All Backlinks are Not Created Equal: Using Trust Flow & Domain Authority to Get Quality Backlinks

How popular are you on Google?  How trusted is your website?  Does Google know about all of the high quality material you’re putting up on the world wide web for potential clients to see?  Maybe…maybe not.  Part of the answer may lie in how many high quality backlinks you have.  Google will trust your site a LOT more if they know other trusted, well established, credible websites trust you as well.

Reminder: Backlinks are Important for SEO

If you’ve taken my 7 day e-mail series, gone through my SEO training, listened to me on therapist podcasts or basically had any other interaction with me as an SEO consultant, you know backlinks are an important part of SEO. Maybe you’ve even read my blog post on how and why to get backlinks.  Hint: If you haven’t, go over and read it now…

But just as a reminder: Backlinks are IMPORTANT.  In fact, I’ve frequently heard that getting backlinks from reputable sites is the single most important thing you can do for your website’s SEO!

However…Some Backlinks Help Your Website’s Ranking Better Than Others

It’s better to have a few high quality websites that Google already trusts pointing to (or “voting for”) your website than to have a TON from low quality websites.  Why?  Because Google places more weight on “votes” from websites they already trust.  I spoke to a private practice owner the other day who only had a couple of links to her site so far.  However, her site was ranking shockingly well!  We did a little investigating together and found that the few links she had were from high quality sites with a high trust score and domain authority.

So…How do I know Which Websites Google Trusts?

You’re interested in building backlinks to your website, so you decide to approach other blog authors in your field about writing guest blog posts.  How do you decide which websites to reach out to?  One way would be to check the domain authority and/or trust score of the websites you’re interested in reaching out to.

What the Difference Between Trust Flow Score and Domain Authority?

While both are useful measures of how helpful a backlink from a specific site would be, they are slightly different.  Based on my understanding so far (and admittedly, I’m still learning more about the nuanced differences), I’ll share my simple explanation.

A website’s trust flow score increases as a website gets more backlinks from quality websites.  Here, the quality of your backlinks makes a difference.  So a website that has a lot of quality backlinks pointing to it already has a high trust flow because it’s trusted by high quality sites.  It’s important to note that links from low quality sites will actually reduce your trust flow score.  Therefore, if you have links from low quality, spammy sites, you’ll want to disavow those links.

On the other hand, it’s my understanding that a site’s domain authority is a little more comprehensive measure of a website’s quality.   The Domain Authority takes into account the external links, internal links, popularity, what anchor text is used to link other sites to the website and the relevancy of the other sites pointing to that one.

Free Resources for Checking a Website’s Quality

You can check a website’s domain’s authority  using this free SEO tool.

Here’s another free tool where you can check a website’s trust flow and citation flow.

When All Else Fails…You Can Count on These to be High Quality Links

The best backlinks are those with both good trust flow and a high domain authority.  But I find it can be a pain to check both each time I’m reaching out to someone about a backlink. I generally just look for good, relevant sites.

In general, you can count on certain types of websites to be more trusted than others.  Web addresses ending in .gov or .edu should pretty much always be high quality.  One great way to get a .edu backlink is to reach out and ask to be added to resources pages for students at a local university.

Are you ready to come up with a plan to improve your small business website’s online presence? My SEO Consulting services can help!

Are You Ready to Get Serious About Your Website’s Search Engine Ranking?

Are you ready to get serious about your small business website’s SEO?  I help small businesses rank better on search engines.  I started my SEO Consulting services with psychotherapy group practice owners, but I do work with other small business owners as well.  The best way to rank quickly is to hire me to do your website’s on page optimization while you work on getting as many backlinks as possible.  I’ll offer you tips and you can even hire me to do some research for you.  I’ve found that the best approach to increasing your search engine rankings though is for me to really focus on the on page work while you invest time and energy (not money…please don’t make Google mad by paying for backlinks) into getting quality backlinks.

If you’re just wanting to learn more about search engine optimization, you can check out my free SEO e-course.  On the other hand, if you’re ready to work together, you can schedule a free 30 minute SEO consultation.  We’ll talk about your website and develop a plan to help get your small business in front of more potential clients.  I’ll help you figure out if my monthly SEO packages are what you’re looking for, or you might excel at doing your own SEO with a little training.