John Cass: Welcome to Authority Marketing Podcast. My name is John Cass, Senior Vice President of Marketing at McDougall Interactive. I’m here with John McDougall, Founder and President of McDougall Interactive. We’re here today to talk about authority marketing and how to position yourself as an expert. Welcome, John.

John McDougall: How are you doing, John?


John Cass: Pretty good, pretty good. I want to get into asking you a couple of questions about authority marketing. Let’s start off. How can you define authority marketing for those who are not familiar with it?

John McDougall: Authority marketing is when you systematically do things to position yourself as an expert. I’ll give some examples here. Number 1 – branding via specialization and picking a niche to call your own. So for example, I have a website, “Legal Marketing Review” that is about our work with law firms and what things we’re doing with internet marketing for law firms.

By picking that topic in that niche and drilling down, we’re able to show our expertise to that community. And then, blogging regularly is very helpful to show people that you’re committed to this top galleria. And then, writing a book even if very short, can really set you apart.

Once you have a book, it’s easier to get in the media and get more media mentions as well as public speaking engagements and hosting thought leader events and seminars and things like that. SEO, owning those keywords, like internet marketing for law firms and having good content to share with people in your sales process, all can be part of positioning yourself.

What were some of your thoughts, John, when I first approached you about internet marketing through authority marketing and buying the domain and getting started, really ramping this up?

John Cass: Initially, I was actually a little bit skeptical because when I think of authority marketing, I was actually thinking of influencer marketing because that’s a term that’s very widely-used in the industry.

And so, I think what turned me around on this was the fact that you gave the definitions to influencer marketing and also authority marketing. An influencer marketing is the process of marketing to influences, but authority marketing is the process of becoming an influencer. So obviously, in a way, influencer marketing is part of authority marketing, and you probably have to do some influencer marketing to become an authority.

The other thing that convinced me I think was the fact that we did the keyword research. We discovered that for influencer marketing, that was definitely a high volume term. But for authority marketing, there was certainly some numbers there but they were lower.

I think what’s interesting then is that this is a category that hasn’t really been fully defined in the community. And so, that’s what’s exciting to me, which is that we have the opportunity to really describe what this term means to the community and to provide some extra light. So, I think these series of podcasts are going to be great to help define what that term means for the wider community.

But I wanted to ask you, John. I know that you’ve been doing quite a bit of research on how to build authority. You’ve also done some research on the Google Patents. Can you tell me a little bit about the Google Patents as they relate to authority marketing?

John McDougall: Sure. I think it’s important to start with the first, Google Patents such as really for PageRank, when Larry Page, in 1997, first did a provisional patent about that. It’s basically about what websites link to other websites, and why one website is more authoritative than another.

And so, while page rank and things of the early Google Patents have changed over the years. Google has been different than other search engines. One of the primary ways they’ve been different is to really do a great job analyzing trust signals from backlinks to you.

In fact, Google was originally called “BackRub” [chuckles]. There’s a cute picture of the Google logo with the words BackRub, instead of Google. And so, I just found that fascinating that they were originally called “BackRub,” meaning other websites would massage your website and give it a boost.

And so, over the years, Google has come up with lots of different patents now that they’re so — almost a monopoly in the industry. Some of the recent patents have to do with identifying who is a fake versus a real person in social media.

They have a huge plan on that with Google+ that really they just ended the Google+ authorship program, which was sad to see go. But authorship is not dead. Google is very deeply looking at who are the authorities out there, who are the authors that are trusted.

And so, various patents over the years, and some, very recent ones, again on who you are as a person – are you real, are you fake, how good is your writing, are you connected to communities, where are you locally – all different ways to figure out if you’re a real human being and how good your content is.

So, I’ve been studying that and a lot more to come. But that’s the initial gist of it. And actually, one last thing, there’s several patents – Knol and Sidewiki and some others. One of which, I think it’s Knol that mentions — They say specifically in the patent that they want to give authors a score and rank them based on their content.

And then, the waiting of authors, they actually say specifically in the patent that it’s — think of it as PageRank for authors. So, where PageRank is identifying how good a website is from how many backlinks.

If Stephen King, and that’s the example they give actually, gives another author a comment on their blog or a reference, if you will, in various ways that they can sense out, that author is going to be more credible and more powerful than another.

John Cass: That’s great. I wanted a follow up discussion on that point, which is that you’ve mentioned that the Google+ Authorship had just been taken down. I was wondering if you had any comments about that. I was actually thinking that with that gone, that was almost an embryonic approach to Google to looking at how to measure authority.

One of the reasons why they took it down was it didn’t work so well. And two, it was waiting towards perhaps influences that didn’t — when actually the chief authority in the community. But the other thing is that with the introduction of Hummingbird in a way, they’ve got the technology and the strategy in place with Hummingbird to do a better measurement process. What are your thoughts on that?

John McDougall: Yes. I think number one, Google Authorship dying. From an official standpoint, it doesn’t take away anything from the fact that Google is deeply interested in who the authors are. I think you’re right.

