Authority Website
Purpose
An authority website is a huge and ever expanding website dedicated to providing useful information on various aspects of a niche market. Some authority sites like Wikipedia provide information on nearly an endless number of subjects. However, most authority websites will provide information on multiple sub-industries and related industries of one larger global industry. These websites normally have a minimum of 100 pages and are ranked very high in the search engines due to their specialization in a particular category.
Benefits
Most wiki's are also authority websites. These websites are basically the king of information websites. There typically are only a few in any one industry due to the complexity of the sites and the amount of time and dedication it takes to grow such a site and keep it accurate and timely. With an authority website, your adverts(3rd party advertising) is almost guaranteed to convert better. Higher search engine visibility will equal massive traffic. Donations are more likely to be received for nonprofits due to the increased number of people and scarcity of locations with equal information.
Risks
These websites are not built overnight. In fact, they are rarely built without a dedicated team normally specifically involved in the subject matter. Many wiki's are open source and anyone can add to it requiring admins to only monitor and accept posts. For an unprepared team the work is overwhelming.
Summary
It takes a lot more than generic knowledge and a little time on your hands to produce a good or even great authority site. Our website here was originally designed to be an authority website. At only about 80 pages, it's truly lacking and it's evident in many ways. Our initial target was 300 pages. Ironically, we decided information alone was useless and began slowly transforming the website into an eCommerce website where we could sell the information vs. just writing it all out in a web of information many people won't read through... We don't have to tell you if an authority website is for you or not, you'll tell us.
Page Tags: Authority Web Design | Small Business Website | Small Business Marketing | risks of authority websites | benefits of authority websites | search engine optimization