Is there enough substance to trust? Content and authority checks
Is there enough substance for people and machines to trust? 12 checks · 8% of the overall score.
Search engines and AI models reward sites that demonstrate depth over time: enough words to explain, readable enough to be understood, updated recently enough to be current, and referenced by others. This chapter measures content depth and the external signals of authority that are visible from the URL alone.
The 12 checks
| Check | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Homepage word count | Homepages under ~300 words rarely rank for anything beyond the brand name. |
| Readability (Flesch) | Plain language converts better and is quoted more by AI. |
| Thin pages | Pages with almost no text dilute the site's quality. |
| Visible freshness signals | Dates, “updated” notes and recent posts show the business is alive. |
| Blog / news section | Regular content is how sites earn rankings for non-brand queries. |
| Most recent content update (sitemap lastmod) | Sitemap dates reveal when anything last changed. |
| Archive activity (last ~12 months) | Wayback Machine captures show how often the site changes. |
| Website first seen (Wayback Machine) | Age of the site's public history. |
| Domain age | Older domains carry more trust; very new ones are scrutinised. |
| Global popularity rank | Traffic-rank estimates place the site among the web's ~10 million most-visited domains. |
| Link authority (0–10) | A PageRank-style estimate of inbound link strength. |
| Video content | Embedded video increases engagement and appears in video results. |
Most common fixes
- Expand the homepage to at least 400 words that state what you do, where, for whom, and why you.
- Publish one useful article a month answering a real customer question.
- Earn links from suppliers, associations, local press and directories you already belong to.
Questions
How much content does a small business website need?
Enough that each service has its own page of 400–800 words and the homepage clearly states what, where and for whom. Depth beats volume; a blog only helps if it answers real questions.