What Is Authoritative Content & How to Use It in Marketing?

Blog posts, videos, SM pages, infographics... What do they have in common?

Each of them is the opportunity to share your message, tell the world what your business is all about, and build authority.

Even if you think building authority is only for big brands, that's not exactly the case. In fact, if you have anything published online, people are already forming opinions about your business. And that opinion will either position you as an authority or as someone incompetent.

So, the sooner you get control over the situation, the better your results will be in the long run. That’s why today’s guide is a must for every marketer and business owner out there.

Get yourself comfortable and prepare for a journey into the world of content authority.

What is authoritative content?

When people talk about authoritative content, they refer to

information that is accurate, backed by great research, and written by someone with expertise. As a result, both people and search engines can rely on and trust these pieces

Google describes this content as one showing “experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (aka E-E-A-T).”

Any authority content has these four main components:

• Research-backed insights
• Relatable experiences/stories (preferably personal)
• Simplicity
• Relevance and comprehensive depth

Now, let’s see what each of these means.

Research-backed insights

Everyone has opinions, but you need more than your personal thoughts to pull off great content. There is more to it than just repeating sound bites and quotes from well-known studies, experts, or posts.

You have to take a comprehensive approach of the most meticulous journalist crafting an exposé (we might exaggerate a bit, but you get the point). This means looking at different statistics, experiences, and thoughts and checking how they’ve evolved over time.

Source: Search Engine Journal

Relatable experiences/stories

People remember stories 22 times better than pretty much any other information. But let’s be honest – even without this stat, you know how everyone loves storytelling.

Partially, it is due to our human nature – you know, when a parent tells a story to their kid. Yet, we also value stories this much because, often, they can provide real-life experience and wisdom that pure theory and dry facts simply can’t offer.

That’s why if you want authority, examples, stories, and anecdotes should become your best friends.

Source: Punchline Copy

Simplicity

Some people seem to think that the more complicated language you use, the smarter you sound. But the truth is the opposite. The concepts you are writing about need to be explained in such a way that readers get it.

After all, who wants to feel like they are doing another school assignment when they just want to click a button and get the answer?

Source: DollarShaveClub

Relevance and comprehensive depth

In addition to being easy to understand, your content also has to relate to your niche and provide value to the audience if you want to build credibility.

To ‘beat’ your competitors, you must make sure you do justice to the topics you write about. This means that even a complete beginner should feel like they have been brought up to speed. Besides, help your readers connect the dots and get the big picture.

Source: animalz

Sounds tough? It doesn’t have to be, especially if you have an experienced in-house team or hire professional blog writing services for your content writing.

The importance of authoritative content for SEO

You know the cliche by now, "content is king" – it’s been said 1000 times. But there’s actually truth to it. So, if you are wondering why build authoritative content, here are some pretty good reasons to jump on board right away:

Brand awareness

Authoritative content can help your brand make all the right waves and get noticed. In fact, the quality of your content affects your search rankings, and we all know why it’s important – the higher your rankings are, the more visibility your business gets.

Most people don’t bother with anything beyond the first page of search results, and good content helps you get to and stay on that first page.

Plus, since users share links to content they love all the time, this pushes your brand even further, right in front of new interested audiences.

You can target more keywords and gain more traffic

Customers rely on using special phrases or combinations of words to find what they need online. These are called keywords.

Targeting relevant keywords is the key to getting high traffic. And high traffic is the key to getting more exposure.

But here is the catch – even if you blindly insert keywords into your copy and rank for those, this won’t mean that your sales increase. Why? People have to trust you. They have to believe you are the authority.

You probably see where we’re heading with all this. The importance of authoritative content can’t be overestimated. You have to show all your potential customers that you know your stuff.

The best way to make your brand authority marketing successful is to combine extremely trustworthy content with all the best SEO practices. This will make getting organic SEO traffic much easier.

Attract backlinks naturally

Nothing attracts backlinks like authority content. Check out comprehensive case studies and tutorials, and you will notice one thing – they have more backlinks compared to other mediocre posts.

The reason is simple: people want their verifiable facts, and if you can serve this, then you get seen as a credible source of information. It won’t happen in a day, but you will get there eventually.

When more people are linking to you, search engines see that and go, “Alright, users really love this, so let’s give them more.” That’s how your web page appears higher in search results.

Better engagement metrics

When customers click on a content link, they have a certain expectation. At the least, the content should be useful and match the meta title and meta description.

But if the information doesn’t provide much value or, worse, turns out to be clickbait, no user will want to spend much time on the page, which would affect your bounce rate.

In the same way, if they like what they see, they will probably stay longer and even check out what else you have. All that time spent on your site positively affects your SEO performance.

It might seem hard to know what type of content people want, but there is a great place to start if you’re lost. Remember what we said about Google's concept of helpful information (E-E-A-T)? Start with this, and you’ll be just fine. Here is what your content needs:

• Expertise. You or your writers need to have verifiable knowledge of the subject and industry.
• Experience. The more experience you have, the deeper your knowledge and the more valuable your tips will be.
• Authoritativeness. Are there others vouching for your expertise? Nothing like a couple of high-quality backlinks and testimonials to really make you look more credible.
• Trustworthiness. According to Google, this is the most important aspect, while others (expertise, experience, and authoritativeness) contribute to your trustworthiness.

Source: Search Engine Land

How to create authority content

By now, you probably understand that there is more to content authority than meets the eye. So, to give you a full picture, we’ve gathered the most important steps below.

1. Keyword research

The foundation of any authority-building marketing strategy starts with thorough keyword research. You already know that keywords are important since that’s what your target customers use to find your products and services.

But it's a little more than just having a long list of words and phrases to add to your content.

