Business Management Consultant - Stuntdubl Search and Marketing Consulting

A good SEO is both a geek and a suit, and is able to speak the language of both worlds. Providing SEO services without understanding both business and techie principles is the equivalent of trying to teach english to spanish children without knowing both languages and cultural mores of both fluently.

A few ways to judge if you may even be a tech guy that speaks marketing:

1 - You’re a card carrying member of the DMA, AMA, or MMA and know what USB, C-class IP, DNS, WHOIS, PPC, and G stands for.

2 - Every morning you recite the 4 P’s of the marketing mix as well as all mnemonics for the OSI Model including how it is like a 7 layer burrito.

3 - You know what city Madison Avenue is in as well as who invented the altair, TI, and Atari.

4 - You dream about purple cows and have listened to pink floyd synched with the wizard of oz after consuming various forms of caffeine.

5 - You read Adweek, Adage, Brand Republic, Fast Magazine, Inc.com, Linux Journal, Linux Mag, and Apache Week.

6 - You use linkedin and 2600 in the same day.

7 - You’ve heard of Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, Saatchi and Saatchi, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, BBDO, and can speculate how many boxes they run, their bandwidth speeds and marvel at how well Grand Theft Auto would run on their intranet infrastructures.

8 - You buy text links and optimize webhost performance.

9 - You are a certified Ambassador, Adwords professional, A+, network +, and cisco certified MCSE (marketing computer speak explainer).

10 - You can name the top 5 most run banner ads of all time, and still surf with javascript off from a proxy, and cloaking your user agent

Your marketing guys and gals need to communicate the how’s and why’s of both marketing and SEO to their caffeine and sugar sipping cohorts coding databases down the hall.

SEO/SEM is getting your marketing guys to talk to your techies (and maybe even hang out and ENJOY their differences of world and work views). SEO is bridging the business/ technology communication digital divide. I really enjoy both worlds, and training on the areas that oftentimes get missed when the dialogue is incomplete or strained due to how different they have traditionally been. Think of the stereotype of both groups (while stereotypes are not great, they are often based somewhat in reality), and you couldn’t have two more different type of people. These differences cause the cognitive dissonance that IS SEO.

This is the essence of SEO - project management that improves the communication between folks who specialize in marketing and those that specialize in technology for a better understanding of improving the relevance of a website for optimial search performance. This is a new idea, and even the personality type is a completely new one (thus the demand right now). If you work for a marketing company, ad agency, PR firm or SEO company that needs some strategic advice - I have a deal for you, Drop me a line, and I’ll fill you in, or point you in the direction of some good folks and information that may be able to help you.

I had a recent e-mail conversation that I felt was worth publishing publicly (with permission of course), due to the frequency I receive this type of question. Link development is highly important, and quality link development is a valuable skill. That being said, it is still only a part of the overall process of getting a website top rankings. It is often among the most difficult part of ranking a website high because it doesn’t get planned for from the start of the project and has to be retrofitted later. Getting the links you need for the rankings you want entails understanding the value involved from the publisher’s side, and providing adequate incentives for them to link to you (cool stuff, good content, bartering, cash, etc.). Unfortunately, this is a pretty difficult thing to put a budget proposal in for unless you really understand the true value of the different types of links, and what they mean to the bottom line.

Another issue that often gets neglected by SEO’s is the management of client expectations. When you talk about doing SEO for their site, the client does not have the same fundamental understanding of what that will include for their site unless it is spelled out in pretty specific detail. It is very important to set realistic expectations, since many people have been able to achieve extremely high return on investment rates during the “SEO boom” of the last decade or so. Unfortunately the barrier to entry for new sites, and even existing sites continues to rise as larger corporations, ad agencies, and other entities with substantial financial backing start wising up to the fundamental principles of SEO. It’s always nice to double traffic, sales, or even revenue, but many clients still expect this to be the norm unless their expectations are set to more reasonable levels. It’s nice…but I wish I could say it ALWAYS happends and should be expected.

