Every day I talk to someone that is either elated or completely bummed out when they find out what their page rank currently is. I of course will reply telling them that it’s great news when its high, and when its low I tell them not to worry about it quite so much, and then we talk about trust rank.

Everyone who is actively working towards a goal that involves making their living online should understand a few things.

1. Nothing happens overnight, or likely ever if it’s a “get rich quick” scheme.
2. Slow is steady and steady is fast, if you walk 5 miles and run the last 10 feet someone that jogs the whole way will beat you. Just one of the things my time in the military taught me that also applies in the business world.
3. Nothing you can do will replace hard work, quality content and implementing solid, honest marketing strategies.
4. Page rank will impress your friends but it will not make or break your site.

The factors that influence your search engine rankings are of course a very well guarded secret, but there are quite a few things that one can do to encourage a favorable spot in the ever growing list of “sites just like yours” and one factor that isn’t addressed enough is your sites “trust rank”

What is trust rank you may ask, it basically equates to your sites “street cred” or how trustworthy is your site. A site that has a high trust rank will quite regularly out perform a much higher page rank site in a similar niche for the same keywords or phrases. There are several factors that will have a big impact on your sites trust rank, such as:

• The age of your domain, nothing beats experience. If your site has been around for many years you are considered old money in the “SERP social circle” and your site will have a much higher trust rank than a site that is 6 months or a year old, regardless of how many articles that new site can pump out every 24 hours.
• Quality content, coming in second place to age. Quality, regularly updated and relevant content is the daily must-do if you want the search engines to pay attention to you, don’t throw up a poorly written, inaccurate article once every 3 months and expect anyone to care. Add good content often (3-5 per week minimum) and watch your site climb up the SERP ladder.
• Quality, not just quantity of back links. If you post a flyer in the bad part of town, don’t be surprised when some undesirable side effects come of it. Get good links naturally from other related sites that fit the above criteria which will have a high trust rank and you will be rewarded. Simply paying money to a link farm to get yourself a bazillion back links from a site about cats, that’s written at a second grade level and is in Korean will not benefit your English speaking site teaching people how to make money online.

Like everything else that is required to make your site a success, nothing will ever replace hard work (unless google decides to give you their domain) so get cracking, build your trust rank and watch your profits climb. Oh, and don’t get caught up in the “I will endorse anything if I get paid $5 to say I love it” crowd, that just irritates me :-)