Why is it that some websites can attain high rankings on Google for pretty much any content they publish whilst other websites despite search engine optimisation struggle? It all boils down to TRUST. Trust is a major factor in Google's ranking algorithm

 

A high trust level is crucial if you want to get high Google rankings

 

Some websites have managed to reach a very high trust level with Google. That helps them to get higher rankings on search engines than you do.

 

Why? Google doesn't want to serve spam sites or the unknown in the search results. Google uses this trust factor to protect its core business. It is important to show Google that your website is for real, that you're not a spammer, you are serving informative content and that you plan to stay in business for a long time.

 

What can I do to gain trust with Google and other leading search engines?

 

1. Your domain name

 

The age of a domain is important to Google. When you start a new online business, consider buying an old domain name if a suitable name is available. There are  a whole host of domain auctions and resale sites that you can do this through. At the SEO-Authority we can assist with this and have all the necessary accounts in place to seek, buy and transfer a domain you may want. We are also experienced negotiators in the purchasing of existing business domains and selling on behalf of clients.

 

There are many considerations to be aware of when purchasing expiring or expired domains. As this is a huge area in itself, we will create a new posting for this topic.

 

Back onto domain trust, make sure that the contact information on your whois record is correct. Do not use exotic top level domains. If you are in the USA, use .com, .net or .org. If you're in another country, use the official top level domain of your country. If your customer base is global consider a .com domain and the top level domain for your country. You can run both independently with different content or simply apply a 301 permanent re-direct from one to the other.

 

Don't overuse hyphens in your URL. For example, www.keyword-keyword1-keyword2-keyword3-keyword4-.com looks spammy. Although the domain name is considered an important ranking factor, with the increase in Google Chrome usage whereby the domain name isn’t displayed in the search results, less emphasis is being placed on this by Google.

 

2. website content

 

Make your contact information easy to find on your website. List a full address and not only your email address on your website. The more information about your company can be found on your website, the more likely it is that it will be considered a real business.

 

Your website should have a privacy policy and terms and conditions (if applicable). Both should be linked from your sitemap.

 

Don't use doorway pages. They annoy search engine spiders not to mention website visitors. Doorway pages are a clear indicator of a low quality website and Google will not reward you with high rankings medium to long term.

If possible, keep the HTML code of your web pages below as small as possible so that search engine spiders can crawl it easily. Regularly update your web pages to show Google that your website is alive and serving fresh content

 

3. Inbound links

 

Do not participate in automated linking schemes. Keep your linking patterns as natural as possible. If your website gets 1000 inbound links on a single day and then nothing more, this may be considered by Google as paid links and an attempt to trick the search engines. All of the SEO-Authority links building packages are spread across a number of months for this very reason.

The links to your website should contain your keywords but they should not all contain exactly the same link text. If all links to your website used exactly the same link text then this would be a red flag for Google. Create fresh new anchor text for your link partners to display.

 

Do not advertise the sale or purchase of paid links. This is strictly against Google guidelines and you will be penalised if flagged up. No matter how under the radar you think your paid links may be, just consider how aggressive your industry is.  Do you trust your competitors enough not to blow the whistle on you? Yes this happens, more often than you think too. Business is business at the end of the day why wouldn’t your competitor go telling tales to Google if they thought you were gaining competitive advantage over them using such techniques.

 

Linking is not just confined to website ‘A’ linking to your website. You must also consider when researching link partners who links to them. If website ‘A’ has 1000 links pointing to it from porn, hate, illegal, spam and generally low quality sites that have no relation to your industry, then that link from Site ‘A’ to your website carry’s little value. Although Google don’t advertise this fact, it can actually be damaging to your ranking. As part of our SEO audit and analysis we perform a bad neighbourhood link check to against this very problem.