Do you want to know how to build an authority WordPress site that makes consistent income every month?
If yes, then you’re in the right place!
Starting a WordPress website is so easy. Anyone can do it within 5 minutes!
But making consistent profits is definitely not an easy task.
Did you know that 81% of the blogs never make even $100?
There’s a reason why most bloggers quit blogging within the first 3 months.
The reason is that they don’t make even a penny!
I know how frustrating it would be to get no results even after working hard to create content, promote it, and network with other bloggers.
But here’s the thing: don’t expect quick results!
If you’re wondering how to improve the authority of a WordPress blog/site in 2018 and beyond, here are 5 PROVEN tips for you.
Let’s get into the details!
5 Ways To Improve The Authority Of A WordPress Blog
#1. Pick A Smaller Niche For Your WordPress Blog To Succeed
The key to improving the authority of a WordPress blog is to find a smaller niche.
There’s no point in creating content on a broad topic. You can’t compete with the authority sites.
For example, you can’t build a high-traffic, profitable website around a broad topic like “passive income.”
Why? The reason is simple.
You can’t compete with an authority blog like Smart Passive Income, run by Pat Flynn which mostly talks about passive income.
But you can build a better WordPress blog by picking a small niche like “passive income apps,” where you can only talk about apps that generate passive income.
Are you getting the point?
My question to you is: Are you covering a broad topic, or is your WordPress blog focusing on a smaller niche?
You can use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to easily develop a ton of profitable smaller niche ideas to build a WordPress blog that makes money in the long run.
Just make sure the niche you select has some search volume and is good enough to monetize.
If you’re still wondering how to develop profitable niche ideas, you can read this excellent post from Niche Hacks.
#2. Don’t Ignore SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the key to getting more traffic. Without getting organic traffic to your WordPress blog, you can’t make profits from it.
Regarding traffic sources, search engine traffic is considered the #1 traffic source. The reason is: that people from search engines are likelier to buy stuff from you.
That being said, here are the three most important things you need to implement to boost your search rankings on your WordPress blog.
Keyword Research
The #1 reason most people don’t get any traffic from search engines to their sites is this: they don’t do any keyword research.
How can you attract more organic traffic without using the keyword phrases used by your target audience? Find out what your audience is looking for.
Here is a guide to doing the keyword research for SEO easily!
Create a list of long-tail keyword ideas and pick a primary keyword with less search volume (preferably with less than 1000 monthly searches) to create content that naturally attracts more organic traffic.
You can use tools like Long Tail Pro Cloud, Ubersuggest, KWFinder, and its alternatives for finding long-tail keywords in your industry.
On-Page Optimization
You won’t get any organic traffic from search engines like Google without optimizing your blog posts or pages for the keywords you want to rank for.
Ensure to include your primary keyword in the title, meta description, image alt tags, and URL and sprinkle multiple times within your content to boost your search engine rankings.
Make sure to use relevant keywords (LSI keywords) instead of repeating the same keyword repeatedly if you want to attract traffic from highly relevant multiple keywords. You can use the free keyword research tools to find relevant LSI keywords to optimize your content.
Quick Tip: For WordPress users, an incredible SEO plugin is available: WordPress SEO by Yoast. It’s the most downloaded SEO plugin on the planet, used by millions of WordPress users worldwide. It helps you easily optimize your blog posts for a primary keyword you want to rank for.
Attract Quality Backlinks
Building backlinks not only helps with more search traffic but also increases domain authority (DA, a metric determined by Moz from 1 to 100, 100 being the best) of your WordPress site.
How to improve the Domain Authority? I’ll discuss it later in the post; stay tuned till the bottom!
Here are a few proven ways to build quality links to your site.
- Write guest posts and submit them on relevant sites in your industry (try to guest post on sites with DA 30+).
- Use the skyscraper technique – Find top-performing content in your industry using tools like Buzzsumo or SEMrush, create 10x content around it, and promote it to the right people to create more buzz online.
- Give a try to broken link building, where you find broken links on other sites, and ask the site owners to replace them with relevant links from your site. If they find your content helpful, they’ll gladly link back to it.
#3. In-Depth Content Is The King
Nearly two decades ago, Bill Gates said, “Content Is King,” and so it has been even now.
But not just any content. Google gives first-page search results to those websites with in-depth, engaging, and highly informative content.
Whether you want to increase the domain authority or overall authority of a WordPress site, you need great content.
Gone are the days when you could write a 500-word article and still get top rankings for a keyword. If you look at the average word count of the top 10 Google results, you’ll be amazed at the results.
The average count for the first page results is over 2,000 words. The study conducted by serpIQ also showed that the average word count for a page in the first position is roughly 2,450 words.
The average count for pages in position 10 was a little over 2,000.
Brian Dean from Backlinko also conducted a similar experiment where he found that;
“Based on SERP data from SEMRush, we found that longer content tends to rank higher in Google’s search results. The average Google first page result contains 1,890 words.”
So, what can you learn from it?
If you want to get first page rankings for a competitive keyword, create long-form content around it (typically with over 2000+ words).
