Do you wonder what the single most important factor in the success of a blog is? It’s trust!
Trust is a tool that enables you to communicate and work together with people.
In blogging like in business trust is the single most important success prerequisite.
This blog succeeded in getting 1000 subscribers because people trusted me – a complete stranger!
Building your reputation
In social SEO we often talk about reputation management or building.
Reputation is the aura of being trustworthy, the message purported by others who already trust you.
Those others trust you so much that they will recommend you to their peers or readers.
On the Web, where most people never meet the actual person behind a blog or business, trust is even more important!
Likewise reputation is even more crucial than in print publishing or offline business.
Before you think about personal branding and the likes you need trust.
Nothing is more useful to gain trust on the Web than a blog.
Trust is a two way street. You trust others and other trust you or they don’t.
Thus ideally you also have some kind of two way communication channel established.
In SEO trust is even more valuable as it is seriously hampered by its bad reputation.
A blog post is the perfect conversation starter!
People get to know you by engaging with you. They start by listening.
A blog is still the most effective tool to accomplish that.
How to establish trust online?
How to build trust with a business blog? Especially if you’re not full time blogging?
As a part time blogger I have always envied professional bloggers a little.
You know, these girls and guys who spent all day and night in their basements blogging and who have thousands of subscribers and followers.
There is no need to do that though: You can succeed as a part time semi-professional blogger like myself too.
Focus on the trust! There are some very simple measures to gain some of it. First of all skip the sneaky techniques.
- The Google ads
- The undisclosed affiliate links
- The overselling – “we offer the world’s best x”
- The attacks on others to elevate yourself, you might become famous but also the least trusted person in your industry, even a persona non grata in the community due to hatebait
- The pyramid schemes where you make people join services you get commission from
On the other hand it’s not as easy as following solely this simple advice.
- You have to know what you are talking about, convince your peers and your niche leaders that you do.
- You can’t by only flattering them!
- You have to play in the same league based on merit.
- Thus you have to share what you know to enable others to assess your merit.
- You have to mingle with like-minded individuals, at least online.
Write well or let others write
Last but not least you have to write a lot and well.
Or you find other writers who blog on your behalf!
I want to thank James of Online Marketing Banter who I entrusted this blog twice for contributions.
He assisted me in getting where I am with seo2.blog!
Weren’t I a prolific writer myself (and arrogant) I’d need someone like him to blog.
He’s of course only one of the many who trusted me: My
- readers
- subscribers
- peers
and the industry as well as blogging and social media mavens who link and refer to me.
Your trust has made this blog this big. It’s your triumph too.
On the day the last post by James was published this blog reached 1000 subscribers!
His sexy post on permission marketing made a difference!
So you see tapping into different writing styles and perspectives is also helpful.
And guess what? By 2025 seo2.blog still has that audience – even though feeds and feed readers are not cool anymore!
I still have 1k subscribers only Feedly alone.
Feedly is the most popular feed reader and they call them followers over there.
E-E-A-T is the new normal
When I wrote about trust in 2008 it was a neglected topic. Most SEO experts focused on
Why should people trust you at all when you rank on top of Google?
By 2025 it’s a completely different situation. Without trust Google won’t even show you.
Trust is the most important part of Google’s E-E-A-T concept.
Human quality raters look at websites. Why?
They determine whether they are trustworthy and then the Google algorithm gets trained on that feedback.