To help your website rank higher in search, you need to establish both trust and online authority.

In just a few decades, the vast web of information that is the internet has expanded exponentially, and it isn’t showing signs of letting up anytime soon.

But while the wealth of information online is incredible, it is also problematic. So much content is scattered like islands in a massive sea. If you manage a website for your company – your personal internet island – your challenge is visibility, or how to get visitors across the vast sea to your shores.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is your tool. Effective SEO helps you bring your website closer to the top of search results on search engines like Google. A top ranking, however, is based on two main points.

First, Google prefers and gives a higher ranking to websites that are “trusted” and that enjoy a good reputation. This means if you’ve built a high-quality site, Google will trust it more and rank it higher.

But what exactly is a high-quality site? For Google, this is a site with content that is both informative and precise. You’ll need to make sure you’ve fixed spelling errors, and ensure content is easy to read and written in a style that is accessible.

Remember: the easier it is for a larger audience to consume your well-written, clear content, the higher Google will rank your site.

But while quality is important, reputation is even more so. A good way to build your online reputation is to have other respected sites to link to your site.

For example, you might get an established news site like that of the New York Times or Guardian to run an article about your business and include a link to your website. Such links are known as backlinks.

The second key point is the more authority your website has, the higher it will rank in search.

Authority is measured by the number of backlinks you earn and the number of followers you have on social media. Simply put, if you have 10,000 Facebook followers and 550 backlinks, many of which come from respected sources, you’ll rank higher than a competitor with just 100 Facebook followers and 20 backlinks.

Here we’ve covered the basics of SEO; now it’s time to dive into more specific strategies.