Just make sure to include meat with useful information within your content instead of creating filler content just to write 2000 words.
So, how can you create in-depth content that’s valuable for people and search engines?
Try these tips, and you can easily create an extended form of content.
- Research is everything. The more time you spend researching your content, the better the content you can create. Most people don’t spend time much time researching, and that’s the major reason they often end up writing 500-word blog posts. Spy on the top 20 search results for the topic you want to cover, and you’ll suddenly have much to write.
- Outline the right way. Use a ton of subheads, and before you start creating a long form of content, divide your blog post topic into several chunks and make them into subheadings.
- Fill the gap. Once you’ve analyzed the top 20 search results for the topic you’re going to write, find out what’s missing. Think from your target audience’s perspective so you can come up with many questions you can answer within your content.
#4. Focus On Boosting Your Domain Authority
If you want to improve the authority of your WordPress site and get more eyeballs to make consistent sales or income, then you have to focus on improving your website’s Domain Authority (DA).
It is nothing but a ranking metric (0 – 100) introduced by Moz. The higher the DA, the higher the search engine rankings would be.
Moreover, the relevant businesses wanting to get mentioned on your site may look for this metric and approach you for sponsored or guest post opportunities. They may have huge funds and be ready to pay $$$.
So, how to increase the DA score? – It’s a million-dollar question!
Let me tell you in detail!
As I said earlier, publishing useful content, focusing on SEO, and earning high-authority backlinks would boost the Domain Authority of your WordPress site. Along with these tasks, make sure to implement the following tactics.
- Get rid of bad backlinks (You may use the Google Disavow feature in Webmaster tools)
- Reduce the bounce rate (You may do it through Internal Linking)
- Make your site load fast (You may use the fastest WordPress themes and Reduce server response time)
- Get social presence (Earn the social signals by adding like-minded followers and audience)
- Design a mobile-friendly site and install an SSL certificate (You may get responsive WP themes and utilize free SSL providers)
Not only improving the DA but also better focussing on high DR and TF to build an authority WordPress site.
What are DR and TF?
DR (Domain Rating) – DR is the metric calculated by the popular SEO tool Ahrefs that displays the power of your site’s backlinks. The larger numerical value is better because it shows the authority you have built in your niche.
TF (Trust Factor) – Have you ever heard of the Majestic SEO tool? It is a great resource to check the backlinks, referring domains, and other website details. This tool helps you to measure how close you are to the most trusted websites.
#5. Come Up With 2 To 3 Monetization Strategies
If you want to build a profitable WordPress site, make sure to come up with several monetization strategies.
Most people fail to make profits because they depend mostly on a single income source such as Google AdSense, selling banner ads, affiliate marketing, and so on.
So don’t make that mistake and don’t put all your eggs in one basket. That being said, here are 3 solid monetization strategies you can use to profit from your WordPress blog.
1. Become A Freelancer
The fastest way to make money from a WordPress blog is to offer freelancing services such as writing, designing, SEO services, etc.
Start with building your portfolio. The best way to attract high-paying clients to buy your freelancing services is to create a portfolio as it builds instant credibility.
You can write guest posts on other websites in your industry and put a link back to your freelance portfolio or services page.
You can also use various publication platforms like Medium or Quora and start writing about relevant questions to your industry and, whenever possible, link back to your WordPress blog.
If you’re finding it hard to attract clients, you can use freelance platforms like Fiverr, UpWork, Freelancer, and Guru to start making money from freelancing.
2. Affiliate Marketing
The best part about affiliate marketing to monetize your WordPress site is you can make money even while sleeping. There are people like Pat Flynn who are making millions of dollars in affiliate commissions every year.
You don’t need to create products or provide technical support or invest anything to make money by promoting affiliate products.
There is a wide range of affiliate marketing networks like CJ, ClickBank, PeerFly, Amazon Associates, and so on to promote affiliate products, no matter what your industry.
3. Selling Your Products
Selling information products isn’t easy, especially when you’re just starting, but it gives you passive income sources to earn more money.
Just in case if you’re wondering about what information products are, here are a few of them;
- eCourses
- Printables
- PDF workbooks
- Templates, checklists, and eBooks
You must build an email list and educate your subscribers about the products you want to sell. The only way to increase your product sales is to build trust and strong rapport with your audience.
WordPress Blog Authority 2024
Building a profitable WordPress blog and increasing its authority is not rocket science. If you observe any successful sites, you’ll notice that they are flourishing because they offer a ton of value to their audience.
If you can find a way to provide MASSIVE value to a specific group of people with similar interests (by focusing on a smaller niche), you can comfortably make an authority WordPress site that consistently makes profits.
I hope I have delivered some essential information to make your WordPress site/blog more authoritative in the eyes of Google search engines and readers. Do you have any questions? Shoot them in the comments below.
People don’t know about seo and this is wy they don’t increase their reach
Nice article Nirmala! Keep it up..
Really a great article.I can relate everything you said here.I am working on an online site and this post is really helpful to me.Thanks for great work.Keep it up!
yes authority is a major factor to help in to rank a website. thanks for this great information.