How to become a trusted website to increase your search engine rankings

The authority of a website influences its position in the search results on Google and other search engines. If you want to see your website on Google’s first result page, you have to make sure that search engines trust your site.

There are several things that you can do to show search engines that your website is trustworthy:
1. Get links from seed sites or from websites that are linked from seed sites

Seed sites are websites that are manually marked as trustworthy by the search engine owners. For example, if Apple.com has been chosen as a seed website by Google then a link from Apple.com will have a positive effect on the TrustRank of your website.
Of course, it is very difficult to get a link from a trusted seed site. Fortunately, the websites that are linked from the seed sites also have a positive effect on the linked sites.
If Apple.com links to website site2.com, website site2.com links to website site3.com and website site3.com links to your website then your website will still get a good TrustRank.

2. Get links from related websites

Does your website get links from related websites and does it link to other related websites?
Is your website a lonely island with no links from and to other websites or is it integrated in a network that deals with a special topic? The better your website is integrated in a network of topical sites (by different owners), the more likely it is that your website is a good resource for that topic.

3. Don’t link to spam websites

Avoid links to websites of dubious quality. If a website is a known spammer, do not link to the site at all.
If you link to such a website, you show search engines that you support them and that your own website should not be trusted too much.

5. Try to get links from social networks

The more often your website is mentioned on social media websites, the more likely it is that your website is a trustworthy high quality website. The more votes your bookmarks on social media sites get, the better.

6. Offer more than just a few websites

A website that consists of only one page won’t be considered an authority website. Search engines want to show good websites with good content in the search results.
If your website has many pages that contain great content about a certain topic then it is much easier to get a good TrustRank.

If search engines trust your website, it is much easier to get high rankings.

Google News Testing Twitter Integration With “Friends”

Google is testing a new feature that lets you connect your Twitter account to Google News. Some people are seeing a “Friends” box on the right hand side of Google News inviting them to do this.
The friends box asks you to enter your Twitter username and click “Save.” When you click save, Google News will refresh, and you will see a list of updates containing news articles shared by the people you follow. Google even has a help document on this feature.
@jblukin spotted this and posted a picture of the sign-up box:

Google’s help page on the feature clarifies that the Friends box only shows you links to news content that can also be found in Google News. Other links they share, if they aren’t Google News-worthy, so to speak, won’t be shown.