2. Content is king
When potential clients have questions, most likely they are
going to turn to search engines to help them find the
answers.
If your website comes up first in the search rankings it gives
you an opportunity to engage that person and prove to
them you’re a credible source. Just the fact that your site
came up first will likely improve your business credibility.
Of course, reaching the top of search engines isn’t always
the easiest things to do.
But before you start trying to drive traffic via off-page SEO
practices, you need to make sure your content is worthy of
driving traffic to in the first place.
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3. Useful – if your content doesn’t add value, people won’t read it. To
know what your readers value, you need to continually interact
and engage with them. This is done by having a solid
understanding of your marketing and sales process.
Backed by data - people trust data. A quick way to boost your
business credibility is to simply back your content by data. Once
you build a content portfolio of data-driven content, you can
simply reference your own content when appropriate. This
technique re-enforces your business credibility.
Optimized for readability – when writing content for your
website, you need to organize it in a way that makes it enjoyable
for people to read. Chunking information together and using bullet
points to give people information are typically preferred by
readers. Be sure to test different methods to see what your readers
prefer the most.
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4. Updated often – when Google updated it indexing system in early June, it made
search results “fresher”. Meaning that, in order to have that opportunity to get
in front of potential customers, you’re going to have to create useful content
on a regular basis.
Include excellent visuals – in most cases, people really don’t like to read about
studies and data. The funny thing is, however, that people absolutely love to
look at charts and visualizations of data. One of the easiest ways to build
business credibility is to take your data and make visuals from it in word or
excel.
Minimize errors – nothing screams unprofessional more than errors. Always
make sure you take the time to look for typographical errors. Use a plugin like
“broken link checker” to continually scan your website for broken links. When
you do come across errors, correct them immediately.
Always be human – people are much more responsive to humans than they are
to corporations. When appropriate, putting a human face behind your content
will improve your business credibility.
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5. Design is queen
Content is king only because it is what drives traffic to
your site. A research report by Stanford’s BJ Fogg (et al),
however, explains that the first thing many visitors will
judge is actually NOT your content but rather the design
of your website. As illustrated in the chart below, this
varies slightly depending on your category and who is
viewing your website.
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6. Here are a few suggestions for improving business
credibility through the design of your website:
Have a professional logo – a really easy way to boost business credibility is
to have a professional logo. If you’re not good with design, use a site like
logotournament.com and pay a couple hundred dollars to have
designers submit entries.
Use quality images – images are a powerful tool for boosting business
credibility. Always make it a goal to only use quality images on your
website. If you can, consider purchasing a quality SLR camera and
honing in on your photoshop skills.
Always be testing – the more you can improve your website, the more
you’ll improve your business credibility. Those of you who’ve read The
Poised before may have noticed that I switched out my profile image. I
thought the initial photo looked cool but it turns out that people
connect with the current photo more. I never would have known that
without testing.
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7. Improve business credibility by making your
website more social
Give your readers a chance to interact – it’s typically
always a good idea to have a commenting system on your
blog.
Let readers subscribe via email or rss – email
subscriptions give you a way to see what your readers value.
To do this you’ll need to use a tool like Aweber or
MailChimp. If you don’t have money to purchase one of
these services, use Feedburner. Either way, be sure to
provide the email subscription option so you can move
your email list later on.
Respond to comments – if someone takes the time to say
something about your content, you need to respond. Don’t
just respond though; respond in a meaningful way.
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8. Build relationships with readers – comments give you
a great opportunity to learn about people. If the
person who commented on your content has a blog,
follow them and interact with their content as well.
Make it easy to contact you – in most cases people
prefer to contact you using methods other than blog
comments. Make sure that you provide several
different contact options. Email, a mailing address,
and a phone number are a must. Consider using a
service like Desk.com or Zendesk to help you manage
these different channels.
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9. Conclusion
The great thing about a website is that it’s always up and
helping you improve your business credibility. Of
course, this means that your website could potentially
be damaging your business credibility if you’re not
careful. If you haven’t implemented these practices yet,
be sure to do so as soon as you can.
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