Four Simple Ways to Help Google Trust Your Content, and You, as an Authority
The news in every form and on every platform is run amok with falsehoods, half-truths, and downright lies. Information that can be dangerous, at the very least harmful, is presented as truth. This is a challenge that we all have as individuals to check and then check again, the sources, the numbers, the statistics, and the plain common sense of the information we see. Google, and all of the search engines, are constantly trying to return the best and most reliable information to searchers. There are several ways they try to assess, in a micro-second of time, what sites and what content from those sites is likely to be trustworthy.
This GOLD is from Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison’s Blog post of a few days ago when talking about the task of returning reliable and trustworthy information in search results:
“𝗪𝗲’𝘃𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗶𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗵𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗼𝗻 𝗮 𝘁𝗼𝗽𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗹𝗶𝗸𝗲𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗽𝘂𝗯𝗹𝗶𝘀𝗵 𝗳𝗮𝗹𝘀𝗲 𝗼𝗿 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.”
To do this, the ‘𝘸𝘦’𝘷𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘦𝘥’ part of this statement leads the experts (and me) to believe they have focused a lot of machine learning to create ‘profiles’ of what authoritative sites ‘look and perform like’ and are then comparing all of our sites to them.
THESE ARE THINGS I AM DOUBLING DOWN ON FOR MY SITE AND WHAT I AM CONTINUING TO RECOMMEND:
- Make sure you use language that is more professional/scientific/including stats & studies when producing informational content,
- Spend some time looking over sites in your niche that are highly respected to get a feel for how they write and present information,
- Keep your information focused on the subject/topic/keywords that you want to establish authority in-don’t write about cooking one day, horses one day, quantum physics the next (unless they are all centered around one particular niche or topic and that is EASILY identified within the text) or it will be more difficult to establish authority in Google’s eyes on a particular topic,
- Publish on a consistent basis, ‘authoritative sites’ are continuously updated their information, quoting experts from other authoritative sites, and are visited frequently (which comes from producing new content that keeps visitors checking for updates.
Being mindful of these things while producing your blogs, white papers, and articles will help your content be trusted enough to be returned as a search result and be seen.
