The problem with internet marketing is that there are too many things to market, and you can find yourself chasing every new shiny car on the block. This can lead to owning hundreds of sites that are anemic at best and very thin in the eyes of the search engines. This may do ok for a while, but in the end it is the guys and girls with the big authority websites that are racking in the big bucks.
Think about it, how susceptible are thin affiliate sites from being knocked down by the search engines? Very likely in the changing world of Google wanting to control everything and shutting down every affiliate Adword campaign. What the search engines and PEOPLE are looking for is value. You want to offer as much value to your audience as possible.
So what does it take to build an authority site and how do you do it?
Well you don’t build an authority site by using autoblogs which just recycle old, used information back into the net. You need true unique content written and not spun by a machine. This may be ok for backlink building, but you need relevant, unique content that is both interesting and informative to the user.
This is why I emphasize on your bounce rate? You cannot build an authority site with a bounce rate of 80-90%. This means that visitors don’t really care for your content and the search engines are taking notice of this. They are seeing that people don’t like to stay on your site very long and so they count it as irrelevant and you drop in the SERPS, eventually.
The great thing about having an authority site is that you can always make money on it. You might have a thin affiliate site that ends up drying up and it will be good for nothing else. When you are building an empire with your site you are able to make money off advertisers, and this is where the big money is.
If you are getting even half a million visitors a month you can get advertisers crawling over shards of glass just to put a 125×125 banner on your site. So by working as hard as possible today, you can reap the benefits tomorrow, or at least in a few years.
So the key ingredients are the 2 things no internet marketer likes to think about: hard work and patience. But this is why the drop out rate in marketing online is so great. Just like with military training, it doesn’t take lone to separate the boys from the men.
Leave a comment below and let us know what you think….
Makes sense, I believe in it and am building a couple authority sites, but there are plenty of ups and downs along the way that’s for sure.
Truth be told I’m not sure what to do with my first attempt at building an authority site is simply a mess, but it does bring in a few hundred a month and I guess it will increase with age so I’m not complaining.
I agree with Shaun – building your own authority site when you don’t know where to start can be messy and I have found it quite daunting in my feeble attempt. As much as the though of making money of it is very tempting isn’t there ways to make money on blogs and wordpress sites through advertising etc.? I know it is 3rd party and won’t get as much money but it does sound easier. Having said that I do like your post. It is making me consider trying again at the authority site.
Amy, building an authority website can only be messy when you dont have a good game plan in the beginning. If you can structure your site before you begin it will save you from a lot of headaches. Once you build this site you can monetize it with all kinds of advertising and you don’t have to sell a thing. You just have to help people.
I’ve been coming around to a similar conclusion lately. The more I learn about the net, the more I realize it’s got a lot to do with persistence and patience.
You have to do a lot of trial and error work just to find out what works. Then you have to do all that work applying what you have learned! And of course everything is changing (eg, the boom in social media) so you have to keep up with that as well. You just have to accept that you won’t make much money for quite a while.
That’s why it’s very important to build sites that are about things you’re passionate about. Then you will have the persistence to keep going, and also the knowledge to keep adding good content and make them authority sites.
i agree rightfully with you the question is that i dont know how to build a site before starting with the seo