Even when you use SEO tools like SEMrush, Ahref,s or Google Keyword Planner, you’ll notice that among the metrics for each keyword, there is something called search intent. Search intent refers to the ‘why’ behind each query people type in.

Each time you use any keyword in your content, you want to make sure it matches the reason (i.e., motive) the user has. Matching users’ intent will ensure that your content hits home and your readers actually get what they want.

In a nutshell, if a user wants to buy a toaster, giving them a story about the inventor of a toaster isn’t what they need, and Google won’t give this content top positions (even if the keywords are fine). That’s why understanding search intent is so important.

Overall, there are four types of search intent:

1. Informational
2. Commercial
3. Navigational
4. Transactional

Informational

The user, in this case, is simply looking around for information and hasn’t made up their mind on whether to buy or not.

People in this category have specific questions that they want answers to or topics they want to read. An example is “How to make steak tacos” or “Why is the sky blue?”

Source: Google

Commercial

People at this stage are interested but want to check out as many options as possible before settling on the best option for them. Your content needs to be pretty convincing if you want them to stick with you instead of your competitors.

Source: Google

Navigational

At this stage, the prospective customer wants to know where to go (which site, webpage, or physical store) to get that product or service.

It helps if your content and website are SEO-friendly so that anyone who searches for your target keywords or product will easily find you.

Source: Google

Transactional

This time, people are ready to buy. When it comes to this search intent, you will often see words like ‘buy,’ ‘purchase,’ or ‘discount’ next to the keywords. Here, users just need to find that exact brand or product.

Source: Google

You can understand the search intent even without an SEO tool – simply google your keyword and check the top-ranking results. Are those how-to guides? Or maybe salesy landing pages?

This will give you an idea of what Google is looking for, and you can then match that or do something fresh, depending on your goals. This brings us to the next step.

2. Check top websites in the SERPs

What did you find when doing the Google search for your target keyword? What did you notice when you analyzed the pages displayed in the search results?

Source: Google

When checking the top search results, you want to focus on these things:

Dominant search intent

If you see that the top-ranking pages are mostly guides and tutorials, that’s a sign that people are looking for that content format.

Keep this one crucial thing in mind – you might be using the right keywords, but if your content does not match the dominant search intent, you’ll lose out on ranking for that web page. The good news is that it can be easily fixed.

Necessary content length

You want to check those top-ranking pages and see their content length. If all of the blogs are some super in-depth guides that are 5000+ words, you can’t write a 500-word article and expect to rank.

Visual assets

Did other sites use a video, lots of images, or both? Sometimes, the word count might be smaller, and the video will do the heavy lifting. In that case, it might be better for you to add some visual content as well.

Of course, the idea is not to blindly follow what everyone else is doing. Instead, as you take note of what works, you can adjust your strategy while still being able to bring your own unique style.

3. Content writing

This step is where the real spark happens. Think about it – who sounds more credible? An engineer talking about a bridge he helped build, or a random person talking about a picture of the bridge they saw one time and giving construction advice based on that?

This is what content credibility is about.

If your content is going to tick the ‘E’ for expertise checkmark in Google’s list, then you need to really know what you are writing about. Of course, no one is an expert in every topic, so you can always interview an experienced professional or invite them to write a guest blog for you.

Yet, of course, you don’t always have to get some external experts. If you’re hiring professional writers, they will use primary sources, cite the latest studies, and fact-check everything. As a result, your publications will already be credible.

If you’re writing the content yourself, aim for the same end results. Make sure you:

• Give your readers practical tips that help them with their pain points;
• Use the proper structure (H1, H2, H3, H4);
• Use a mix of short and long sentences and lists to help readability;
• Add relevant visuals;
• Going for some tasteful humor doesn’t hurt anyone either, so consider gifs, memes, and jokes (if that fits your tone of voice);
• Add a couple of internal links to other related articles you’ve published that can help provide more context;
• Edit your content to make sure there are no spelling errors or weird sentences (using tools like Grammarly and Hemingway can make this process easier for you);
• Want to make your content rank faster? Get backlinks. If you don’t have time for the outreach, use guest blog posting services for easier link building.

Over time, you’ll get your unique content creation process. But until then, try different approaches and check what works best.

Source: @ahrefs on X

4. On-page optimization

It’s hard to do any real brand authority content marketing without mastering on-page SEO. Making your web pages SEO-friendly is the first step to better rankings and higher traffic. If you aren’t sure what to do, start by fixing the following things:

• Place your keywords strategically in your content headings, body, and meta tags;
• Your meta titles should be concise (50-60 characters) and include a relevant keyword;
• Your meta description shouldn’t be longer than 150-160 characters;
• Make sure your URL is descriptive enough to let the reader know what to expect when they click on your link;
• Add alt texts to your images and make them descriptive and accurate;
• Make sure that every internal link you’ve included works as intended.

Source: @semrush on X

5. Monitor the success of your content

Okay, you have done a really great job so far. How do you know if it's all been worth it? This is exactly why this last step is essential. You need to track your web performance to know how your content is doing.

You can use any SEO tool for this — anything from SEMrush and Ahrefs to Google Search Console and Google Analytics will do. Keep track of the current:

• Keyword rankings for each post,
• Views and traffic,
• Click-through rates (CTR),
• Bounce rate,
• Average time visitors spend on the page,
• Conversion rates.

You want everything to go up except for the bounce rate. Besides, make sure you update the content regularly to keep it fresh and relevant.

Conclusion

Rome was not built in a day. And while this might sound cheesy, it’s true – good things take time. If you want to pull off a successful authority content marketing strategy, you have to be patient and consistent.

After reading this guide, you now have a clear plan of action. All that's left is to stay focused and put in the effort. If you do, you'll see even better results than you hoped for.