23. How to Blog with Authority

Stephanie 0:00

If you want your blog to rank on Google, establishing your authority is one of the most important things you can do. But don't let imposter syndrome set up shop. I'm going to give you some tips to help you blog with authority.

Stephanie 0:14

Hey there, teacher, business owner, it's time to give your bank account a break and pause that ad campaign. I'm your host, Stephanie Royer, and I'm going to show you how to pay less for traffic.

Stephanie 0:25

Welcome back to the podcast. For the past few episodes, we've been talking about things you can do to set up your blog for success, specifically when it comes to search engine optimization. These are things that ideally you put into place from the very beginning, but these are things that can be fixed if you've been blogging for a while. But if you want to boost your SEO, one of the most important factors in getting Google to like your content is to blog from a place of authority. Now you're a teacher blogging about teaching, so I know that you're an authority on this topic. The key is to prove it through some of the blogging decisions that you make. So in this episode, we're going to talk about three things you can do to blog with more authority.

Stephanie 1:16

The first thing you can do to send signals to Google that you know what you're talking about is to focus on covering fewer topics in more detail with more posts, rather than using that same quantity of posts to cover a lot of topics with just general less detailed information. So just as an example, if you wanted to get travel tips before a vacation to Spain. Would you be more likely to trust the information from a blog written by a local who writes weekly posts about different points of interest in their favorite cities? Or would you trust the information in a one time blog post from a home decor blogger who went on a vacation to Spain five years ago and shared some pictures in a post? I've mentioned it before on the podcast, Google has trust issues. You need to show that your content can be trusted to give people accurate and relevant, up to date information. So when you're regularly writing and updating blog posts that cover a topic from many different angles, you're showing Google that you're an authority they can trust. The way that you do this is by sticking to those content pillars you've chosen for your website. If you missed last week's episode, episode 22, we talked about content pillars and how it's important to make sure every post you write can fit into one of those buckets. This ensures that you're focusing more on depth than breadth.

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The next thing you can do to blog with authority is to avoid hiding behind anonymity. I know that it can be tempting to blog without identifying yourself - using illustrated avatars instead of actual pictures of yourself or using a pen name instead of your actual name - but I will say that the tides are changing. With the increase of AI, people and Google want to see the human behind the content, they also want to see that you have actual hands on experience with what you're writing about. And like I said, it's not just readers who want to see the person behind the post. Google wants to see it too, and you can do this by having an About page on your website, where you have a picture of yourself and you talk about your experience and credentials. You can also have an author bio box on each of your posts, like at the bottom, and that will highlight the person behind the content, and again, your experience and your credentials. Other ways that you can help people see that there's an actual human behind your website content is to have brand photos throughout. Show your face in some of your pictures with your products. You can, if you have a YouTube channel, you can embed some of those videos into your content, and also putting testimonials for your products in there can also be helpful showing that people actually do purchase your products because a real person created them. Now, again, I know this can be uncomfortable, but you're not sharing your mother's maiden name or your social security number or your home address, but you are giving basic information about yourself to show that you are a human, that you are an authority on what you're talking about, because you have experience on this topic.

Stephanie 4:48

The third thing you can do to blog with more authority is to treat your website as an arm of your brand, and not just a personal blog over here as something you do when you have spare time. Now, I know this goes against like the origins of blogging, because back in the day, we used blogs as a personal journal of sorts, but nowadays, blogs are mainly for curating content on your website that answers questions and solves problems for your audience. Your website should be another place where you can showcase your brand and connect with your customers. Over the past year, there have been a lot of signs that Google is leaning towards brands over individuals, and we can't go into too much detail in this episode, but I'll just give you a quick overview of what we're seeing and why we're starting to think that Google is showing a little bit of preference towards brands. Last year, Google rolled out the helpful content update, and it decimated the traffic for a lot of bloggers. Now we can never really know why Google does what it does, they're very hush hush about that, but we can look at patterns and draw some conclusions based on what we're seeing. After a really difficult update like this one, there are people in the blogging space that analyze and look for patterns in the people that really struggled with the update, and then the people that start to see some improvement, and they just look for those patterns. Now it seems like in this case, Google is starting to lean more towards showing content from people with clear, well known brands. This does not mean that you have to be a huge brand like Walmart or Nike or whatever. It just means that you should have a presence somewhere on the internet other than just that one website. So over on Instagram, you're known by the same brand name. Over here on YouTube, you have a YouTube channel, whatever it is. But just outside of that website, you have a presence other people who are analyzing the results of the update show that Google also seems to give preference to websites that have some sort of E commerce element, so they have a shop on their website. And again, that's something that's more common among brands than individuals. So I don't know if those are individual factors or if it's a chicken and egg situation, but it's just a pattern that people are noticing. But just for one more little piece of I guess, evidence or food for thought. In the spring of 2024 there was a huge leak of Google documentation. I mean, it was unprecedented, and it gave us an inside look at some of the criteria that could impact Google rankings. Now, it didn't give actual context about how these criteria are actually weighted in the algorithm, or how these criteria are used by Google, but just the fact that those criteria were in the documentation shows that they exist, that they matter enough for Google to track them. And so people who are much smarter than me, they dove into this documentation to see, well, what are some of these criteria? Do we see patterns? What can we learn from this? One conclusion that was drawn from looking at this documentation was that brand does matter, and so one of these very smart people that I mentioned is Rand Fishkin, and he said, quote, If there was one universal piece of advice I had for marketers seeking to broadly improve their organic search rankings and traffic, it would be build a notable, popular, well recognized brand in your space outside of Google search. The good news for you is that, as a TPT seller, you are already building an E commerce brand on a well respected platform. You likely share your products on Instagram or Facebook. You are already building your brand, so all you have to do is treat your blog as an extension of this brand. Ultimately, just try to find ways to show Google that you are more than just this one website, that you have a presence outside of your blog, that you interact with people on Instagram, you have a YouTube channel, you can embed those videos on your website. You can have your Instagram feed at the bottom of your home page, whatever it is, just send those signals to Google that you are an established brand in the teacher seller space.

Stephanie 9:48

I hope that this episode has helped you feel less like an imposter and more like an authority because you are one by covering topics with more depth and breadth identifying yourself as the author of your content and treating your blog as an extension of your brand, you're going to be well on your way to getting Google to share your content in search results.

Next week, we'll be switching gears for another episode in the Let's Pay Less series, so be sure that you're following the pay less for traffic podcast so you don't miss it.