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Trust Rank

Last updated: Mar 24, 2023

https://cmlabs.co/en-us/seo-terms/trust-rank

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What is Trust Rank?

Trust Rank, or simply TrustRank, is an algorithm created to rate websites based on their quality.

The quality seen from this algorithm is based on the reputation of the website itself and whether the content presented can be justified or not.

Usually, poor-quality websites are judged as spam by the algorithm. Conversely, a website with good quality is one that does not contain spam or is non-spam.

A Brief History of Trust Rank

Trust Rank was first introduced by Zoltan Gyongyi and Hector Garcia-Molina from Stanford University and Jan Pedersen from Yahoo! in research entitled "Combating Web Spam with TrustRank" in 2004.

This algorithm was created because PageRank itself is considered insufficient to measure the trustworthiness of a website.

With this algorithm, search engines can spot good quality websites and avoid low-quality ones.

How Trust Rank Works

After getting to know the brief history of the algorithm, you need to know how it works in order to optimize websites to the fullest.

Broadly speaking, the algorithm works to determine how strong a website is based on the links it has.

For example, website A has a link from the seed website. That means the website is only one link away from the seed website.

On the other hand, website B has a link from website A that points to the seed website. When compared, website A is clearly stronger than website B.

It can be concluded from this scenario that the closer the distance to the website, the higher the trust value a website gets.

Obtaining links from authoritative sources, such as Wikipedia, can help your website rank highly in search engines.

How to Optimize a Website Based on Trust Rank

As is the case with PageRank, TrustRank itself is one of the things considered by search engines in determining website ranking in SERP.

Therefore, you need a high score to increase the strength of the website. Here are some ways you can optimize your website based on this algorithm:

1. Increase Quality Backlinks

One way to optimize website performance is to increase quality backlinks from websites with high Domain Authority.

However, if the backlinks come from low-authority websites and are not relevant to your niche brand, search engines will judge your website as non-spam or of poor quality.

To get quality backlinks, you can use Media Buying services from cmlabs which can connect your website with relevant national media and bloggers.

2. Avoiding Controversial Topics

On the other hand, you also need to avoid controversial topics that can reduce the value of website trust.

For example, you need to avoid content about pornography and gambling that is rated poorly by search engines.

These topics need to be avoided in terms of content production and backlinks obtained from other websites.

3. Check Domain Age

The existence of your website determines how much trust search engines can place in it.

The older the website, the more search engines will consider it trustworthy in terms of its commitment.

Conversely, websites that are young will find it easier to leave or disappear because they are considered to still not have a track record proving their authority.

4. Completing Website Information

In order for your website to be more trusted, you need to complete your website's information so that users can also get accurate data about your business or brand.

Here, you can add information to the About Us page. Be sure to include contact details and a physical business address if available.

Not only web users can use this information, but search engines can also judge your website as trustworthy.

Websites that provide real information will be more trusted by search engines because it has been proven that website managers are not robots but humans.