Credibility is an important ranking factor. The more credible a website is, the better it will rank on Google. How do search engines measure the credibility of a website and what can you do to improve the credibility of your own site?
A) Proven elements that influence the credibility of your website
There are several elements that search engines have been using for a long time to determine the credibility of a website:
- Backlinks: the
links that point to your website greatly contribute to the
trustworthiness of your site. If your website has mainly automatically
created low quality links then this won’t have a positive effect on
your rankings.
Links from reputable websites will have a positive effect on the credibility of your own site.
- Links to other websites: if your website contains a lot of links to irrelevant websites then
this can have a negative influence on the credibility of your site. If
your website mainly offers affiliate links or if many of the links to
other websites are broken then this might also have a negative
influence.
- Error-free pages: search
engines won’t find your website trustworthy if it contains a lot of
errors. Your web pages shouldn’t contain broken links or missing
images. A lot of spelling mistakes can also be a sign of a low quality
website.
- Many website visitors: Google has many ways to track the number of visitors that a website
gets (Chrome, Analytics, etc.). A website that gets many visitors seems
more trustworthy than a website with only a few visitors.
- Good web page navigation: a
clear website navigation that makes it easy to find pages is an
indicator of a good website. If people find what they’re looking for on
your web pages, search engines will give these pages a boost. In
addition, a good website structure helps search engines to index all of
your pages.
B) New elements that can influence the credibility of your website
In addition to the proven elements above, there are some new elements that influence the credibility of your site.
- The number of social
mentions: the more often your web pages are mentioned on
Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social media websites, the more
credible your website can be.
Of course, only real mentions from real people will have a positive influence. Fake likes and mentions might have a negative influence.
- Verified authorship: web pages with a verified
author that has a good reputation can get better rankings on
Google. At this time, the effect of a verified authorship on the
rankings of your website seems to be low.
A credible website is important if you want to have a successful online business. In addition to higher rankings on Google and other search engines, people tend to buy much more on credible websites.
Use the Top 10 Optimizer in IBP to check if your web pages have all elements that are necessary to show search engines that your website can be trusted.
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