You may have noticed a recent google update. It now shows twitter results as the first result on google for some of the terms. For instance, we own easysubmits, and when searching for “easysubmits” on google, it shows twitter posts before it displays our site result.

So, what’s the big deal? The big deal is it can be an easy way to get traffic to your site. For instance, the term “easysubmits” generates around 20 visitors every day for us. Even if half of the searchers will click on the link mentioned in your twitter post, you would get around 10 visitors. This is just an example, but don’t go for unrelated traffic. Look for something in your niche. Go to twitter and search for something niche specific to see the latest tweets and search for the key terms mentioned in those tweets. Spend half an hour and you may find a gem that may generate a good targeted traffic to your website. Make sure that you have shortened link to your site in the tweet.

It was pretty hard to get to #1 position on google before, but not anymore.  Tweet about the brands of your competitors,  industry resources, something interesting yet relevant, add your URLs, get traffic. At least while it is still there, after all, I heard its only a beta.

P.S. I wonder how much more traffic twitter receives due to this change. Please share if you know a good statistical resource.

What exactly is website authority, how do you check if you have one and how to gain it? I started to notice that people talk more and more about site authority. Is PageRank slowly getting replaced? I read quite a bit on the topic lately, and it seems that the methods of gaining authority are not too much different than increasing a pagerank. However, source quality seems to be the focus.

I remember a couple of years ago I would just register a keyword rich domain name, put a landing page, get a few links from directories and enjoy the organic traffic. Doesn’t work this way any more. I created a landing page, got some pagerank, built a few links but still on 15th page for my target key phrase. Seems that search engines are getting smarter, pagerank lost it’s power and website authority has more effect now.

So, how do you check if you have a website authority? Here is how I look at it:

1) Go to google and type something like “cnn” in the search bar. See 8 sitelinks below it? As far as I can see, those only show up for the websites that have authority. Well, it’s a well known news site you may say. Sure, type in “Shoemoney” or “Nicky Cakes”, same story. 8 here as well, I don’t think google goes beyond 8 at this point. You can see less however, see “Jonathan Volk” as an example, his blog has 6. Still shows authority. My blog is relatively new, but there are a ton of older blogs that don’t have even 1 sitelink. Even if you type hackcorp.com, you are not going to see one. (yet)

2) Check google news. That’s right, go to news.google.com and type “site:techcrunch.com”. If you see the results, the site must have a lot of authority as well. It takes a lot of effort to get listed on google news.

Did you check your site? Any results? If not, don’t get discouraged. Those factors show the sites with big authority levels but you may have some too. How long does it take to get indexed for a new page/post on your site/blog? Does it instantly rank relatively high? If yes than you have some level of authority too.

Now a few tips to increase the authority of a website:

1) Quality Backlinks. Do you have unique newsworthy content? Write it from a slightly different perspective, try to make it as interesting as possible, do some research, spend a couple of hours to add and edit more interesting information on the subject. Keep on trying to get to page 1 on digg, reddit, mixx and other social networking sites, there are a ton of good ones. This would give you a lot of traffic and authority.

What is there besides social networking? Other sites! Try to get backlinks from other sites, just make sure that they are established and have some authority. Following a blog in your niche? Ask if the owner would want a guest post from you, work hard on it and send it for review. Don’t forget to reference yourself.

What else? Directories… Any? No. While low quality directories may bring some benefit, you should focus on getting indexed in the quality ones – dmoz, botw and yahoo if you have some budget. There are a ton more, you know how to check for authority now, get a list and start checking. Type “Botw” in google, you’ll see sitelinks.

Anything else? Yes! Press Releases and established article directories. Same trick here. It is hard to get approved in many press release places like prweb.com, but this is what you need. As a matter of fact, if you get approved in those a few times, you may end up in google news and get a TON of visitors as well. Try to have a few authors on the articles and work hard on them. Write quality content and be consistent.

2) Content on your site. Make sure that it is unique! Duplicate content gets penalized, don’t steal. Be consistent and write on a regular basis. Don’t write for search engines, write for people, even if you don’t have them yet. Content is the king, or at least a throne for the king.

3) Other important factors. Make sure that your site looks professional. Don’t keep the default wordpress theme, make it look like you care! Make sure you site-load speed is good. Optimize or change hosting if needed. Don’t host on a crappy host, I heard stories how rankings go up instantly when people switch from crappy shared hosting. If you have a shared host, check the sites that are on the same ip, make sure there are not banned or spammy sites. Use tools like sitesonmyip.com to check all the sites on your ip, if you see a few spammy sites on your ip, perhaps you should look for a different host or ask your provider if there is a way to move to a better server. I would even recommend lower level dedicated or vps hosting if you know how to set one up. You can find some that are slightly more expensive than shared.

Renew your domain name for the next few years. Take a look at authoritative sites, most of them are registered for the next 10 years or even more. It shows that you are serious about your site and it doesn’t cost much. (I use name.com, see if you can find a promo online).

Make sure that your URL is search engine friendly. Learn how to use .htaccess for URL rewrite if needed.

Don’t spam! Not in forums, not in newsgroups, not anywhere else. Don’t submit to directories with the same title and description, don’t use automated traffic exchanges, be wise when doing any link exchanges.

Keep on creating great content!

Please let me know if this post helped you or if you have any additional information on the topic.