How You Can Build Trust and Authority to Your Website and Get Higher Ranking
Do you know that almost 25% of the Google Ranking Algorithm is calculated by the trust and authority of your domain.
So your next question would be – can I do something about this? And yes you can. So are you ready? It’s much more than just the age of your domain.
How Google calculate the ranking of websites
Trust and the search engines
- Domain age is very important. I am sure you know about this. And there is not a lot you can do about this. But when you are choosing your server, you should choose one with a good reputation, so you don’t have to move your site to another server after 6 months or 1 year.
- Registration information. You can see my registration here. There is in general more trust to a public registration than a private registration. So a .Gov or .Org name will have more trust than a .Biz or .Com.
- Physical address. Write your physical address on your site – this will also help your trust by your viewers.
- Privacy policy. If you have any web form where you are collecting data you should have a well written privacy policy and use some secure data transfer (like SSL Certificate) and tell your viewers that you are using it. If you see my web form – you will see that it says “We respect your email privacy” and you can read more.
- FAQ page. A FAQ page will also help you increase the trust of your site.
- Who links to you? The search engines will check the links to your site and check where they are coming from. The principle here is that if they are coming from spammy domains, the search engines might think of you as a spammer. On the other hand if Google discovers that you have links from trusted domains such as Wikipedia, dmoz or yahoo directory or other websites with a high PageRank, Google will think your site must be trusted too. So in short – if you have a new site like me (www.SeoCustomer.com is only 6 months old) and you only have very few links to your site, and most of them are spammer links, you might get in trouble.
- Who do you link to? It’s the same idea as a link coming to your site. If you link to spammy sites, the search engines might think of your site as a spamming site too. So be careful who you like to.
Domain Authority
This is a more straightforward concept than trust. The most important element is how many quality pages link to your website and how do they link to your website.
First let me show you this Google Authoritative from www.chrisg.com. Click on it and take a good look at it. Very informative. Use it as a reference map. I love it. Click on it to see it large.
Many people believe that Google has a whitelist of trusted web sites. So if you can get some inbound links from websites which are on this list, it will give you a boost in your search engine rankings.
I am not sure about this whitelist – but anyway if you get inbound links from websites with a high PageRank you will do well.
Other Link Factors
- Theme – what is the subject of the domain that links to you – is it relevant topic for your subject?
- Strength – is the site that links to you trusted?
- Diversity – do you have a few varieties and diversity of domains that links to you or many
- Age – how old are the linking domains?
- Location – the location of the inbound links – from the content or the footer?
- Anchor Text – Google will love a lot of different anchor text. If the different sites use the same anchor text Google will think it’s suspicious.
You can check out your backlinks, anchor text and follow or no follow at www.backlinkwatch.com. Great tool.
Okay guys… Did I forget something? Let me know…
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Remember to grab the Complete SeoCustomer Guide 2011 and 2012 Q1. 180+ pages with tips and tricks about SEO, SEM, Social Media Traffic and Link Building.
Have a great day out there… Time for my coffee 
Henrik
Comments (10)
this all seems to be very true, but of course we don’t know exactly how google works and even if we did it’s constantly changing. good advice though I would say
Hi Steve.. yes you are right… both that we don’t exactly know.. so a lot of business are doing test to see what is working.. but you are also right about the constantly changing… Have a great day out there… best regards, Henrik
IT was a great article to go through, I liked the ways reference map is created.
Although Google Algorithm is constantly changing but it is changing in lines with providing good quality content to the users, hence no matter how they change the algo above method will still give fruitful results if implemented correctly.
Gr8 work!
Hello Nayan… thx for your comment. And you are right Google Algorithm is constantly changing… a good way to look at trust is to think of Google (or other search engines) as a human being. How could you make a human being trust your website. So of course show your face, write your real address, make a FAQ and so on… it will help.
Have a great day out there..
Henrik
Do you think having a privacy policy on your site and a physical address listed makes a difference to Google? Or it just helps build trust with visitors? I’m not sure if when Google crawl a site they look for and take note of factors such as those.
Hello Carlita… the Google algorithmic is a big secret – so nobody can really be absolute sure.. but Google is always trying to make the search as relevant for its viewers. So put yourself in the viewers shoe (its a saying in Denmark.. I don’t know if you can say that in English). Will you trust a site more if you knew how to contact it in the real world too? Would you trust a site more if you had a privacy policy on the site… Well I would… but again it is a big secret.
If you are doing Adsense.. then Google said this… “You must have and abide by an appropriate privacy policy that clearly discloses that third parties may be placing and reading cookies on your user’s browser, or using web beacons to collect information, in the course of ads being served on your website. Your privacy policy should also include information about user options for cookie management.”
Regarding the adresse.. have a look here.. http://searchengineland.com/does-including-a-physical-address-on-your-website-help-rankings-19669
Thank you for your comment… all the best to you, Henrik
Great POst. It seems the whole idea of Trust has kinda fallen off recently with all the panda and link farm stuff. I have an enthusiast blog so the address is not really applicable. But I do need to get a privacy policy up and also a FAQ page up.
I agree Thomas… the whole world is talking about link and social media (me too lol).. but even though its not 25 percent of the ranking anymore (it is constantly changing) but 20 or 18 percent of the algo … then its still a lot of ranking points to get… have a great day out there.. by the way… Thomas is also a common name in Denmark.. best regards, Henrik
Henrik,
Excellent post on creating authority. One big hole is social. Since the SERPs are watching social signals these days like hawks looking for dinner increasing social presence and approval via LIKES and SHARES and FOLLOWS helps create authority.
I think you could also discuss the difference between mobile and non-mobile since mobile SEO is different though I’m not sure how yet (lol). If feels like the faster content looks better on mobile the more juice you gain in the mobile Google et al.
I though your discussion of being a new website was particularly helpful. We are an agency and this is a difficult concept for many non-Internet marketers to grasp. Time is part of Google’s algorithm most people overlook but you point out very clearly.
Well done,
Marty
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Martin Smith
Director Marketing
Atlantic BT
Raleigh, NC
Hello Martin… you have some great points… the world of SEO is changing so fast. Google has between 500 and 600 small and big changes for its algorithm each year.. so yes things are moving fast. And I have to check into mobile SEO… its one of the fastest moving trends right now. Everybody is going mobile theses days lol.. The fun part about SEO is the changes I think. You know… if it never change everybody would know everything lol…
I do agree that SEO is very important for the SERP. Thats why I was trying to make this (only a little) provocative article here.. lol…http://seocustomer.com/ranking-is-dead-and-welcome-to-the-new-seo-baby-named-joe/. I am not so sure about Social and Trust … but I guess you will trust a website more if you can see it has a lot of followers …
Thx a lot for your comment… I might have 2 or 3 great topics for more articles to come…
Have a great day in NC
All the best to you…
Henrik