Marketing A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-Y Audit

True authority comes from consistently providing value beyond its own financial interests, contributing to the industry, and acting responsibly. Without that, marketing will struggle to stand out or maintain a strong reputation. Authority is earned by offering genuine value to others—not just pushing an internal agenda.

— Zach Jalbert, President of Tek Enterprise

Establishing authority online requires more than marketing content tactics, SEM, or even PR; it demands a multi-faceted approach that encompasses trust, relevance, responsibility, and credibility. In today’s competitive digital landscape, search engines and users alike prioritize websites that offer accurate, up-to-date information, user-friendly design, and true value exchange over visibility tactics. This article outlines Tek Enterprise’s core method of auditing and ensuring a domain is building lasting authority. Our guide is all encompassing including the necessities of maintaining a healthy website, providing reliable and verifiable information, outstanding content, and even managing the brand. Authority for sales and brand searches can influence both your online presence and sales success, here’s what you need to focus on to ensure your site is seen as a genuine authority in your field.

Why Start The A-U-T-H-O-R-I-T-Y Audit?

Our no-nonsense approach to the Authority Audit was designed to cut through the noise and deliver real, actionable insights. Many businesses get caught up in superficial SEO tactics and vanity metrics, but the Authority Audit focuses on the core drivers of long-term growth—credibility, relevance, and trustworthiness. It’s a streamlined, practical process that identifies critical gaps and opportunities in your website’s performance, ensuring your brand is built on a solid foundation of authority that leads to real results.

You should consider starting this audit whenever:

Your traffic isn’t converting: If visitors aren’t turning into leads or customers, the audit will help pinpoint areas where your site lacks credibility or relevance.
Your SEO efforts have plateaued:
When traditional SEO strategies stop delivering growth, it’s time to reassess your market authority and make targeted improvements.
Competitors are gaining ground: If you’re falling behind, elevating your authority can help you regain leadership in your industry.
You’re launching a new product or expanding: An audit will ensure you’re positioned as a trusted, authoritative source when entering new markets or introducing new services.

This audit isn’t just about checking off tasks—it’s about laying the groundwork for sustained success, making sure your brand is viewed as a leader in your field, and ensuring your digital presence is optimized for long-term impact. 

A – Accurate Referenced Information Found Elsewhere (Citations)

Your company domain is the true source of something that is found elsewhere (products, locations, brand statements.) 

This is one of the most obvious sights of authority is that people remember or list your information accurately exactly as you say. In one way or another your site producing content that 3rd parties have picked up or if you are providing an educational method that is being replicated by referenced by other websites or businesses in credible ways.

U – Up To Date, Modern Design & Preferred UX (User Experience)

Your website’s content and guidelines are updated continually as the industry innovates and the world changes.

Everyone needs to find information about topics or businesses, and without consistent maintenance and updates to websites authority drops. The better your website is designed to serve users the more authority it has. It’s actually that simple.

T – True & Verifiable Depictions of Subjects (Trustworthy)

Significance, depth, quality, and quantity of content to quickly enhance someone’s understanding. Providing information that truly educates and informs fast.

The thing about content is that there are many different types of media, styles of presentation and nuances or subtlety of language that takes real experience of the topic to relate to those with significant understanding. Sophisticated information and taxonomy is something Google and AI struggles with but subject matter experts within industries never do. An advanced concept for some within SEM is the importance of understanding the real risks behind generative AI and language-generating tools. If you are not understanding this concept entirely you may want to read understanding the limits of NLP and LLM-based software essential for successful SEO optimization, especially if you are building a website at scale.

H – Healthy Website & Respected Domain (Well Maintained Website)

No record of suspicious use. Data sets are correct, page layouts are up to date and responsive, and links are well maintained (fewer 301s, minimal 404s experienced by users.)

To put it simply, a website that isn’t healthy or working for customers isn’t authoritative, Google will almost completely ignore domains or website addresses that are 404 over time. Most already know that site health scores aren’t the most important metric for technical SEO success but striking the balance of a great working website for clients is. Regardless of how many times you change your URL structure, if users find broken pages or can’t use your site effectively, you will lose them as customers and also potentially be penalized for SEO rankings.

R – Relevant To The User’s Actual Situation At Hand (Purposeful)

Your site goes beyond just winning keywords or selling ads, it serves users with a clear purpose for what they need and they maybe can’t get the same experience anywhere else.

