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Why Should A Search Engine Trust You?

This article can be freely reprinted and distributed provided it is unchanged and include the "About The Author" section with the link to Lillicotch.com intact.

Because search engines are getting thousands of new pages a day and who knows how many authors they tend to be very sceptical about new content. You need to convince them that you are a trusted source of reliable information (whatever your information may be).

The best way to have them take you seriously is to have some high ranking sites with plenty of trust point to your site. That is not very likely to happen as large powerful sites generally do not give out links to small or new sites. It does happen occasionally and that can be another problem altogether. I have seen sites overwhelmed with traffic. That's a good problem, though.

Here are some things that you can do to improve your standing in the eyes of the search engines.

  • I have to say this again (and again), good quality content and lots of it. I find over and over people are coming to my sites for keywords that I wouldn't have predicted that they would. Write articles, add a blog. Concentrate on your own unique content.
  • Make sure that your navigation can be easily read by the search engines. Having text links to all of your pages that say where they are going is the best choice. A complete site map is a good idea. Google offers a site map maker for free.
  • Have detailed contact information. People feel much more comfortable dealing with you on any level when they have plenty of information about you that they can trust. Search engines are are trying to do what their customers want, so they also will lean to sites with verifiable information. This includes contact information. You or your companies identity can be pretty easy to verify these days, like it or not.
  • Time. That's a hard one if you are just starting out. The longer that your site exists the better and there's nothing you can do about that, but you can keep adding new information on a regular basis. Consistency is good as you don't usually want to be seen as chaotic, but I don't believe that is as important as simply adding new content (again) on a regular basis. This is where your visitor logs can be very valuable. Look to see where people are going in your site, where they are coming in and where they are leaving. Add content accordingly. I have also found that it looks good if you renew your domain name for as long as you can (up to 10 years). This shows that you plan to be around for a while. People won't easily see that information, but I believe search engines do consider it.
  • You should have a Privacy Policy on your site. Keep it as simple as you can. Tell everyone how much information that you collect and what you will do (or won't do) with it. Then stick to it.

There are many other things that you can do, but I feel that these ideas will help you the most. These are simple and straightforward things that will probably always help you no matter how many times the search engines change their algorithms.

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About The Author...
Jim Lillicotch is a website designer and marketing expert based in Pittsburgh, PA. Jim is the owner of Lillicotch.com. He has worked as a Website Designer and SEO for over 10 years. His passion is helping people start or improve their own sites. He can be reached through his website Lillicotch.com

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