Discover the three crucial pillars of SEO success: authority, relevance, and user experience. Learn how optimizing these key factors can dramatically boost your website’s search rankings.

 

If there’s one thing we SEO pros excel at, it’s making things complicated.

That’s not necessarily a criticism.

Search engine algorithms, website coding, navigation, selecting and evaluating KPIs, and setting content strategy require specialized knowledge.

However, despite these tasks’ complexity, only a few key factors will significantly impact your SEO success. In SEO, three foundational pillars will drive your achievements:

 

Authority

Relevance

Experience (for both users and bots visiting the site).

 

Just as nutritionists advise that our bodies to remain healthy, an effective SEO program requires a balanced focus on authority, relevance, and experience. Refrain from neglecting any of these; your SEO strategy will soon falter.

 

Authority: Do You Matter?

 

In SEO, authority is the importance or weight given to a page relative to other pages that are potential results for a search query. Modern search engines like Google use alot of factors when finding the authority of a webpage.

 

Why Does Google Care For Assessing Page Authority?

For most queries, thousands or even millions of pages are available that could be ranked. Google wants to prioritize the ones most likely to provide the user with accurate, reliable information that fully answers the query’s intent. Google prioritizes authoritative pages because satisfied users are more likely to return to Google, increasing their exposure to Google’s ads, the primary source of its revenue.

 

Authority Came First

Assessing the authority of webpages was the first fundamental problem search engines had to solve. Early search engines relied on human evaluators, but this approach became impossible to scale as the World Wide Web grew. Google surpassed its rivals because its creators, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed PageRank, which used links from other pages as weighted citations to assess a page’s authoritativeness. Links functioned like scholarly citations, with more authoritative sites “voting” for pages they deemed reliable and relevant.

 

Links: The Primary Measure of Authority

The significant innovation that propelled Google to dominance was using link analysis as a ranking factor. Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s paper, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine,” highlighted the web’s structure of interlinked documents. Links to third-party sites acted like votes, endorsing the linked pages as valuable resources.

 

Passing PageRank

PageRank was a vital component of the initial Google algorithm, which evaluated the importance of pages based on the links they received. Pages with many valuable links had higher PageRank and were likely to rank higher in search results. When a page links to another, it passes a portion of its PageRank, allowing pages to accumulate authority based on the number and quality of incoming links.

 

Not All Links Are Equal

While more links are generally better, the value of a link depends on several factors. PageRank scores ranges from a base value of one to potentially trillions. Higher PageRank pages can pass more authority than lower PageRank pages. Google also considers the topic of the linking page with the anchor text of the link to relate to relevance.

 

What About Trust?

 

Discussions about trust in search rankings stem from a Yahoo patent on TrustRank, which evaluated the trustworthiness of sites based on their proximity to a seed set of trusted sites. Although Google has stated it doesn’t use this metric, it was granted a patent in 2013 related to evaluating the trustworthiness of links. While the existence of a patent doesn’t mean it’s used in practice, assessing a site’s trustworthiness for linking can still be valuable. Avoid sites that sell links, have poor content, or seem disreputable. While Google may not calculate trust similarly, its system will likely devalue such links.

Focusing on authority through quality links remains a cornerstone of SEO success. Balancing authority with relevance and user experience will create a robust SEO strategy.

 

Fundamentals of Earning & Attracting Links

 

Understanding that obtaining links to your site is crucial for SEO success is the initial step. The real challenge lies in developing a strategy to earn these valuable links.

A Holistic Approach to Link Building

Google emphasizes a holistic approach to link building. It actively discourages and, in some cases, penalizes artificial link acquisition tactics. Some practices that are viewed negatively include:

• Buying links for SEO purposes.
• Posting comments on forums and blogs with links back to your site.
• Hacking websites to inject your links into their content.
• Distributing low-quality infographics or widgets that contain links to your pages.
• Offering discount codes or affiliate programs solely to generate links.

Google prefers you create an exceptional website and promote it effectively, leading to organic link acquisition.

 

 

Who Links?

To attract valuable links, it’s essential to understand who might link to your content.

 

Relevance: Will Users Swipe On Your Page?

 

To succeed in SEO, your content must be relevant to the topic. Think of each visit to your page as a match on a dating app. Will users “swipe right” and see your page as a good fit? If your page is about Tupperware, no amount of backlinks will help you rank for queries related to used cars.

This limitation highlights how relevance affects link value and the importance of your content with user intent.

 

The Importance of Relevance

Consider a page selling a used Ford Mustang. Given its car expertise, a link from Car and Driver magazine would be highly relevant. Conversely, while still valid, a link from a site focused on sports is less appropriate because it needs a solid connection to Ford Mustangs.

In summary, the relevance of the linking page and the site itself influences the value of a link.

 

Evaluating Relevance: Key Factors

1. Anchor Text Anchor text helps Google understand what your page is about. For instance, if the anchor text is “iron bathtubs” and your page covers that topic, it reinforces the page’s relevance. However, avoid using exact-match anchor text, as it can appear manipulative.