Your market segment, customers, brand evangelists or just pain visitors find you and look for you until they find you. Sources either social media, reference traffic from other domains or even various related searchers seem to magically stop looking at Google when they land on your site. This type of issue goes beyond issues covered before related semantics and taxonomy, it’s more related to not being able to fake the actual person someone is looking for through SEO tricks. If something isn’t as relevant then it isn’t engaged with, that simple. For instance, let’s say I was a famous chef and i wanted the world to know about my new burrito company. I could write as many famous articles about burritos that I want but if there are 3 restaurants in the area Google will show them a map of where they can get burritos in case they don’t want to hunt down where to try mine. For this reason, manually inspecting search engines and having an understanding of what answers SERPs can provide for keyword types is essential. Make sure at all costs you aren’t blindly optimizing pages.

I – Integrity-Driven, Good Reputation (Honorable & Distinguished)

You didn’t skip the line or cheat. You put in the work overall and provide quality. You have others who can vouch for your integrity.

Google has manual penalties for domains tied to suspicious practices or abuse Google may not have the resources to catch all of you who do this, but any website that is just gaming the system to steal attention away from viable companies or websites will be penalized as soon as they are identified. This piece of the puzzle also goes back to Reputation. Too much leniency on gray hat tactics or undermining tactics in sales can destroy a brand’s credibility; many successful SEO professionals testing a number of black hat tactics avoid this on credible company sites as there are numerous penalties. 

T – Topical and Organized (Inspires Action Over Being Informative)

Your website serves users and provides profound commentary on topics or narratives. Your understanding of the topic reflects the site’s literal architecture of what pages you have and what statements you make.

Not only are your website pages clearly focused, using headers to break out topics, but every page serves a specific focused area of subjects. The site is not just a collection of pages but they are organized or cross-linked well. Rather than building content around what keywords you want to win, you build content about topics that relate to keywords or search phrases.

Y – Yields Branded Searches & Interactions (Recognizable)

Visitors recognize your brand.

This is pretty obvious in some regards but one important concept we share is that when users who visit your site actually get educated they build a relationship with your website or brand. Their search patterns and queries respond to the information they learned and they are encouraged to check back with you online if they need you again. Branded search is a big indicator of a growing business. 

What Kind of Authority Influences Sales?

Understanding Marketing Companies & Authority: “Perceived” vs. “Verifiably Real” Authority For Sales
The gap between a company hired to “build SEO authority” and one that can genuinely position your brand as a market leader is significant. There’s a difference between businesses churning out SEO blogs and those dominating transactional queries by earning their place as the best. The most powerful brands don’t need shortcuts or heavy advertising—they’re focused on managing their backlink profile and brand mentions because others are already talking about them and driving sales on their behalf.

So What Proves My Company or Brand Has Authority The Fastest?

How Can I Build My Authority For Marketing, SEO, Sales, & Social Relevancy At Once?

What kind of behavior can be found on the internet (posts, blogs, videos, ect.) that currently demonstrates I have authority on the internet that my competitors have that I don’t?

Is there any critical information I need to update or does my website stay in good standing?

Can I find information about my company elsewhere that is favorable or has there been anything press-worthy about my brand?

Are my fans compelled to market and sell for me or are their notable influencers who create content about my brand?

Am I visible in local markets in ways that my brand can generate search and sales narratives without me having to advertise?

How can I continually improve and position my brand as a leader in the industry?

See yourself as an actual credible source of information for the topic rather than just needing SEO traffic and hunting for keywords so you can rank. 

      • Authority is earned through active responsibility, credibility, and success, you may have 100x the organic traffic of competitors but the less ties to other credible websites such as links, press releases, addresses, social posts than another site or brand with more influence outside their own domain.

      • Not only is it important that you can be found and identified on the internet easily as a company but your offerings and information about the organization is kept up to date.

      • Users engage and respond to your brand in a clear way. Users, however new or familiar, act in the way you suggest more often than not.

      • There is a clear command you possess of some decent percentage of users to learn more, buy, or verify what you are selling in a critical manner

      • Customers make an effort to stay connected with you: they subscribe to your email list, go back to your website or end up following you on social media.

      • Your website gets direct traffic or bookmarked traffic without strictly advertising every time.

      • Your brand’s search volume, as a keyword itself, is growing. As you steadily get press or mentions it’s obvious you are doing something important.

    Once again, a person looking for a restaurant that serves the “best fish tacos in Miami” most likely isn’t going to choose based on who has the best backlink profile or Google ranking alone but they for sure may look over for a few news articles to help find out what each restaurant has so they pick the right place (they don’t want to let their friends down and lose your trust.) Surprisingly Google is no different in that regard; the only difference is that it can search every article in existence at warp speed and then organize its findings for you on a map.

    How Can I Better Command Users & Execute Strategies To Influence Authority?

    If you are trying to grow authority and don’t know where to start, feel free to reach out to us to make a plan. Becoming a viable source of information for others and uncovering what industry topics you can shape the conversation around goes beyond simple understanding of what keywords you can win in any particular moment.

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