Does Web Credibility Help Your Rankings?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, August 8, 2008

While having a good reputation is a must when it comes to attracting customers, does it have any search engine optimization benefits.

If you accept that one of the major components to a search engines ranking of a web site and its pages is the number and quality of links coming in, then perhaps credibility could be an issue. Let’s face it, would you link to a site whose credibility was doubtful? Would those links hurt you SEO if they proved to be dishonest?

Web credibility has become a big issue with customers still having lingering doubts over the reliability and honesty of online businesses. Some larger businesses have ongoing credibility issues and this flows through to all other sites. There are several fairly simple steps you can take that can improve the credibility factor of your site.

Include your off site information. This includes telephone number and street or mailing address. If possible, get listed on Google maps.

Can I verify your existence? If your business is registered, let me see the registration information. In some countries you company registration numbers, registered offices, and other information that is available publicly. Include this information on your site.

Are you qualified, perhaps a member of a professional association - prove it. There are many professions that require registration and membership of professional associations to work in that field. Display the relevant information.

Provide appropriate contact details. Providing appropriate contact details is important. Sales@ or Admin@ are not realistic. Wherever possible, use a name that I can find on your website. If you have staff profiles, include their email addresses.

The first step in credibility is to provide those in doubt sufficient means to prove your existence, your qualifications and your ability to provide the service/product relating to your web site.

As a web owner, if I can see that you are indeed a credible site and one that is worth linking too, I will be more than happy to do so. In fact, if your credible and I am credible, the spin off is that one my customers is likely to shop with you, and vice-versa. Credibility has become one of the most important issues for successful online trading.

Category: Online Reputation Management

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2 Comments

Made Sunday, 10 of August , 2008 at 8:18 am

When we are demonstrating our industry focused, white labelled news service to potential customers, we find that site credibility is a major benefit to increase conversion. The issue website owners have with this is that the financial returns are hard to quantify compared with other benefits such as traffic levels, stickiness and so on. With offline marketing and PR this is the norm, but online the technology means that exact figures are expected and so brand enhancement is often ignored.

Comment by SOHO Prospecting

Made Friday, 15 of August , 2008 at 12:22 am

It helps to increase search engine traffic for sure. According to iprospect, 39% of search users consider the company in the top of search engines as the best in their field. Because of that, some people don’t even bother checking the competitors’ websites.