By David Watson, Design Drizzle
Modern-day consumers are increasingly mistrustful of brands and businesses flooding them with paid ads and promotions. The influx of online businesses, products, and services has subdued the charm of digital shopping and buying convenience. Consumers have caught up with all the SEO strategies and digital marketing schemes designed to capture their attention.
Consumers actively seek credibility and transparency before investing their trust and money into an online business. Naturally, your website is the beating heart of your digital identity, and your credibility begins from this platform. A visitor or potential customer will exhaust all means and resources available to examine your website’s credibility and authenticity.
As it happens, consumers aren’t the only entity that scrutinizes a website’s credibility, quality, and authenticity. Google and search engines have highly sophisticated ranking algorithms that dissect creative and technical SEO aspects to determine website credibility. Winning over these AI-powered algorithms and automated bots is quite a challenging task.
Website credibility has a profound impact on your overall rankings, website exposure, and audience engagement. Google is responsible for providing its users with relevant, trustworthy, and reliable websites in search results. The search engine takes its responsibility very seriously. It even issues security alerts to prevent users from venturing onto unsafe websites.
Keep reading to explore factors that impact your website’s credibility and trustworthiness.
Technical Errors, Bugs & Malfunctions
Does your website feature any technical errors or glitches that might scare users away? If yes, then Google will quickly note these errors, reducing your chances or making it to the search results’ first page. Technical errors, bugs, and malfunctions can drastically compromise the credibility of your site and brand image.
Technical errors are frustrating, and they undermine the user’s confidence and trust in your website, information, and business. Modern-day users do not waste time waiting around for pages and images to load. They will quickly leave your website and visit a competitor’s site that offers a user-friendly experience. Hence, it’s wise to invest in digital tools to conduct website audits and check backlinks for technical glitches, broken links, and malfunctions. These tools can help you identify technical errors, 404 pages, broken links, slow-loading pages, viruses, and bugs within seconds. Business owners are advised to invest in a reliable and credible web host that offers built-in security features.
HTTPS Security
Did you know that HTTPS certifications offer data security, encryption, and safe browsing experiences? Google always warns its users from venturing onto unsafe websites suspected of harboring bugs, viruses, and other technical vulnerabilities. SSL encryption improves the surface credibility of a website, winning over both customers and search engine algorithms.
A website without HTTPS cannot protect its users’ personal and financial information or ensure secure browsing experiences. HTTPS breeds trust and credibility, and a lack of SSL encryption results in security warnings from Google and the browser. Imagine the impression your website would make when the visitor gets a security warning?
Do you expect visitors to continue to your website despite the security hazard? Modern-day users are hooked on their smartphones, and they dare not enter unsafe websites in fear of viruses. Users don’t want to infect their smartphones and mobile devices with bugs and viruses. Therefore, SSL encryption and data security are vital undertakings to enjoy user trust and higher search rankings.
Web Design Quality & Consistency
In the early days, there were no preferences or requirements with regards to web designs and layouts. But in 2021, users have a fair concept of high-quality web designs that allow effortless navigation and interactive experiences. Users actively prioritize websites that are engaging, immersive, and brimming with interactive content.
The layout, design, color palettes, fonts, and categories have a dynamic impact on credibility. These aesthetics may seem superficial, but their influence runs much more profound. Web design is a powerful aspect of your branding strategy, and users demand consistency, creativity, and professionalism.
An unprofessional or low-quality web design devoid of modern upgrades and features will breed a negative image. Users will prefer competitor websites over a retro web design that doesn’t support contemporary upgrades. It’s crucial to maintain a professional and consistent web design that supports easy navigation and innovative upgrades.
Most business owners neglect factors like fonts and color schemes because they downplay the impact of branding aesthetics. It’s essential to revert to the lessons on color psychology and use different colors to evoke emotional responses. Colors can boost brand recognition, making your website experience memorable and engaging.
Content Creativity, Relevance & Readability
Users venture onto a website for a reason. They are either looking for business or information in the form of content. Most business owners believe that the word content translates into the written word, confining content to blogs and articles. That’s not true. Content refers to all forms of media, such as images, blogs, articles, listicles, podcasts, videos, and more.
Creating one form of content, such as lengthy blogs, also undermines the credibility of a website. Today, users are flooded with all kinds of content, and they engage with brands that curate a variety of media. Users appreciate a creative mixture of videos, images, social media posts, and informative articles to keep them hooked.
However, creating a mix of content won’t do the trick unless you take measures to build relevance. Keyword research is a vital endeavor that builds credibility by connecting your content with your target audience. Readability is another powerful factor because if your content isn’t readable, it will compromise website credibility.
Domain Authority
Google prioritizes authoritative and popular websites when it comes to allocating higher rankings and coveted feature question spots. How can you build authority for your website? It requires a combination of SEO strategies, of which link building is the most effective technique.
Generating high-quality backlinks from authoritative and credible websites, such as Forbes and The New York Times, is the ultimate goal. It’s not an easy endeavor and requires meticulous research, digital PR, and extensive outreach with leading publications. Securing backlinks from popular websites can boost your search rankings and domain authority tremendously.
Conclusion
Numerous strategies allow marketers and business owners to build credibility and authority for their websites. However, these strategies demand meticulous research, endless creativity, and robust technical knowledge of SEO.
Focusing on content creation and creativity is essential, but technical SEO strategies matter the most in building credibility and authority. Investing in digital tools to create backlinks, perform website audits and review technical errors will reduce the overall labor. Ultimately, consistency is key to ensure sustainable SEO success.
