Developing Your Website's Credibility Factor

The "Credibility Factor" is a huge dynamic component for the ranking and success potential of all web sites, not just commerce. It is generally theorized that the most important components of Credibility are trustworthiness and expertise. So we will look at those areas first.

Trustworthiness is more or less the dependability of the site, products, policies, staff, performance, and promises. I know that seems like a lot. Look at it like this, does your site deliver what it claims to over 95% of the time? Its that simple.

Expertise is a direct reflection of whether or not the user can believe you, your claims, and your products. This one is sticky. Word of mouth is a powerful motivation to do things, but equally powerful motivation not to.

This is where the "Get rich" scam sites and such will not gain the TrustRank and Credibility Factor of good commerce sites with PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, Google Checkout, eBay, and other online affiliations will be able to develop and sustain a good Credibility through good business connections.

Here are some ideas to help you build sites that are more trustworthy and credible.

• ALWAYS clearly publish the site privacy policy. This is going to be something Google will be crawling for soon to continue to develop TrustRank.
• Do not spam. Read the Can-Spam act.
• Avoid paid subscriptions.
• Give good detail about products/services.
• Have a working contact area with VALID information.
• Watch your backlinks for bad ones. Send the bad ones emails asking to be removed.
• Shipping policy and return policy if applicable.
• Terms of use or conditions if applicable.
• You must have a postmaster@yourdomain for users to contact you for abuse issues.
• Use a standard domain extension. .com/.net/.edu./.gov/.org
• Use SSL, this also is and will continue to part of the "guts" of Google's TrustRank.
• Look in to a Privacy Seal/Reliability Seal I recommend the Better Business Bureau for Commerce it is the least expensive and most recognized. (US Businesses Only)
• Use customer testimonials on your site, audio or video is best.
• Get rid of the logins, users realize that most site only use these to gain their email addresses and spam them. Most will leave and never log in.
• Get a site rating device for your users to rate content or the site.
• Display licenses, memberships, awards, and projects on your site. It gives your company depth.
• Make good business connections.

I think all in all Credibility is common sense, take your "webmaster's Hat" off sit back and look at your site from a user's prospective. I have a great deal of trouble with this, so I leave it to the development test team...My husband , 3 daughters, and 3 sons. I get pretty well rounded responses. So use your head, this is already a big deal and is going to be a MAJOR player in 2008. Might as well be on board and cached already, hmmmm leg up?

Peace and SEO

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