Having a few minutes to spare today, I thought I'd write a quickie in light of the Penguin 2.0 update.

In a recent video by Matt Cutts about what we should expect in the next few months in terms of SEO for Google, one of the things Matt Cutts talked about was 'authority':

"We're doing a better job of detecting when someone is sort of an authority in a specific space. It could be medical, it could be travel, whatever… and trying to make sure those rank a little more highly if you're some sort of authority or a site that according to the algorithms we think might be a little bit more appropriate for users."

Why should you care about authority? Sites (brands) with authority will get a boost in ranking (at 4 min 40 seconds in the video).

From Google's perspective, they need to serve up the most trusted, comprehensive search results. It's in their financial interest to do so.

In 2008 Google CEO Eric Schmidt stated, "The internet is fast becoming a "cesspool" where false information thrives." Speaking with an audience of magazine executives visiting the Google campus here as part of their annual industry conference, he said their brands were increasingly important signals that content can be trusted. "Brands are the solution, not the problem," Mr. Schmidt said. "Brands are how you sort out the cesspool."

So, how do you go about building your (brand's) authority? Authority comes from:

• Your site's trust rank
• Relevance
• Endorsements from websites who have earned authority from search engines
• The amount of quality information found on your website
• Building a fan base by blogging and using social media
• If your brand is publishing content, be sure to link that content to Google Authorship.
• Network with other brands. By sharing contributed content, this puts your brand in front of a whole new audience and gives you the opportunity to increase your followers and engagement.

Fundamentally, there needs to be a shift in thinking that a website is a "set and forget" exercise for marketing a business. To build authority, you need to build a following, which means making great content that people love and will want to share.

If this is something you could use a hand with, get in touch! We're here to help.

During his panel at SXSW Matt Cutts announced as a side note that Google will be releasing an algorithm update specifically targeting sites which have been uber-optimised and SEO'd in an attempt to level the playing field between web masters that build quality content vs web masters who are aggressive SEOs.

"What about the people optimizing really hard and doing a lot of SEO. We don't normally pre-announce changes but there is something we are working in the last few months and hope to release it in the next months or few weeks. We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO - versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect. We have several engineers on my team working on this right now."

Per Matt Cutts, the changes to Google's search algorithm would take place over the next few weeks.

As we know, each time Google makes significant changes to their algorithm there are winners and losers, and it can significantly alter the traffic and revenue to commercial sites.

We shall wait and see...