Car Sick With Scott Willoughby And Dumbing Down Domain Authority
Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.
I’m just learning about domain authority, but from what I’ve experienced with my own search engine rankings, it’s no joke.
Just an FYI – I wrote a fair bit in this post (lots of coffee) and added a video that has some authority from Scott Willoughby, but take note – this is literally .000001% of the information out there. Where I get my real training and knowledge from is .
I record myself driving and talking sometimes — It’s weird, but that’s where I get some great ideas. Today I was driving around in traffic and it got me thinking about google (don’t ask…rough night). From what I see, traffic in real life, is the exact same as searching on google. Over the past few months I’ve taken it upon myself to learn the basic principles of SEO, from sites like SEOmoz, and also from friends and resources in the interenet marketing niche (Kris Darty, David Wood, and the like).
To start, I have a very inquisitive mind, I love watching videos, learning the inner workings of tools that are creative in nature.
So why is this domain authority deal important to the Empower Network, or any other blogging community? Because it may just be the one factor that you’re missing, when trying to get traffic.
Have you ever been “outranked” by wikipedia? I have, for seemingly unrelated topics, but they are like google’s guru. Anything that is said on wikipedia is like scripture to google – Imagine a time, thousands of years ago (now I’m not a religious guy, but stick with me here).
Imagine Jesus was a website.
The people were the jury (google).
And I was just some dude.
What would the jury do, if Jesus said “follow me”? you got it… follow him.
Now what would happen if I said the same thing? you’re quick – NOTHING! The people would stare at me like I was nuts. ”who is this guy telling us to follow him?”
So that’s the simplest way to explain Domain Authority. The sites that have authority get to direct traffic, and the sites with no authority, get to watch the traffic.
Now there are ways to “borrow authority”, or “leverage authority”, which is what I do with the Empower Network blog platform. If you want to learn how, join and get into the Inner Circle, there are training calls on this method.
If you watch this video and get car sick, sorry about that — I was in traffic for 2 hours, and needed to do something (so what better than a video about google)!
See what I mean about authority? Now think of ways that you can “be the firetruck” – I know a few of my daughter’s friends would love to be a firetruck (actually one of her friends dresses up in a fireman outfit everyday).
So we’ve learned something from me, who has no clue about these topics. Now let’s learn from a master about domain authority.
Here is a great explanation from SEOMoz CEO Scott Willoughby on Domain Trust and Authority.
Scott talks about “Domain Trust” for around 6 minutes, and the rest is “Domain Authority” (from around minute 7 on).
Here is Scott Willoughby Talking About Domain Authority
You can! That’s the exciting part. A few months ago, David Wood started testing a concept of a group blogging site, to see how much authority and traffic could be generated from users. That site quickly became a hub of activity, all from people blogging on the main domain, under different portals.
The Empower Network is the actualized version of this test site. An aged domain (around 8 years at time of writing), over 11,000 users blogging on the domain, and massive amounts of traffic.
When I say massive traffic, I mean MASSIVE. The domain gets more traffic than Oprah.com for goodness sake. I love Oprah. When she was on the air, I would watch with Sarine every night – it’s something that we loved to do. Now Oprah has this show called the Life Class – it’s literally positive and motivating lessons on life, how to be better, and all the feel good stuff Oprah talks about.
I’m not too macho to talk about Oprah – I look to her and see how influential she is, and how she gets massive amounts of people to follow her guidance. If you’re looking for a true authority on personal development, forget all the doctors and gurus out there… Oprah is where it’s at – and the way she has so much influence, is that she is open and honest about her own life and struggles.
Have you ever seen how someone that is at the top of a mountain really only stays there if there are strong ties to the ground?
People said that she would fail. People said that we would fail, and that’s ok – because she didn’t, we haven’t, we won’t and there is power in intention.
Check out the pattern of traffic here — if you want to understand this and how it relates to domain authority… read on.
So that chart shows you that since the launch of Empower Network on October 31, 2011 there are more people on the internet visiting the Empower Network website, than ANY other site I’m listing. These are huge sites (oprah.com, visalus.com, amway.com, msnbc.com) and I chose them for a reason.
I chose niche sites, as well as sites that the general public goes to on a regular basis, for entertainment, news, resources, business ideas, research etc. What does this tell you? that people are interested in the topics that our affiliates and bloggers are talking about. The domain authority is building every day.
Here another stat that will floor anyone that knows what this rank means:
How is it possible to get this type of traffic?!
An alexa rank of 1,994 as of December 15, 2011, after only being active for 45 days, is unheard of. That means that there are only 1,993 sites on the WHOLE INTERNET that get more traffic. In the USA, there are only 277 that get more traffic. That’s insanity.
And to think that this traffic is ALL user generated, from people like you and me, trying to make a difference in our lives. That’s amazing and is only getting stronger.
I didn’t intend for this to be a post to sell you on EN. Because I do my blog research as I write, it just astounded me that we are in this position of authority on the internet. The science of the internet is a huge abyss that I had no clue about until I attended a keynote session with Mitch Joel. Mitch wrote a book called Six Pixels of Separation a few years back and it got me so interested in the dynamics of how people and businesses connect that I started learning. And now that I’ve actually started becoming involved online, the topics he covered make so much more sense. I highly recommend it.
So what now? If you’re in the blogging arena, there are only a few options to get the traffic and exposure you’re looking for. First ask yourself why you blog, and why you want traffic.
If you want traffic to make money online with your blog or website, you need domain authority, either on your own site, or you want authority sites pointing/linking/voting for you.
I make it easy on myself, and just create that domain authority, direct relevant traffic, and get the results I desire. It’s really that simple, with a few youtube videos and some guts.
Now I mentioned in the first line that this is only the tip of the iceberg. Well it’s really the tip of the next snowflake that lands on the iceberg. The information I write about is anecdotal at best, as I’ve achieved some search engine rankings directly based on the research and education I’ve received from my training platform and I really only started it last week.
Here’s what I want you to do. Get started and learn as you go.