This week Rand discusses Trust as a ranking factor: how it originated, what it may look like, and how you can use it when planning your link building campaigns. The closer you can get to major authority sites, the more trust your links are likely to have, and as we all know, trusted links are the most powerful links.
Whiteboard Friday-Using Trust Rank to Guide Your Link Building from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.
By: Scott Willoughby
Whiteboard Friday - Using Trust Rank to Guide Your Link Building
Whiteboard Friday
The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.
WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO WHITEBOARD FRIDAY! I haven't seen it for ages and now the intro looks like a shopping channel! Give me back honest, slightly shakey, one angle videos!!!!
Yeah, I agree it's a little commercial, but I won't bash them for it. If it brings them a little more money, cool with me - they deserve it.
I'm not sure that WB Friday is a revenue generator (after all, it's free to everyone), but hopefully it gives us a little more professional look and feel, and makes it a bit easier on the eyes and ears (anyone hear Mel's phone ringing in the background?) :)
I think you are right personally, no matter what the site is it undoubtedly will impress more if it is professionally done (so long as the content is useful of course)
I do understand the other opinion in so much as being a bit less professional can seem less 'corporate' and less of an enemy to the a percentage of users who like to feel they are in a special niche of people who deal more in information as oppose to being part of a well known brand so to speak.
what is that saying? "You can please all the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but never all of the people all of the time"
Regards the whiteboard itself, nice and clear and always good to see how others break things down into clear pictures.
I do however believe that most users in here would appreciate the authority concept already tho.
Of course the 'authority sites' in different niches will be different sites altogether for differnt businesses. Yes we can all guess who some of the big players are but how do we get some pointers for who more of these may be in our own niches?
oh, yes.. google page rank :-/
The content however (which I neglected to mention), was well thought out, clearly explained and dealt with a difficult algo riddled topic. So thumbs up for that. To be honest, as long as the talkytalky stays good, I don't care if you deliver it on a snotted hankerchief. :)
not entirely true Rand, I came into SEOmoz off of youtube watching your whiteboard Friday. In fact your stuff and SEObook was what pushed me into this industry.
I'm a pro member, so that's definitely revenue.
I prefer this camera work, but the old opening with those awesome songs!
- also the green marker can't be seen clearly.
Shopping Channel??!!! You bastard!
In the immortal words of Sean Connery on Celebrity Jeopardy, "Below Me."
Hugs and kisses, Scott
@great scott - your comment has made me laugh out loud the loudest of anything I've seen on any industry site this year. sweet.
Haha, brilliant! :) I think perhaps we're at the sharp end of a culture difference here. Being a good ol' stiff upperlipped Brit, the music especially sets off alarms for the American shopping channels which have been invading our TV the last few years. It does look professional though :) Also, Rand does a great job of basically explaining this www.vldb.org/conf/2004/RS15P3.PDF (which is worth a read if you want a more tech view on TR/Spam). Keep up the good work.
I thought this was another great edition of Whiteboard Friday. Good detailing of trusted sites (and the 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon reference is priceless)!
As for the production value I think it is great :) I must admit I have not seen the shakey videos of yester-year, but the quality keeps improving and I enjoy that (I come from somewhat of a film aesthetics background). I understand the nostalgia for the good 'ol times, but updating your filming style is a must to remain professional and competitive. To shirk innovation would be like an SEO who still swears submission is all you need to get ranked!
I'm just jealous because I feel silly talking into a camera when nobody is there :)
Trust Distance, eh? What an interesting term. I've always tried to sort of calculate a site's perceived trust when seeking to link to it or to ask for a link from it, but never thought of sort of calculating trust like that. Cool, I learned something new today!
Thank you Rand.
- Eric Itzkowitz
Thanks Rand. How to find these trusted Sites? Is there any great tool to find them as you mentioned in different levels: 1st, 2nd, 3rd...?
Great video! I learned a lot of things I have had questions about and cleared up a few mis conceptions as well. I hope you keep posting more videos.
In the confusing link-o-sphere this vid gives some clarity.
We've recently looked at some link building agencies and the quality is just awful. So many seem to be providing spammy side bar list type links and although there might be a short term gain I just can't get excited by these approaches.
The problem is clients want links and advising them can be tricky but this approach will help to explain in a clear and concise way.
Thanks
d
In some ways it sounds like Yahoo's algo of indexing people based on known/respected websites.
Thanks for the installment. It was great.
Funny, I've been on this page so many times, I've favorite'd in Veimo and each time I use the site operator commands looking forinformation I need I get this page - VALUABLE -
Nice whiteboard Friday.
I always enjoy these, however I do miss the different tunes that Scott would throw on the front which often had comedy value.
The whiteboard seems to be getting bigger and bigger too. It gets its own theme tune, flashy graphics, good lighting. Mr Whiteboard will soon be demanding M&Ms with all the brown ones taken out etc
(can I have its autograph?)
I miss the old music selections too, but I'm trying to be copyright friendly these days. Sorry :(
Could we have a Whiteboard Friday update on 'moztrust links' and Directories submissions? Tying this video and your 'What Makes a Good Web Directory', September 20th, 2007, together?
a new good edition of whiteboard friday Rand ! linking is always a difficult thing to do, especially if you want to get some links from some sites that you "believe" are trusted ones.
What's better, get 1 link from a "trusted 0" site, or get more from the -1 or -2, as they will be easier to get ?
Great video Scott, and great advice Rand!
This is something I've been trying to communicate to employers and clients for years. From now on I'll just sit them in front of this video and loop it until the light bulb goes off in their head and they say "OH! I GET 'IT' NOW!'
Wait... so if you link to me, that puts me in the -3 category? :)
I'm kidding, this is a great concept. That said, I do think that it should be a criteria to consider when link building, but it would be self-defeating to only use this sort of methodology. Especially given the somewhat subjective nature of trust.
P.S. Ditto on the "BaconRank". Where's that rimshot when you need it?
I gave this video a thumbs up, but "BaconRank" almost pushed it the other way. : )
A free iPhone to anyone who produces a list of all trusted seed websites.
You pay for my unlimited plan for one year with it and you have yourself a deal.
Great information. Keep up the great work Rand!
Short video, but puts it in to an easier framework to grasp. I've been following Trustrank since it was first discussed in detail over at wmw, (i think).
hadn't quite thought about out of context with google, but I can definately see how it applies across the other search engines.
I loved the new intro and the BaconTrust reference!
Great Information and easy to understand. I can even have my clients view this and most of it wont even go over their heads.
The text on the actual whiteboard is a little difficult to read.
Keep up the good work, see you and your yellow shoes at SMX Social.
I'm no wizard at math... but 0,1% is not a tenth, is it? Then again, it might be, since I'm no wizard at math :D
Sorry - I think I meant to say "10th of a percent" which is 0.1% :)