Maybe, that it was all becoming too systematized. I think not enough people adopted it. So, that’s one of the reasons they’re giving. That may be true. I’m wondering if it becomes too systematized, then the people, like you said, that maybe aren’t the top influencers, really just jump all over it and do such a great job with the actual mechanical platform that you could almost game.

Maybe they would rather it not be so systematized. They’re going to pick it up, almost like Cloud does or not exactly. But Cloud is looking at how often you’re engaging with people and sharing content and things like that. I think maybe they’d rather have it be less systematized but there are certainly a lot of debates on that. How did you attract influencers, John, when you came out with your business blogging survey?

John Cass: That’s a good question, John. That was back in 2005. It was actually the first business blogging survey in the country although I actually did have another one in 2004 but that wasn’t quite so extensive because I was just asking questions to people at that time.

Really, it was a questionnaire that we did with 100 people. And then, we interviewed six to ten major companies on business blogging. At the same time, what I did was build a companion blog called “The Business Blogging Survey.” It was an update basically on how the survey was going.

So, it was used as a tool to get additional people to take the survey, and then to give updates about what was going on with the survey, plus then I was writing on general issues relating to corporate blogging.

So, in some ways, we were getting answers back from people who were interested in taking the survey. And they were saying, “Oh, yes. Thank you very much. I want to take the survey. How do I get involved?” So, it was an operational, tactical one.

And then, sometimes we were talking about issues. This was in early days, 2005, in blogging and corporate blogging. So, we were all still working out exactly what this new thing was and how it worked, so very much the community was asking some basic questions and if —

The community wasn’t very big. And so therefore, I would write a blog post that someone had — and would reference perhaps the topic in the community that somebody else had written about, and I would link back to them. Or I might write a comment on that blog and that link back to my own blog post as well.

So, from that back and forth process, we were able to garner interest in the blog and also additional links. Now in those days, in 2005, you didn’t really have so many different social networks. You didn’t really have social networks, something Facebook style in 2005.

So, it was really the social network was the blog. So, that was really how we attracted the influences. It was one – reaching out to people, and two, writing those content that people were interested.

John McDougall: It sounds like the Google Patents put into play there.


John Cass: Yes.


John McDougall: Some of the things I was just describing that Google is picking up on who writes content, scoring content, one versus another piece of content, authors that are linking to and connecting with and commenting on other authors are part of how Google is judging who’s credible and trusted. And so, you were doing some of that great work that got you some success.

John Cass: Yes, exactly. That’s what I was doing. We had tremendous results from that survey and also the blog – thousands of downloads, hundreds of links. It was very successful program.

John McDougall: Sorry to interrupt, but what had happened if you just put that content out there and just said, “Come and get it,” but didn’t really do that level of work with the influences?

John Cass: I think it might have produced some interest. But I think the very fact that we were doing the survey, actually garner the conversation in the community. So, it was the fact that we were doing the survey and we were reaching out to people as we were doing it and informing them about what was going on that really, I think encouraged people to participate.

We got wider coverage as a result. Plus, we kept on telling people this is when the results are going to get published. So, that when it did, we got thousands of downloads. It was a really successful program because we were basically attempting to have an on-going conversation about the topic. We certainly didn’t change the survey. We didn’t change the survey questions but as we went through the survey, we gained some additional information that actually resulted in a better product at the end of the process.

John McDougall: That’s great. So, it wasn’t build it and they will come like in the early days of the internet, just build a website and people didn’t realize you needed to do SEO or anything like that. Now, everyone knows you need to do content marketing. So, it’s not just write it and they will come. You really do need to find that community of people before you even start going out to just put your blog and your content out there.

John Cass: Yes and no. Though I think we did get corporate blogging number one fairly easily because we were trying to have a content on that. But in some ways, we would have got some content but we would have got traffic anyway.

But I think it was how the wider impact, you got more people are taking the survey, more interested as a result because people are anticipating, “Hey! This survey is coming out.” So, that engagement factor, I like to call it “engagement marketing.” But I think that’s one thing that really interests me with authority marketing is that that’s part of it.

That’s part of this process of how you are successful, which is doing those sorts of things such as influencer marketing, how you reach out to people. So, I wanted to follow up with a question to you. Do you think Authority Marketing is a trend that will come and go quickly? Do you see this lasting a long time, John?

John McDougall: I’d like to actually bring in the second part of the question that I didn’t get a chance to answer about Hummingbird. You’d talked a little bit about that. For those that aren’t aware of what Google Hummingbird is, it’s really more like an entire new engine of Google, their algorithms as opposed to Panda and Penguin, which were more like an oil filter change or a spark plug change, Panda being just largely focused around quality content, penguin about being — discrediting bad backlinks and being more about making sure that the links coming to you are good.