E-mail from reader:

I’ve been reading your blog posts; you are always referenced as an excellent link builder. So I have to pick your brains for a minute.

I think there’s something I’m missing…but I can’t put my finger on it.

Hello fellow seo,

Thanks for writing.

My big suggestion would be - think quality, not quantity. Chances are you
probably don’t NEED as many links as you think you do…of course, I don’t
know the whole situation, but most likely if you get 1/10 of what they have
in terms of volume, but trump the quality, you will out rank them.

When you get into the realm where you DO definitely need that many links,
the viral marketing route is the only way to go. You need to naturally
attract those links with ideas formed around linkbaiting.

Sounds like you are right on track man. You can’t manually build that many
links normally and have them be quality. The links that you don’t have to
ask for are generally the best ones.

In high dollar marketplaces, link begging just doesn’t cut it anymore
unfortunately. It sucks, but more and more of the industries will return to
the need for ad agencies and traditional media to be successful at SEO in
the next few years. The barrier to entry was lowered, but it is now back to
rising every day for new businesses on the web.

Best of luck with your project,

Todd

Continued…

I feel like Linking Sucks…because everybody’s doing it. So, if I were your client and I was competing for a competitive term like Bass Fishing (I read that you like to fish) and I needed 5,000 links. How many email requests would you need to send in a day ? 20-50-100or more? — I’m still stuck here in disbelief.

Thanks for the info and the responses. Congratulations on going solo by the way!!! Thanks again Todd.

Hey xxxxx,

You’re question is so good, I’m almost tempted to ask to answer it publicly on my site.

Actually, you’re pretty much answering your own question correctly, but the points you bring up are quite relevant.

>linking sucks
Yes, it absolutely does. It is hard, tedious work - but it is absolutely neccessary to address for rankings.

>bass fishing
I don’t think I’d ever encourage a client that wasn’t already in the top 1000 that they could rank for this. I would more likely encourage them to focus on three word variations for the next few years if the site was only a couple of years old (or perhaps even new). As unfair as it is, I often turn down new sites for work, and just provide them with some information, because of the steep learning curve, and the increasing barrier to entry for new business on the web.

>lot of work
Yes it is. I normally just train on HOW to do it. I’ve spent plenty of time doing it, and when I feel so inclined, I link build for my own sites. I think it is really about finding the right balance, and link mix to achieve the ultimate goal of higher rankings.

>Math
Again, I think it’s quality and not quantity. Trust trumps just about anything these days on G. One “advertorial” or “presell page” on the right trusted domain and you may not need ANY links;)

Build links smarter…not harder. Train your developers or yourself to find high VALUE links, and you will grow more quickly over time. The landscape may change, but if you’re always searching for the highest quality links and overall advertising value, you won’t have to redevelop your process near as often.

Other things to consider
- scraper site backlinks from sites who’ve been on top for a while
- natural link attraction by ranking for phrases
- natural links from good content (did i really just say that?)
- syndication and aggregation

Link building can be outsourced as well, provided the staff is trained to a decent level of quality. You’re on the right line of thinking…the barrier to entry has definitely been raised. Link begging is no longer a valid technique solely on it’s own. It’s using the knowledge and understanding of how and why links are valuable that ultimately helps to create an effective seo strategy now through a marketing mix of obtaining them for rankings.

Cheers,

Todd

Don’t make your users feel stupid. Make them laugh. Check your 404 page today and make sure it’s not the same old default techie drivel that sites lose users to every day. Preserve your web traffic with a few easy changes.

Just in case - what is a 404

Probably my single most “SEO pet peeve” is default 404 pages. Don’t ask me why, but it just bugs the hell out of me. Probably because it’s a really easy thing to do once someone tells you how, and it often gets neglected until someone points it out.

Don’t make your users feel stupid by serving them some uber-techie looking page…if anything, this is your chance to appear HUMAN and show that you make mistakes and you can fess up to them. 404’s are a great way for even the most stuffiest of corporate websites to display a little humor. It’s okay…EVERYONE serves 404’s sometimes…you’re not gonna get around them, so you might as well use them. Don’t be a contentious asshole…admit you made a mistake and have a bit of fun with it.

