Lately, a lot of articles talk about achieving better search engine ranking by building an authority website. So what is an authority website and how do you go about building one? In general, authority website is a large website full of resources on a specific topic. A good example of an authority website for search engine marketing industry is SearcEngineWatch.com. Let's now take a look at how you should go about creating an authority website for yourself.

Pick a Niche

When building an authority website keep in mind the niche you are targeting. Try to pick a niche that is as specific as possible. For example, if you are a travel website it would be pointless to create a travel portal; you stand very little chance against existing websites. But you can create an authority website that focuses on handicapped travel and their needs. There is a lot less competition and you will have much better ranking for the keywords you want.

Get Up-to-date Content

Content is the key to building a successful authority website. Fresh content differentiates commercial and authority websites in the eyes of search engine spiders. Commercial websites usually write content for their pages once and do not update it very often. Authority websites, on the other hand, usually provide content in the form of articles, news, blogs, etc. so information is always fresh and is frequently updated.

Looking at the SearchEngineWatch.com we see that they show content from their articles and blog right on the homepage which means it is updated very often. There are several ways you can get content for your website.

1. Write articles and publish news yourself. You are a professional in your niche. Why not write content yourself? Who else if not you knows more about business you are in? Start adding content under your name and you will see that your visitors will start seeing you as a professional that you really are.


2. Syndicate content from other websites. Look for other authority website in your niche and if possible syndicate their content. You can find RSS feeds on many topics on website like 2RSS.com .


3. Contact other professionals in your industry. Another way of getting content is to contact other professionals in your industry and ask them for resources. They might have written some articles which you can use; or some of those people might be interested in posting information on your website.

Build a Forum

Forum is

There are a lot of forum platforms out there but my personal favorite is phpBB . It is easy to install and customize. You might also consider using mod_rewrite to make your forums more search engine friendly. More information on how to do that can be found at able2know.com forum .

Start a Blog

Blog has been often regarded as a backdoor to Google. Indeed, the whole blog concept is very search engine friendly. Blogs are easy to crawl and they provide fresh content. There is no way you should disregard this advantage. Start your own blog right on your authority website, discuss industry related topics and make sure to post something at least on weekly basis if not on daily. Google and other search engines will reward you for fresh content by giving you better ranking.

Create Link Directory

There are several benefits in building your own link directory. First, by requiring reciprocal link during the submission you will build up backlinks from other websites in your industry. Second, you will build up the number of pages on your website. Each business will probably submit a description along with the link and that description will most likely contain keywords related to your website. That means that you will instantly generate pages with keywords that you are interested in. One of my favorite directory scripts is Hot Links SQL . Unlike many directory scripts out there, this one generates static pages for categories as well as details pages for every website listed in your directory.

About the Author

Andrey Milyan is a professional search engine optimization and online marketing specialist with over two years of experience. For more information on services offered, please visit DesignVelocity.com