2. Internal Linking Internal linking helps Google gauge your site’s relevance to various topics. Properly structured internal links connecting related content signal that you cover the topic comprehensively. Ensure your site hierarchy supports user navigation and search engine understanding.

3. Content Quality The content itself is the most crucial factor in relevance. Google’s algorithms are sophisticated, evaluating content beyond simple keyword usage. Key aspects include:

• Keywords: While keyword stuffing is outdated, incorporating relevant terms still matters. Case studies show that using terms common among top-ranking pages can boost organic traffic.
• Depth: Top-ranking pages usually provide thorough topic coverage, satisfying user queries and linking to related content.
• Structure: Use structural elements like H1, H2, and H3 tags, bolded headings, and schema markup to help Google understand your page’s relevance.

4. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) E-E-A-T is a framework used by Google’s Search Quality Raters to assess how well pages meet user needs. Although ratings don’t directly impact rankings, creating content that demonstrates expertise and trustworthiness is crucial for Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) sites, which impact user well-being or finances; ensuring accuracy and showcasing qualified experts is especially important.

 

Building a Content Marketing Plan

A well-thought-out content marketing plan is essential. Avoid random efforts and study your competitors to inform your strategy. Use tools to analyze their backlink profiles and content strategies.

Identify the types of links they acquire, their target pages, and their ranking keywords. This analysis will help you understand the links you need and how to outperform them.

Review your competitors’ content plans and find ways to differentiate your content. Focus on topics in high demand for your audience and offer unique perspectives.

Investing time in these strategies will pay off, enhancing your SEO performance and ensuring your content resonates with users.

 

Experience

 

As discussed earlier, Google initially ranked pages based on authority and relevance. The third significant evolution in search is evaluating site and page experience, encompassing two key aspects: technical health and user experience.

 

Technical Health and User Experience

These two elements are interconnected. A technically sound site benefits human users and helps Google’s crawling bots efficiently explore, understand, and index your pages—a crucial step for ranking in search results. Many SEO professionals, including myself, prefer to think of SEO as Search Experience Optimization rather than just Search Engine Optimization.

 

User Experience

Google recognized that while authoritativeness and relevance are critical, users also seek a high-quality experience on the pages they land on. A “good user experience” includes:

• Expectation Matching: The page aligns with what the user anticipated based on their query. No misleading or irrelevant content.
• Content Relevance: The content is directly relevant to the user’s search query and sufficiently addresses their needs while linking to pertinent additional sources and topics.
• Page Performance: The page loads quickly, content is easily accessible, and elements stabilize swiftly. These factors are part of Google’s Core Web Vitals.

Enhancing content quality is also crucial for improving user experience.

 

Technical Health

Technical health refers to how well a site facilitates crawling and indexing by Google’s search bots. Issues such as broken links or elements that hinder bot progress can significantly impact how many pages Google indexes and, consequently, the organic search traffic your site can attract.

Maintaining a technically healthy site falls under the practice of technical SEO. Although a detailed exploration of technical SEO is beyond this article, you can find extensive guides, such as Search Engine Journal’s Advanced Technical SEO, to help you.

 

What About the Google Leak?

 

You’ve likely heard about the recent leak of Google documents, which include thousands of labeled API calls and numerous attributes related to those data buckets. Many speculate that these documents might reveal the secrets behind Google’s search algorithms. But should we consider these assumptions justified?

 

Context and Interpretation

While the leaked documents provide intriguing insights into the types of data Google may collect or have collected in the past, several critical factors should temper our interpretations:

• Lack of Context: Google has highlighted that we don’t have the full context of how these documents were used internally or how current they are.
• Jumping to Conclusions: Just because Google may collect data point X doesn’t necessarily mean that X is a ranking factor. There is a significant gap between data collection and its application in ranking algorithms.
• Uncertainty of Usage: Even if some information from the documents is used in search algorithms, we have no details on how it is applied or the weight it carries.

 

 

Putting It All Together

 

Search engines aim to satisfy users so they return whenever they have a question or need. To achieve this, they strive to deliver the best possible results that effectively address users’ queries.

 

Understanding Authority, Relevance, and Experience

To keep users happy, search engines need to accurately assess and measure the relative authority of webpages for various topics.

When you produce exceptionally useful, engaging, or entertaining content, and when visitors find your content reliable enough to return to your site or prefer it over others, you build authority. Search engines recognize this and work to continually enhance their ability to match users with trustworthy, authoritative content.

High-quality content also plays a important role in earning valuable backlinks. These links signals search engines that your site should rank highly for relevant searches. Whether other sites want to link to your content or feature your content with links back to your site, earning these backlinks is facilitated by your content’s authority and relevance.

 

Mastering the Three Pillars

Focusing on the three pillars of SEO such as authority, relevance, and experience—will enhance your content’s visibility and simplify the link-building process.

With this knowledge, you’re well-equipped to achieve SEO success. If you still find it challenging or overwhelming, consider exploring our monthly SEO packages and let our experts guide you.