Those were really peripheral changes whereas from what I understand about Hummingbird, it’s like an entire new engine in Google. Part of what they’re doing is responding to mobile and how people are searching with their cell phones, whether it’s Google now or Serie on the iPhone, which I do constantly.

And so, I’m able to and people are able to search with much longer, natural search terms by asking their phone instead of — In the 90s, we would say, “hotels” or “New York hotels.” Now, you might say, “What’s the best boutique hotel in Soho with a swimming pool near a bar,” or something like that. These longer search phrases, Google is better at providing results for those. They encourage people. They reward people that have good content that matches these search queries.

So, if you are an authority and you’re blogging regularly and you have a lot of good, helpful content, I don’t see how that’s really a trend – at least for the foreseeable future, while Google is in a train. It’s certainly very dominant right now. Their massive new algorithm is based around providing good results to people asking questions and certainly good mobile results.

So, I would have a hard time seeing past say, “We usually can only look out two or three years or so in the future.” If that with internet marketing, what’s going to happen and where things are going to shift.

But really if you look back even to ’95, we used to say content is king. And so, authority marketing is not only playing on that idea, “Content is king.” But having great content to position you as an expert, and that’s been around, for God knows how long. That’s been decades of not since the beginning of marketing, people wanting to show their level of expertise. So, I don’t really see this is quick thing that will turn up and down. I could be wrong but that’s my quick take on that.

John Cass: What do you think are some of the initial ways to get started with authority marketing?


John McDougall: I’ll give you three just as initial few tips. But podcasting and video, like we’re doing here at McDougall Interactive, we find that there are a lot of experts in the world that come to us for SEO, whether you’re a law firm, an attorney, a financial expert, or a bank that’s looking for greater success – whether potentially e-commerce, a dentist, a doctor, in medical.

There are all different types of people that are expert. But they don’t have a lot of content. I think that using podcasting and video to get the content from your voice, which I call “talk marketing,” we turn the microphone on and have a series of questions that relate to very specific keywords ready.

And then, we chat with our expert clients. They’re so great at talking about what they do that the content comes naturally versus when we ask them to write, some of them are fantastic at writing. But there’s a great majority that aren’t. So, we were able to quickly get that content out of them right from their voice. We also do writing services. We hire writers that know their space. But I really love the content that comes right from the expert’s voice. So, podcasting and video are great way to do that.

And then, commenting on influencers’ work and retweeting them, not just sharing content. We really just cover that on, where it’s not just build it and they’ll come. Build a website and write some content, people are going to come clamoring over it.

I’ve made some of those mistakes myself, developing lots and lots of content, thinking it was like in the 90s, if you had enough content with title tags, you were just going to pop up all over the place left and right.

Google gets about six billion searches a day now. It’s a very big business. And so, you need to take it beyond the level of just the basics of SEO. So, engaging influencers and really any customers and/or people in the community around your topical area would be a lot better than just developing content.

And then, getting more media coverage would be number three. You can use sites like prleads.com. Dan Janal is fantastic if you sign up for his service. It’s around $99 a month. I think it’s a three-month package. That’s $200, if I remember correct, for three months.

It’s fantastic. You get leads where journalists are looking to highlight people. You can get very quickly featured. HARO is another, helpareporter.com. The HARO report, there’s so many people on the free version of that. That it’s a little tougher to get coverage. But I did get myself McDougall Interactive in our search engine, search and social media marketing seminar featured in the New York Times because of a free HARO request. So, for getting media coverage, there are some very practical things you can do.

And then, you can put that on your website and say, “As seen in or as featured in the New York Times,” et cetera. And those are three really key ways. I would say that in general, a lot of people misunderstand just how important being seen as an expert is to Google marketing.

Authority marketing isn’t just online marketing. Having a book doing public speaking, those are things that are going to help you when you walk in the door to a sales meeting, or you do a cold call even, and you direct someone to either your blog, “Hey, look! I have this blog post about your niche. You might like to see that. Would you like a copy of my book?”

Those are things that can help you offline. But in the online world, Google is hypercritical of sites that have expert level and now supplemental content. There is a document floating around. It’s a leaked document from Google. They’re not looking for people to read this necessarily. But it’s floating out there and SEOs read it and there are info graphics on it. I think the audiencebloom.com has an info graphic on it.

The quality rater guide talks to the employees that Google hire some thousands of people, from what I gather, potentially many thousands of people. I think it’s $10 to $15 now, or if I remember correctly. They’ve put ads out there. They’re hiring people to judge your website. They’re using this acronym EAT, E-A-T, for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness.

And so, not only do you to deal with hundreds of factors in Google where their algorithm will assess how good your website is. But you also have the chance of an actual human being going to your website and using the EAT acronym to see if you’re an expert, authoritative, and trustworthy.

So, authority marketing could be a game changer both offline and for your online marketing. If you’d like to learn more about it, check out workingdemosite.com/authority and as well, you can see mcdougallinteractive.com.

John Cass: Thanks very much, John.


John McDougall: Yes, sounds good.