Google Trust and Reputation Factors – Part 2

continuation from Part 1

Do original research or reporting– Adding to the Google index with NEW information not found before is highly recommended. You might use polls on your site and publish the results. You might do a meta review of services or products and publish it. Adding original content is what Google loves to see..

Live blog– Anything you can do “live” – the better. Live podcasts, tweets, and Facebook updates accomplish this. Social media is almost becoming synonymous with real time and live – because it’s so much more live than traditional websites. Be active in your niche in as many ways as you can, Google is beginning to look at a lot more things than links to your site… like how many times you’re mentioned in Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, StumbleUpon, etc.

Make lists– Lists are sticky and people usually read them. They’re bits of information presented in a quick format to digest. Online readers have short attention spans. they need short bits of info. Write many articles of this type. Lists are shared often and are more viral than a dry article.

Create controversy – This creates incoming links to your site. Google doesn’t care if they’re positive or negative – they’re links

Meet people on Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed - If you have profiles for your business website on the major social media sites and there are followers and people that interact with you there – oftne – that’s an indication that your site is valid and trustable. Google is starting to add many variables to the “what matters” list and social media definitely matters. You should be all over social media – especially Twitter and Facebook at the moment. There will be more hot social media applications coming out in the short term.

Matt’s list stopped at those, but I’ll add a couple more things here that I’ve learned…

Timeis a major factor in reputation and trust by Google. You’ll notice with each year anniversary your site is trusted more in Google and you’ll see a bump in traffic if you’re updating your content regularly and all other variables on your site are good.

Mozilla.org and other major directory listings help a lot. I’m not sure whether you’ll be able to buy a Yahoo Business directory listing any more or not since they joined with BING, but if they do – it will be a good one to pay for entry into. A Mozilla.org listing is very helpful, but hard to get as they don’t maintain the directory very well any longer.

Inbound links from high-trust sites. Getting inbound links from sites that Google already strusts highly is a great way to gain some respect for your own business site. Use Google’s PageRank checkers to see if sites you want links from are listed at PageRank 4 or more. PR 4 sites are doing well in Google’s eyes and would be great for incoming links.

Onsite variables. Trustworthy sites have pages that every great site should have: About; Disclaimer; Shipping; Privacy; FAQ; Sitemap… etc. These are always found at every reputable site.

Summary
There are many variables that go into helping Google decide whether your site is worth ranking highly in the Google results. I’ve mentioned some here, but there are many more. Focus on keeping your site updated, relevant, and full of great information that makes visitors want to read and share your content. Keep active in social media applications as they come out and

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