Just so no one gets confused I want you all to realize that I do not always practice what I preach. There simply isn’t time for it all. Whenever I create a new site I decide in a written plan what techniques and practices will make me the most money with the least amount of effort for the longest amount of time. Although I have many sites that are over 2 years old, I very rarely put daily promotion work into any of my sites that are over 6 months old. I put a lot of effort into the first six months of a site and then let it perpetuate its own promotion (which is coincidently about when I start getting REALLY sick of staring at the site). This allows me to not only keep my sanity, but to prevent myself from putting too many apples in one basket (I think that’s the way the saying goes). This practice however tends to put a vice over my head when it comes to search engines and that vice is called Trust Factor. One of the greatest strengths you can have in business is knowing your own weaknesses so I’d like to use this article to help us all speculate about what I consider my biggest weakness and possibly yours in SEO.

Factors of Trust Rank
Here is what factors I think the search engines possibly use to determine your trust factor.

• Age of Domain
• Keywords in domain
• Inbound links from sites that compete for the same keywords
• Age of Inbound links from sites that compete for the same keywords
• Stickiness of anchor text of inbound links
• Ratio of inbound links from sites that don’t compete for the same keywords to sites that does.
• Links from authority sites
• Stickiness of links from authority sites
• Percentage of pages on your site that are on topic with the main page.
• Outbound links that result in a page competing for your keywords.
• Site being available in the Google directory.
• Also note that I believe there are boosts available in trust factors for the size of your site as well as meeting a goal of inbound links.

Using these twelve factors lets assume that they are all presented as equal. Therefore we can derive an algorithm to determine an estimated trust factor for our own sites so we may see how we fair to a scale.

The algorithm

#Age of domain factor
If (Age_Of_Domain > 5 Years) {
+10 Trust
}
Elseif (Age_Of_Domain > 1 Year){
+5 Trust
}
Else {
+0 Trust
}

#Keywords In Domain Factor
If (Keywords_In_Domain = All Keywords) & (Keywords In Domain <5) {
+10 Trust
}
Elseif(Keywords_In_Domain > 1 ) & (Keywords In Domain <5) {
+8 Trust
}
Else{
+0 Trust

}

#Inbound Links From Competing Sites Factor
If (Inbound_Links_From_Competing_Sites >= 100){

+10 Trust

}

Else {

+Trust = Inbound_Links_From_Competing_Sites / 100

}

#Average Age Of Inbound Links From Competing Sites Factor
If (Average_Age_Of_Inbound_Links_From_Competing_Sites > 100 days) {

+10 Trust

}

Else {

+Trust = Average_Age_Of_Inbound_Links_From_Competing/100

}

Stop!

I will stop the algorithm right here because by now you’re catching my point. If anyone actually feels like making a tool of this PLEASE LET ME KNOW! Once you read the algorithm you realize the possibilities. When you are finished there is 144 points possible. If you take your number of points and divide it by 10 and remove the remainder you get a scale of 1-14. Assume that 11-14 points mean you are classified as an authority site. This leaves you with a scale of 1-10 of search engine’s trust factor in your site.

From here comes the leg work and yes I’m just as, if not more, guilty than the rest of you of not putting enough work into this as needed to be done. Taking a look at the assumed factors and putting them to scale; +10 being the best you can be or at least well above the average. +0 having none of the factor. We can at least use this to judge how much search engines trust us.

I would really like to talk to some experts on the matter and have them maybe shed some light on this subject for us. Until then I am forced to listen to who I know best………me.