Google Authority

Google authority is a large part of online marketing, if not the largest. When it comes to rankings on SERP’s and relevance of your site, authority is the defining factor that can make or break your SEO efforts. There are many ways to achieve good authority, you must never forget that Google has no single authority metric, but rather makes use of a collection of data to determine where your site or pages best fit.

Renewing the fight against problematic content, Google has found common questions fueled by the extra attention to page rank – the biggest being: How do we decide what authoritative content is?

The origins

In the beginning, Google relied on one key element to distinguish between pages and content: PageRank. This was purely about looking at the links to the specific page, the amount of links and quality of the links determined your page rank – simple enough right?

Although Google didn’t just reward pages with a large amount of links, but also took into account the value of each link and its origin. Fewer links from more important pages would count a lot more in your favour than more links from less important or less relevant pages. While other factors played a role, early SEO relied mainly on quality link building. Not to be over-simplified, good quality links were not the only determining factor, but also which words were linked and what words were used within the page content – what developed into keyword optimisation.

Modern authority

In the modern industry, content and links still rank among the highest impacting elements of authority. However, in line with the technological advances, artificial intelligence has become another massive player in the game. With the introduction of the RankBrain system, Google can now use automated intelligence systems to determine relevance and authority. Not the only contributing factor though, Google’s entire ranking system uses around 200 major signals to compile data. None of these metrics used in the modern system involve a single authority driving or measurement factor as in the early days.

The overall goal is to provide users with the best possible answer to their questions posed on search.

Per-page assessment

While there is no single authority figure in Google’s algorithm, the “bucket” of signals can be seen to act as a single entity, filtering all information together to produce authority ratings. Authority is given on a per-page basis rather than for the site in total. Often using site wide authority can lead to false assumptions about the metric, giving a higher rating to a bad page simply because of its larger site. While this can have an impact to a degree, this is not a defining feature.

Site-wide signals

This does not mean that Google doesn’t have site wide signals that, in turn, can influence individual pages. How responsive a site is or whether a site has been affected by malware are two things that can have an impact on individual pages within those sites. When all things are equal with two different pages, site wide signals can help discern ranking between individual pages.

A complicated and continuously developing area of expertise, be sure to trust a professional SEO agency with your online needs. Ensuring you use professional insight to best capture your traffic and authority rating, contact Click Me today for your professional digital marketing needs.