with your audience that makes them want to come back for more.
When your audience trusts you, you will be seen as more reliable. In turn, you are not only building up that Content Authority metric, but you are also building customer loyalty.
To ensure your content aligns with your overall brand, make sure to check out this blog post about creating a strong content alignment strategy!
