I used to check the search results and bang my head against the wall wondering why my site was not ranking. My articles were well written and the on-page SEO was just about perfect and yet I was still not showing or at least not where I thought I should be in the SERPS. In fact, there were lots of articles higher than mine that when I looked into it were not really SEO optimized at all yet they were beating me hands down. And the reason this was happening was TrustRank, Google trusted these other sites above my own.
When Google trusts what you do you are pretty much bullet proof. If your Trust Rank is low and you make a mistake they take you down big time. You see SEO is great but without TrustRank, on your side, the only competitors you beat are those who are not trusted.
