Authority Site

Authority sites are authority sites because a lot of people visit them, comment on them, visit them again, and again, and again, share them, talk about them on other sites, and share them again, and again, and again. They rank for multiple keywords and even words that have nothing to do with the primary theme of the site.

In other words, true authority sites are not built fast.

So...you BUY an authority site, or you buy a lot of traffic and a lot of top quality content, ongoing (plus hire some aspiring "growth hackers" to help you with whatever it is they think they do for companies - I don't think they really know), or you buy a site that has some age, good content, and can be worked on and become an authority site quicker than from scratch.

Some will say Content Curation is the fastest way, and they'll give you examples of Mashable and Huntington Post as proof, but...

Did you know you can build your own successful search engine? There are scripts for that. And Google and Yahoo made it big, so can you.

Did you know you can have your own successful video upload site? There are themes and plugins for that. And YouTube and Vimeo made it big, so can you.

You get what I'm saying, right? It's going to take some work and time (unless you do have a lot to invest and can buy an authority site outright and maintain it.) "Fast" really isn't part of the equation.

First of all, TS, I applaud you because you're thinking the right way--authority sites are assets. They aren't churn and burn online operations which require you to work for every penny you earn. Build passive assets so you can earn money many times after you've put in the work.

Now, let's get down to business:

The best and quickest way to build authority sites?

Reverse engineer your competition.

Here's a quick step by step case study

Step 1: Find your competition

For this case study I'll use an education portal studential.com

I picked this site because it is a known authority site in the academic services niche.
- it is huge
- it covers many subniches



Step 2: Get a site map

Here, I just put 'site map of studential.com' into a search box at Google



Step 3: Study the site map - get the big picture

You'll notice that the sitemap of the site you're researching tends to focus on certain clusters of keywords. This is indicates the specialization of the authority site.

Your mission: Find a SUB-NICHE that has the following features

- Good commercial value
- Relatively low level of competition
- Decent search volume



Step 4: Strip all the keywords from the site map

Step 5: Enter the keywords into Google Adwords Keyword Planner



NOTE: There are all sorts of keyword analysis tools you can use for this



Step 6: Pick your target keywords

Step 7: Find related keywords



Step 8: Use your keywords for navigation elements

- Higher volume keywords for categories
- Longtail keywords for specific pages or subsections

Step 9: Figure out the backlinks of the site you're researching

For this example, I'm using AHREFS but keep in mind there are other backlink checker tools out there.







Step 10: Come up with your own version - focused on subniches

Step 11: Earn backlinks by writing high quality content on subniches

- Contact your competition's backlink sources and ask them to link to your content as well
- Contribute original content to similar sites

Bonus tips: Find people who shared your competitors' materials on Twitter and ask them to share your stuff too. Instructions are located here

Why? Some followers are also bloggers and you can get some backlinks this way...as long as your content quality is something to write about!

KEY TAKEAWAY: You don't have to start from scratch. You can reverse engineer your competition and build on what they neglect or overlook. Scale up and out from there.

To your success!

Rick