The original patent for Google’s PageRank algorithm focused solely on a mathematical calculation based on the number of links to a website. A simple normalization and voila! – we had the PageRank. Humans however, are very clever at manipulating systems to their advantage, and soon it was necessary to introduce other elements into the calculation. Two of the most important variables are Trust and Relevance.

Basically it means that a link to your site from another site whose subject matter is similar to yours carries more weight than a link that comes from elsewhere. The “Trust” quotient is a measure of a page’s authority and how qualified it is to make a good “vote” (link) to a page. Certain sites like government websites from example, have a high level of trust. But this is due to the nature of their content and the links that point to them – not because they have .org or .edu as their suffix as many people tend to think.

Therefore, it’s worthwhile expending a lot of effort to get links from authority websites instead of trading links with unrelated blogs. Of course, this is easier said than done as a lot of people would give a lot to be linked to from these sites. But then that’s why they’re worth it! If everyone would be doing it, then it wouldn’t be valuable.

Popularity: 2% [?]