Google's John Mueller said in a video hangout the other day that not all websites need to be an authority. He said there are tons of small websites that just try to sell something, something small, not in a competitive niche and you don't always need to be an authority he said.
John said at the 50:55 mark in this video "for a lot of websites, it's not that you need to be seen as an authority." Why not? John explained that "you essentially put your content out there. If you're a small business, you're selling something." "You don't need to be an authority," he said again.
Where does this come into play? John said for smaller businesses, "especially things like one page websites, they're often very focused on this one thing and you don't need to be an authority to do that one thing, to sell, I don't know, an e-book, or to give information about opening hours for a business. It's like, it's just information," he said. "So from that point of view, having a one page website I think it's perfectly fine," he added.
But don't box yourself into to just making a small website and a website that won't let you one day showcase your authoritative expertise. John said "With regards to starting out with a one page website, I think that's fine. I would just think about, well, where do you want to go from there at some point? Maybe you do want to create more pages, and try to find a way that you don't paint yourself into a corner by saying, well, I have to put everything on one page all the time, but rather expand when you see that it fits."
Here is the video embed:
We've covered before that now all categories of content need to be an authority in a space to rank. That is why Google said sometimes breaking YMYL content into a different site might help in some cases?
But eventually, and I think even in niche topics, being an authority is always helpful.
Forum discussion at YouTube Community.
