A recent post on SEOmoz entitled “Proving Trust on the Web” got us thinking. What do we, as website visitors, consciously or subconsciously look for on a website to gain our trust? How can a business promote it’s brand in a thoughtful, automatically trustworthy way? Here are the reasons SEOmoz gave:
Trustworthy:
- Clean, modern, beautiful design
- Poper grammar, spelling and sentence structure
- Deep detail provided about the background and associations of the pushlisher, author or company
- High quality photography of the author(s) or company
- Citations (often in the form of links) to other trustworthy sources
- Presence of high-quality graphics, screenshots or visuals
- Signals of social adoption and sharing (tweets, +1s, likes, etc)
- External validation from reviewed platforms (iPhone/Andoroid app, browser plugins, etc)
- Short, pronounceable, memorable domain and brand name
- Well reasoned, logical, intelligent content
- Professional logo
- Interaction and engagement on the site (comments, visits)
- Frequently and recently updated content on the site
- Clear indications from the author when/where bias or conflict of interest may exist
Untrustworthy:
- Dated, unprofessional, disjointed design
- Poor written prose, rife with errors
- Little to no information about the author(s), publisher or company
- Often no photo available
- Content lacks references to trustworthy sources, but may link out with affiliate codes
- Graphics, where present, feature clipart or stock photography
- Typically, few signs of social sharing exist
- Little or no signals of external validation from well known platforms
- Domains are keyword-based, use hyphenated, non-.com extensions and/or poor brand names
- Poory-argued, hard to follow content
- Amateurish, low quality logo
- 0 comments or signs of other interations/engagement
- Content often lacks indication of when it was produced and site is rarely updated
- Disclosure of any biases is non-existent
As you can see there’s a lot involved with being trusted online. Thankfully, the intrinsic value of trust means increased conversion rates, citations, references and social shares. Building your brand’s trust adds to nearly every activity that we as marketers are aiming for.
[Source: SEOmoz]
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