404’s aren’t really an “SEO thing” as much as they are a usability thing. More and more, however, I am realizing that I lump all things internet business and marketing into SEO, since search algorithms go much deeper than titles, h1’s, keywords, and a few links anymore.

I had to put this post off a little bit, after realizing my own 404 page was a lil’ foobar, and after a bit of digging through my hacked to bits version of wordpress, I fixed my 404 page.

Creating the ultimate 404 page

Recipe calls for:
-(1) Customized message to include: enough humor to elicit a response and prevent boredom, a few words of self deprecation and apology for the error, and written instructions on how to proceed.
-(1) search box
-(1) basic sitemap - directory style
-optional: Funny picture because it’s an error page and you can do that kinda stuff on the web no matter how “corporate” you are.

Cool examples of custom 404 pages:

• Web Professor 404
• 404 inspiration
• SurveySam 404
• Homestar runner 404
• In case you don’t like 404 traffic

Examples of terrible use of 404 page

• Geeks rock - clean it up guys
• Boingboing - blame the people who link to you?
• Even the ultra-brilliant Doc
• Mr. Battelle too
• Squidoo 200 doo-doo
• SEOspeedwagon bombs, but the mothership does it up right.
• Guy doesn’t even list his domain

I’m sure there are plenty of others I could pick on, but these were the ones that I checked out first. I’m not saying I’ve never been guilty of it myself…just that it is a very easy mistake to fix 9 out of 10 times, and that the default settings for 404’s generally suck. This is MUCH more disturbing when it happens on commercial websites

How to Create a Custom 404 on IIS

• Custom 404’s for IIS

How to Create a Custom 404 on Apache

• Custom 404 creation in .htaccess

Other notes on 404s

Always serve 404’s. Always have “customize 404’s” on your list of SEO to-do’s. You can create pretty custom pages for different types of 404 errors, but NEVER bypass the 404 process unless you have a very good reason. Serving 301’s, 302’s, and 200 codes instead of 404’s can create some serious issues, much more serious than just using the ugly default page not found responses.

Note to Yahoo Store Management and Yahoo store users

There is a 404 setting in yahoo store that is an absolutely TERRIBLE idea. It redirects all 404 traffic to the homepage with a 302 redirect. This can create some serious issues and should be avoided at all costs. I don’t believe it is a default setting, but it can really create some problems and should not be done this way. Use a sitemap with a brief 404 message at the top to let users know what’s going on.

If you work for yahoo stores, please beg for yahoo store page level permanent 301 redirects for us too.

Do you have favorite 404’s, examples of poor 404 use, or advice for creative uses of them?

Link valuation is the most fundamental component of current SEO strategies in my mind. There are certainly other important aspects to ranking well, but without understanding how to put a value on a link you are sunk. That’s why I harp about it on a daily basis, and think about it myself just as often.

Pubcon conferences are always exceptional for the insights that are triggered by being around of a slew of intelligent resourceful people. One of the ideas that had sort of dawned upon me beforehand, but was driven home during the conference was a new idea on pitching viral marketing to a client based on the value of the links that are naturally attracted.

Branding is a bonus
I must first say that I barely believe in branding. I understand the concept, and I’m sure there is value to it, but since I can’t measure it well enough…I don’t like it. I don’t like big brands that waste money in the commercial equivalent of political lobbying. If you have to pay to tell people how cool you are…you lose coolness points in my mind. This leaves me as a direct marketer. I love ROI tracking. I love analytics. I love seeing the bottom line and making it grow. Of course this isn’t always possible, but to me, branding is a bonus.

The SEO Lifecycle
I really enjoy link development. Well, let me re-state…I really enjoy TRAINING on doing link development. I have put in my time Link Serfing, and I still do from time to time to keep my skills in the area strong. There is nothing like coming across a nice strong link with a lot of googlejuice flowing and getting them to vote for your site through a simple e-mail. Little link serf’s have grown up all over the world from sending requests for a backlink to becoming CEO’s of million dollar companies. The power of a good link is enormous. The understanding of this power has lowered the barrier to entry to nearly all industries, creating a unique window of opportunity for those that stumbled accross it.

