There are two distinct popular definitions of Authority Site on the web today.
One is used by search engine optimization people and search engines* themselves to give gravity to very large and popular sites.
It is rumored that Google gives more weight to links you get from sites like Wikipedia, Dmoz, and .edu and .gov sites.
I say rumor because this has not been claimed very publicly by Google, but our tests confirm it on our own sites.
Google calls the “establishment” websites “authority” sites.
That’s fine. Great definition within a context pertinent to search engines.
The second definition of authority is my own.
It is much like the first in that if I link to you there is pagerank authority behind it, but much more.
Authority in my definition is measured by respect from thousands of people linking to you and referencing your material, and being the obvious expert in your niche.
Authority sites are the sites you’ve bookmarked to visit again and again in any niche.
These sites have a high return visitor ratio and a high “pages per session” average. Meaning the site is not a throw away spam site but an authoritative and complete reference for the peope who visit it wanting to learn more about a topic.
You can see this is the kind of authority you want to achieve in your niche. Maybe someday you can even measure up to the narrow definition the engines use above as well.
But you won’t get there until you embrace the quality standards of sites you personally respect and admire and use with great frequency because of the good content, service, and tips provided.
Just like the term link popularity wasn’t coined by the engines, Authority is not the narrow definition search engines and SEOs use by itself.
It was a word used in the English language long before the internet came about and it can be used to help define myriad things, such as sites that are high-traffic, niche dominating authorities on a subject.
The Friday Traffic Report is an Authority site under this definition.
Hopefully this post will broaden the minds of those with questions like “just how do you think this is an authority site?” to include much more broad and meaningful marketing practices than simple search engine marketing by itself.
Yes Dorothy, there is much more traffic out there waiting to find your site than all the search engines put together could send you.
Get out of the single-minded pursuit of search engine marketing and you’ll actually get better rankings while driving far more traffic to your site.
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*Oh let’s just say it, there’s just one search engine. Whenever I say “search engines” I mean Google, FYI. If Microsoft buys Yahoo they may, together, be able to be called a search engine.