A question that is on every webmaster’s mind: how do websites gain credibility? Well, the answer is simple, gain the trust of search engines. To separate your site from the schemers and the spammers follow these steps and you will be well on your way to earning trust and legitimacy online.
Search Engines: They do more than just finding the latest stories, or the finest restaurants in town. Their job is to help users find the most legitimate and trustworthy sites out there. Your job as a webmaster is to please Google and other search engines; gaining their trust will lead to more credibility, and higher rankings.
Pleasing Search Engines: These six factors will help you gain more “street cred” with search engines:
- In-Links: Search engines see links that lead directly back to your site from external sites, as a sign of trustworthiness. In-Links assure Google and search engines alike, that your site has strong credentials. The more credible the external site is the more pleasing and desirable your site looks to search engines.
- Out-Links: These are links from your site that link to other reliable and relatable external sites. Make sure that the external site is not outdated and that there are no broken links, otherwise, your search rankings can take a hit.
- Error-free site: Make sure there are no broken or missing images, no spelling errors, or improper grammar. All of these factors will reflect badly on your credibility.
- Traffic: The more traffic you have, the more trustworthy and relevant you seem to search engines.
- Navigation: Your site needs to be user-friendly, and easy to navigate. You don’t need to get all fancy. As long as people are able to explore your site, they will be able to gather the information they came to your site to find. If your site is difficult to navigate, people will not stay on your site, creating a high percentage bounce rate. Search engines will see this as an indication that your site is not a successful match for certain search queries.
- XML Sitemap: Insert a sitemap onto your site. A sitemap is a blueprint of your site that outlines each page of your site. Having a sitemap is the equivalence of having an easy to navigate site for humans. Search engines are able to crawl and index every page of your site more accurately and quickly.
Gaining credibility from search engines is a battle that needs to be fought and won. If search engines see you as a spammer, or as an unreliable source, your site has ZERO credibility. If you don’t have any credibility, search engines will flag your site as unreliable, and irrelevant. If this happens you can kiss goodbye the chances of you being found by potential clients. You need to treat search engines as if they are a needy girlfriend/boyfriend. Give them the love and attention they so desire, and you will have gained credibility. This love and attention search engines crave is outlined above in black and white in six easy to follow steps.
-Joe Giorgianni
If you are interested in more SEO techniques or would like to hire us to manage your reputation online contact us at: sales@getfoundquick.com or call 857.526.0096.
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