In order to be a good SEO, you must understand how to value links. In order to truly appreciate the value of a good link, you must hunt for and acquire links for your site or someone elses. Link begging is a tough job. Link bartering isn’t all that much easier. As folks get better at these jobs they learn negotiation skills, SEO skills, networking skills, and much more. As their skills improve, there is the expectations of advancement. If these expectations are not met in a company setting, the link serf will continue the stages of the SEO lifecycle, and the best of them will go on to become their own business owners, or self employed.

Link Monger’s Anonymous
1. We admit we are powerless over links — our lives have become unmanagemeable trying to measure everything in toolbar PageRank.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity, and that someday algorithms will no longer rely so heavily on a link popularity which is a ballot box that we can stuff, but more likely something with a much higher barrier to entry that will restore the balance of power back to those who have maintained control for so long already in all nature of industry.

3. Made a decision to return to sticky content development with a focus on natural link acquisition.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of our backlinks.

5. Admitted to Google, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of how unnaturally acquiring links can be wrong.

6. Were entirely ready to have Google remove any sites that were artificially inflated by off-topic links that did not occur “naturally”

7. Humbly asked folks at Google to reconsider relevancy - that it can sometimes be commercially defined (as in the case of Bill Gross inventing PPC) and asked that they redefine their concept of legitimate advertising to include the use of relevant text link advertising for the benefit of improving search engine rankings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed through reciprocal linking, suggestion of linking schemes, and links pages, and became willing to make amends to them all if only by explaining to them how search engines work these days.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal link inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through e-mail and message boards to improve our communication with Google and other search engiens, as we understood it, asking only for consideration of relevant text link advertising and it passing link popularity to help sites rank.

12. Having had a webmaster/SEO/marketing professional awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to link mongers everywhere, and to practice these principles in all our development so that webmasters/SEO’s/marketing professionals will be viewed in a more positive light despite their link mongering tendancies.

So What’s This Got to Do with Viral Marketing?
Well, it is basically me trying to bid farewell to link mongering. I love links. From directories to reciprocals, bought, borrowed, begged, and bartered, links have been excellent to me. I have, however, always been one to look for the easier way of doing things. I’ve also always been a guy who liked good ideas. It’s sometimes hard to pitch good ideas to people, and even harder yet to monetize them to make it profitable. In my mind, viral marketing has become the easy way to get links. If you understand social dynamics and what will be widely adopted, you have a much better chance at creating a successful website through linkbaiting than through hours and hours of link development. (Hmmm…I’m starting to sound like the “create good content militia”).

Now this is not to say that I don’t like link development. I think it still has it’s place along with just about every other type of link. Links aren’t going to hurt you as long as there is a natural distribution of the different types linking to your site. Link buying, press releases, presell pages, etc. are just a piece of the puzzle. Someone who’s been a link developer, however, understands the immense value of a good viral marketing campaign if only for the links. Make it easy for people to link to you. Maximize the benefit of your links in the same ways that you would if you were requesting them directly. Steer the nature of the link to benefit you the most with incentive based viral marketing.

Link development alone won’t make you millions. SEO is not a silver bullet. The understanding of the fundamental principles, however, help to visualize bigger more creative ideas that can make a site “tip” to achieve critical mass. Understanding that paying $50 per link per month for several dozen a good link will cost you tens of thousands in a year (and for the right links may have two to several dozen times ROI through their value in the SERPs), sure make that viral campaign that make cost 10, 20, 30 times your link development initially seem much more attractive. It makes it much easier to do the math if you understand the numbers.

