SEO Optimization........A beginners guide !!! - Trust, Identity, Authority & SEO

Part 4 - 

Trust, Identity, Authority & Search Rankings

Authority;

Is your site an authority? Is it a widely recognized leader in its field, area, business or in some other way? That’s the goal.

No one knows exactly how search engines calculate authority and, in fact, there are probably multiple “authority” signals. The type of links your site receives (lots of quality or ‘neighborhood’ links?) or social references (from respected accounts?) and engagement metrics (long clicks?) may all play a role in site authority. Of course, negative sentiment and reviews may hurt site authority.

Engagement;

One of the most important parameter & objective of the site is to engage with its target Audience. A quality site should produce meaningful interactions with users. For example, how long do users stay on your page? Did they search, click through to your listing but then immediately “bounce” back to the results to try something else? That “POGOSTICKING” behavior can be measured by search engines and could be a sign that your content isn’t engaging.

Conversely, are people sending a relatively long time reviewing your content, in relation to similar content on other sites? That “time on site” metric or “long click” is another type of engagement that search engines can measure and use to assess the relative value of content.

Social gestures such as comments, shares and “likes” represent another way that engagement might be measured.

Read more on SEO - Engagement

History;

It tracks how your site has behaved over a period of time & is there a sudden change in the behaviour. Are you suddenly linking out to what the search engines euphemistically call “bad neighborhoods”? Are you publishing content about a topic you haven’t typically covered? Such things might raise alarm bells.

A site with a history of violating guidelines and receiving multiple penalties may find it more difficult to work their way back to search prominence

In the end, a good overall track record may help you. An older, established site may find it can keep cruising along with search success, while a new site may have to “pay its dues,” so to speak, for weeks, months or even longer to gain respect.

Read more on SEO - Manage SEO Ranking during site migration

Identity

At the moment, among the best ways to tap into identity signals involve Klout for Bing, verifying sites with Bing Webmaster Tools and Google Search Console plus linking your site to Google+.