3 Ways to Build Website Credibility with Google

To establish website credibility, your online visitors aren’t the only ones you need to convince — you also need to establish credibility with Google. When the search engine giant recognizes your site as an authority in the space, your website will appear in your target audience’s Google searches and increase your likelihood of being found.

Of course, producing relevant, valuable content that answers your audience’s pressing questions is crucial for building credibility. But beyond that, here are three ways you can show Google that your blog or business is a trustworthy, authoritative source.

1. Create high-quality backlinks

Backlinks, or links between websites, are an important component of ranking high in Google search results. When other high-quality websites link to yours, it’s a signal to Google that you’re a reliable source.

If your blog or business is relatively new, you may find yourself in a bit of a predicament. You want to appear in searches and burst on the scene, but as you haven’t established website credibility, you may not show up just yet.

To start getting those highly coveted quality backlinks, there are some steps you can start taking now.

First, get the word out. Do a bit of PR and reach out to businesses or blogs in your niche. Let them know you wrote a useful blog post that helps their audience, or take advantage of Help a Reporter Out.

For example, if you’re a writing coach who helps entrepreneurs with website and social media copy, you might want to share your “10 tips for writing attention-grabbing Facebook posts” with a social media manager who posts about Facebook management for small businesses.

You can foster those relationships by commenting on other businesses’ blog posts and sharing their content and tagging them on social media.

Along with sharing content you’ve already written, you can also pitch a guest blog post. Using the example above, you might pitch an article about infusing your brand voice on Facebook.

In your guest submission, include links to posts and pages on your own website as a way to create high-quality backlinks.

2. Keep it fresh

Google likes to see that you’re keeping your website and content fresh. Publish new blog posts and update and republish old posts, especially as you make major changes.

You can change the publish date of your blog posts by going to My Site → Site → Posts. Click on the post you would like to update. After you make changes, under the Document section on the right side, click the hyperlinked date. A calendar will pop up and you can choose the new publish date. Click Update when you’re finished.

You can also take advantage of this opportunity to fix any broken links.

3. Use Google My Business

A Google business listing is yet another signal of your website credibility and can help you rank higher in local search. Once you set up your company’s account, encourage customers to review your business. A study by Local SEO Guide found that customer reviews play a major role in bumping your local search ranking.

Building your business or blog’s website credibility won’t happen overnight, but with some dedication, your effort can pay off immensely — you may even show up at the top of Google’s ranking.