We all want to be in authority, don’t we?
Right from infancy, us humans are instructed to follow recommendations or guidance of those in authority. The instinct of following someone in authority (perceived or otherwise) is ceaseless. It never really goes away. We cannot solely perceive everything. Hours like these are when you should allow higher degrees of trade experts or influential individuals to mentor us.
In the long run, brand authority narrows down to trust and loyalty. When your company is trusted, it creates a sense of perception around your customers. They discern that you know what you are talking about, set off confidently and feel wise about the idea having to spend money on your products and services.
Here, let me brief it out on how to build brand authority-
1. Design a content strategy
Content marketing can be a concrete course of action to build authority, but that’s only if you have a plan in place. You will be lost without a plan to build your authority. When you go about content that haphazardly, you cannot expect your results to be all methodical.
When you generate good content, apart from the shares you receive, the content also opens up a bunch of opportunities to winning more backlinks which directly boosts your domain authority.
Domain authority refers to the search engine ranking scores that predicts how likely your website is to rank on the SERP(s) [Search Engine Result Pages]. On a scale, a higher score gives your website a greater ability to rank.
Having a plan under your belt will help you:
- foresee your future content
- keep yourself consistent and responsible
- promote content around strategic dates and seasons
So, blueprint your path to authority and follow it closely.
2. Acknowledge your audience’s questions
What do people usually do when they have a question in their mind? For me, I’d probably surf or ask on sites like Google, Quora or probably even Pinterest. In such instances, for example, you could answer my question on say, Quora. You answer my question, and add-on a link in the end of your answer. It could really help in building your brand’s authority and meanwhile would provide you with a backlink to your site. Well, backlinks make up to a huge deal for SEO rankings.
It ideally might not work-out when you don’t meet this demand. It is more appreciable when your content marketing encounters the answers that your audience is looking for. When you design an on-site content with value of such kind, you immediately place yourself in the area of an expert for those who have no idea about you.
You don’t always know what the audience expects out of you. When you aren’t aware of such insight, research on what your target audience is curious about by talking to, for example, your customer service representatives.
3. Create the best user experience
We shouldn’t ever judge a book by its cover. But sometimes what if that’s all we have to go on with: the cover or the virtual face of a business? That’s when “cover” comes into being.
So, is your site spacious and neat to the eye? Is it easy to navigate?
It’s vital to make your site a place, users are happy to spend time on.
It could be your site’s speed, the performance of your website or even about how it could function across multiple devices, that come into factor when you want your customers to feel comfortable within your workspace.
Added to it, most importantly, creating the best user experience helps boost your SEO rankings. The better the users feels about what you’ve put out for them, the better you are known to everybody.
When customers start engaging with your brand experience, their trust in you flourishes.
Therefore, be sure to create experiences that make your brand resound with your customers and stay true to your brand’s integrity.
4. Don’t have a hidden vendetta
Giving away your expert knowledge is essential for building brand authority. Although your way of sharing your expertise makes all the difference.
Don’t put on a mask, feel free to reveal.
In other words, you should contribute to sharing about what you know without an ulterior motive. Our main intention is to help the people and then comes our overarching goal to build brand authority.
But how do you do that? By giving your readers the value. As a result, it becomes a trust-builder.
5. Create a long-form content with long-tail keywords
Long-form content is where the brand can build its authority or as everybody says, spread its wings. Long-form and in-depth content provides you with the opportunity to show off your expertise on a subject rather than a short blog post or a tweet.
When you are creating long-form content, make sure you target the right explanatory keywords.
Your expert knowledge and hard work are more likely to make its way to the shelves in Google rankings which immediately marks your authority to the searchers. Long-tail keywords sure make up to a brilliant SEO tactic. These are the keywords that are usually longer and more specific. They might not provide you with a lot of traffic, but they give you a higher conversion value because they are more specific. Ultimately, keywords are a friend of ours.
For example, take this search on business insurance agents in Rockville. Adams Insurance Agency seems to have made the cut into ranking #1 organically on Google when the user types in the keyword “business insurance”.
6. Take part in the Community of your industry
Communities online primarily own user-generated content. An engaged community raises a lot of discussions and daily blogs which Google absolutely loves! As a result, fresh content is always generated by the communities which gifts you with extra SEO points as well. When you are active and relevant to your target group, it gives more reason for Google to check your SEO quality by sending a web crawler to your community. After all, an authority status on the web makes an important ranking factor for search engines.
When you participate in your community, not only is your brand associated with a friendly presence, it also serves as a crucial platform for you to promote your products and services.
Make it a point to post regularly where your audience lives and make sure you connect and interact with others. When you engage with your industrial community on a regular basis, you nurture a positive workroom culture and build stronger relationships with your local community. Pick up your style and embrace others with your charisma.
7. Give away secrets, build trust
Giving away secrets might seem a little daunting, doesn’t it? Why would you want to give away the secrets that make you great? I know its asking for a lot.
But sometimes, for chiefly service-based companies, disintegrating the recipe on how you accomplished the greatness can help build trust.
When your clients know your strategy, they partner with you because they don’t possess the bandwidth to execute a strategy. After all, it requires a lot of time and resources. So, when they know how your work, they tend to trust you to handle it for them.
8. Call attention to proof of expertise and other reviews
There are several types of authority signals, right from testimonials to reviews and from reviews to social media share counts.
You mainly want to show people that you know what you are talking about by influencing a third-party validation. That way, your audience doesn’t have to just take your word for it. Provide your audience with a few authoritative signals that show testimonials on your homepage.
Libsyn, a podcast hosting platform, brought this around really well. They have on their homepage a few authoritative signals that provide testimonials which is really smart.
They also throw in the fact that a few popular media companies trust them. This way, it indirectly is asserting that when leading media companies trust us, you should trust us too!
When search engines notice your brand owning up to several positive reviews, it indicates your site has an authority. When your brand has become so trust worthy, give credits for SEO to review management for setting you apart from others.
9. Hire user-generated content
Let your customers make use of their power. The more powerful your customers are, the higher is your brand success.
Employ user-generated content otherwise UGC to promote your brand in diverse forms like texts, images, videos, gifs, reviews and so many more. This type of content promotes brand authenticity, rouses trust and drives your customers’ purchase decisions.
When leveraged properly, UGC helps grow your audience and leverages engagement. It is an effective way to grab users’ attention and steer more conversions.
A benefit of adding UGC into your marketing mix is how it helps improve your SEO. UGC drives conversions, adds keywords and improve your search visibility with an agreeable difference.
10. Gain high recognition
Gaining recognition goes hand in hand with building brand authority. The more you are recognized from higher sources, the more you will be seen as a force to be reckoned with.
Social media has a power that goes beyond any of our understanding. So, when you are trying to gain recognition, make sure to choose associates or partners that have firmly established their brand authority. Your authority will be clearly recognized by the world full of online readers.
A glory hunter is disliked. So, when your name is being mentioned or your work is being shared, make sure to do the same for others as well.
Over to you!
The more your customers lean to trust your business, the more it is likely of them to patronize it. When you have a strong brand, forthcoming clients are going to be more likely to interact with and use your content when they see it. Developing a professional identity helps you stand out to prospective customers in your market. What are you waiting for? Get started now!
