In previous posts, I’ve talked at length about how to increase your visibility on Google.
Whilst relevance, links and properly keyworded content has been dealt with, the true precursor to search engine success lies in how authoritative your website is. If you create content that others wish to refer to, pass on and discuss then you are definitely on the right track. Furthermore, if “real people” are developing a relationship of trust with your website then the great news is Google will too.
“If a site is an authority in your industry, you can bet that it will be for Google as well. So if you’re a web designer, a link from Smashing Magazine or A List Apart helps, as a lot of other web design sites will be linking to those sites, thus causing those sites to be ‘hubs’ in the web design space.” – Joost De Valk, Yoast
Within the context of search, authority takes into account pretty much all the different elements of your site and then makes a call on whether your content is likely to seriously influence others, or at the other end of the scale, just sound like jibberish. The more influential, authoritative and trusted your site is, the better your search engine ranking.
There are numerous factors that can influence the perception of your site’s authority but the main ones are:
- the domain name (a .gov.uk domain is going to be more trusted than a .biz)
- quantity of links
- quality of links ( this is highly important…see Joost De Valk’s quote above)
Inside Google
It’s impossible to know exactly how Google operates. There has been a story doing the rounds for some time now that Google has a “white list” of authoritative and trusted websites. I’d make a guess the BBC website is on there… It’ll be pretty much impossible to get on to this list but you could take a stab at getting links from some of them.
Avoiding negative trust
Not a complete list, but any of these activities will have a negative impact on how search engines perceive your site’s authority:
- buying and selling links
- rubbish content – avoid repetition, scraped or spammy content.
- linking to a bad neighbourhood – sex, viagra, financial scam sites)
- growing too quickly – Google will start to smell a rat if a brand new domain with one page of content becomes an overnight sensation.
- lack of link diversity – do all your links look like they are being culled from the same source or groups of sites? It’s not the number of friends you have, but the quality.
- comment spam – don’t leave them on your site. They’ll get indexed and then your rankings will plummet.
If you can generate unique content and stay away from all of the above, you’re halfway there.
Next up will be how we can generate positive trust signals.