Just read an excellent article about how the trust of a website, among other factors, can influence the rankings of a website. Whilst this may seem obvious, it is interesting to note the extent to which trust of a domain can compensate for the lack of other orthodox ranking factors such as optimised anchor text or to some extent relevance/authority of inbound links. The article states  “that overall domain authority can play a major role in the ranking position awarded to a URL“. So if you have a trusted domain, even if the URL is not that well optimised you can curry favour in terms of ranking strength. So for example a BBC URL about any given subject could match or out rank a site with a better optmised URL. Although you might think being outranked by the BBC is blindingly obvious, it is interesting to note how the algorithm compensates for trusted domains. Which is why moneysavingexpert.com is sometimes in the top 10 for “car insurance” when other sites would appear to be much better optimised for this term.

Another interesting point in the article is the impact that the Vince update has had on search results for competitive phrases. We have noticed this certainly impact on one of our clients, as the major player is now appearing for competitive phrases despite having little optimised content or anchor text. In the article the author conducts a test for the term “flights”. He finds that sites without optmised anchor text in their strongest links, still appear in the top ten including  brands such as”easyjet” and “British Airways” who incidentally both appear in the “related searches” field when you search for “flights”. Clearly Google is factoring in what people are searching for in relation to flights, which is logical.

What does this mean in terms of SEO? Well for those charged with running an SEO campaign on behalf of these companies their life would appear to be made easier by all this. It also gives weight to the arguement that you should focus on building your brand as well as building up a site in terms of organic optimsation. For example over time an extensive TV, radio, press and display campaign should mean more people searching for your brand + generic phrase. This may in turn lead Google to associate your brand more with this phrase.  If we look at the trend for the term “go compare” you can see a sharp spike, due to the extensive advertising blitz featuring Gio Compario, a fictions Italian opera singer. I notice that gocompare.com has moved upto #5 for the term “car insurance” – surely these two events must have some causal link?

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