How do you turn your blog into an authority site?

Wow your asking a lot...

I would go to winningtheweb.com/im-top-blogs/
and start learning from the top IM blogs, commenting regularly on them
once you have a decent amount of good post... start asking to guest post on some of those other IM blogs and go from there

I actually like your overall strategy. I think it would be great if you shot videos of yourself each week talking about what you accomplished each week, and provide a way that shows how you are getting from right now to success. That is something that would sell, especially if you can actually achieve success (or at least show you did something others would want to achieve as well)

It starts with a vision ... why not your blog as the authority? Personally, I spend enough time here that I do not go to any blogs related to IM.

Hi Gavin,

The biggest reason that all those people have huge blogs is because they treat their readers like gold. They give out tons of relevant information and make sure that they over-deliver on almost everything they do. Often times you will see that most of the top bloggers have their own successful products that created a huge list of fans. I would say the main thing being that you always want to be a servant of the people, rather than the other way around.

Raygun

I want to step in here before everybody goes all gung-ho over the guest posting idea and point out that you need to have a solid blog in place BEFORE cultivating guest posts. This is a pet peeve of mine. It is great to have big dreams and to have an idea of what you want people to get out of your site. And seriously, good for you for thinking about what you want your readers to take away from your site instead of just talking about profiting.

I just wanted to say (because while I'm sure you've already thought of this so many others out there don't) that before you go all gung-ho with trying to attract guest posters and guest posting offers, you need to put in some work and build your blog. If you haven't put any work into your own site, why would anybody else want to do the work for you/have you contribute? Commenting alone isn't always going to get the job done.

When approaching someone to guest post on their space you want to be able to have a site that they can look at and say "wow, that guy knows what he's talking about! Look at his audience! I'd love to have some of those readers on my blog!"

If you're trying to get people to guest post on your site you should have a site people can look at and say "wow, look at this great blog! I'd love to somehow be associated with it, even with a guest post!"

I took a look at your archives and can tell that you've already started to build your blog. I just wanted to put this out there because so many think that the best route is to ask for guest posts and to start offering guests posts right away before they've even begun to build their online reputation.

Erin is right on that.

Developing authority sites has been the bulk of my bread and butter for close to 16 years now and I can tell you that there is a big big difference between how you build an authority site and other "keyword niche" sites.

Unlike most of what you hear about backlinks, posting for keywords, Adsnese....

For an authority site you want to live by the "Law of Reciprocity".

Unlike keeping all of your links to yourself and only getting one way backlinks, you want to share and have others in your niche share with you.

Adsense sites that are made for search engines can get away with having 10 -25 "articles" that are just 25 ways of saying the same thing. "keyword", "keyword with another word", "another word with a keyword"...

But humans don't view that as quality. They see right through it.
You have to write for your "community". These are other sites and blogs and services that you all share through related topics.

If you have a "wedding" blog you can't just write those 25 articles all on talking about weddings. The naturally related topics for a "wedding" would be "grooms", "flowers", "event planner", "ministers", "the bride's maids"...right.

So you need to have quality articles and posts written about your topic, weddings, but also talk about those other related topics and give links to the "flower blog", the "minister's blog"...that you view as a quality "flower" blog and so on.

Communicate with the others in your niche community. Visit their forums and participate when you can. Soon you will start getting high quality backlinks from those related blogs. Many of them are the high PR blogs and sites for their keywords but they are related to yours.

This kind of "mini-net" or related "niche web" starts to gain rank and prestige together.

Once you are part of the community then you will be asked to make guest posts and you will have them on your blog. The minister, the flower guy, the event planner woman...

You have to prove your worth within your community and then you will see the doors open. Your site will become an authority along with the other authority sites in your niche. Some are direct competitors and most are related to your niche.

But unlike the "cutthroat" tactics in other types of sites and blogs, you want to remember the "Law of Reciprocity". When you give out links and remark about your neighbor's good posts, their great sites, have your visitors visit them, the sharing comes back to you.

I think is just takes some time and will happen if you start guest posting for a lot of other blog sites and provide really relevant content on your blog. Your posts should be really long and good.

Great post Matt... you hear Google talk all the time about "user experience" and I feel that they are getting better at being able to distinguish true content from manipulated garbage.

The focus should be on creating higher quality content instead of building garbage profile links.

Great content gets backlinks naturally from others linking to it and you also begin to gain credibility, trust, and authority... (so you can sell more of your stuff from your site)