When auditing prospective clients’ current marketing activities, a common recommendation I put forward is creating more authoritative content. I do this because it is hugely valuable in growing their online presence and it is often something they are not doing nearly enough of.
What is authoritative content?
Authoritative content is a form of content that demonstrates subject expertise. It is all about informing the reader and adding authenticity to your brand by demonstrating your knowledge and expertise in your particular field.
An example of this might be a recruitment agency that wants to write some authoritative content for a monthly blog. They might choose to write something about interview techniques, how to write the perfect CV, trends within the recruitment sector or an analysis of some recruitment data.
Sharing their knowledge of the important subjects/issues/challenges within their market, shows they can offer an informed perspective, which adds value to their brand.
Why is authoritative content important?
It helps you gain trust
A key reason that authoritative content is so important is that it facilitates gaining trust.
You want to be seen as the expert in your field – someone who consumers can trust to deliver the product or service they are looking for. It is about ‘showing’ not ‘telling’.
I always recommend my social media clients provide snippets of authoritative content within their content plans to demonstrate their expertise. Quite often I review social media accounts that have plenty of ‘telling’ in the form of “buy this product” or “sign up to this service” but lack the ‘showing’ element. Why should they buy from you? Why should they trust you? How have you gained this authority. These are things you want to ‘show’.
It helps to grow your online presence
Another key reason that authoritative content is so important in your marketing efforts, is the impact it has on your online presence.
So many of today’s Google searches come in the form of a question. Think about the number of times you have typed a question into Google..!
Google has an acronym named E-A-T, which is one factor they use to evaluate the overall quality of a web page. E-A-T stands for Expertise, Authority, Trustworthiness, and these are things that are analysed by Google (in various ways which we will save for a whole other article!) so they can see your site is trusted and legitimate.
Simply put, demonstrating good E-A-T on your website in the form of a blog, case study or other content forms, will help your pages rank better within Google search.
So that was a quick whistle-stop introduction to authoritative content and why is it important. If it is something you haven’t explored before, start to think about some content ideas that allow you to share your knowledge, and the channels that you can use to share this content.