If you own a website, you should understand how to buy or sell one. Buying and selling is at the basis of any viable business. The web business sure has changed the ways of thinking about business with wild valuationn, deals with incredible return, and everything in between. During the first dot com bubble, ALL rules of business somehow magically flew out the window. There was a sense of urgency during the first bubble to “get in on the ground floor”. Even pet food was going to be sold online by sockpuppets! Hindsight is 20/20, and a lot of the promise of the web that was founded on business principles is returning after confidence has returned. Now investors are more skeptical, owners are more savvy, and everyone still wants to get in on the promising ground floor.

There are two main ways I can see to value a website:

1-Cashflow (profit/ revenue) multiples

2-Value of re-creation

So over and over the question is asked of how a website should be valuated. There are a variety of metrics available to the general public, but how accurate are these metrics, and what should they be combined with to determine a true valuation? Where is the line between a website appraisal, and the valuation of an online business?

I think website valuation is one of the most difficult questions in the world of the web. It is based on principles, but it is also based on gut feel. I don’t think you can truly value a website these days without a sense of how to valuate the links a site has. If it were based solely around principles then anyone could do it. Buying and selling websites is somewhere between buying and selling established businesses, real estate, and stocks and bonds. The magic in it is that not too many people have figured out how to do it effectively. There is so much overspeculation and instability in the space that there are wild-eyed investors all over the place chasin’ a dream that is only sometimes based on reality. Here are some questions, tools, and criteria, potential equations, and general thoughts that I would check out for appraising a single website.

With the current state of search engine algorithms, and distribution of marketshare in the space, recreating and maintaining high rankings is one of the very large unknowns with any website. Part of a website valuation should be placed on search engine rankings and/or the potential for them. Without qualified, relevant, targeted traffic (or the potential for it) a website is barely worth the space it is hosted on.

Types of Website Revenue Models

All of these can probably be broken down into additional categories of business to business or business to consumer. The type of site will play a key role in choosing which valuation criteria are most applicable to the site, or more importantly if the site should be valued with the criteria used for 1. strictly a domain, 2. a web-based business, or 3. a “traditional” business.

• No current model - informational or resource site
• Donation
• Subscription
• Advertising
• Service
• Lead generation
• Product

Obviously there are hybrids of these models to make matters more confusing.

Questions for appraising a website

Note: for today we’ll leave domain only and “traditional business” valuations to their respective industry experts. Many times, to get the answer you are looking for you have to craft the proper questions to ask.

• What is the revenue model?
• What is the current revenue?
• What is the current profitability?
• What are the current liabilities?
• What are the current assets?
• What risks are involved with assigning annualized revenue?
• What is the value of the industry?
• What is the scope of keywords?
• How many unique keywords are there?
• Is it a “longtail” or “shorttail” keyword industry? (online education is longtail - poker is short tail)
• What is the CPC range of keywords on PPC?
• Is there room in the industry for a big competitor?
• How many major competitors are established in the industry?
• Do any bigger companies have their eyes on the niche?
• What is the alexa rank?
• Does the demographic skew the alexa rank? (lots of webmasters, etc)
• What is the value of the domain name? (an entire discussion to itself)
• How brandable/memorable/marketable is the domain?
• Is there type in traffic?
• What is the current traffic level of the site?
• What is the current estimated value per unique user?
• Is there any current brand value to the site?
• What is the current natural search traffic like?
• What is the potential for future search traffic?
• What is the quality of the search traffic?
• How well does the site convert?
• What costs would be involved in re-creating the site?
• What is the level of brand loyalty?

Tools for appraising a website

Without accurate tracking logs and financials it’s going to be tough to put a value on a website. KEEP those log files - you’re gonna want ‘em later.

• Alexa
• Overture bid tool
• Aaron’s KW tool
• Site log files
• Site financials
• Free quick domain appraisal tool

Potential Website Valuation Equations

There are probably a million different ways to value a website based on the situation and intentions of both buyer and seller. This is just a handful of ways I can think of to put a price tag on a website

• Ad Expenses
  Pay Per Clicks
  Print Ads
  Other Advertising
• General and Admin Expenses
  Hosting
  Merchant Fees ($)
  Bank Fees
  Other Expenses
  After getting through nearly all of this post, I found a pretty darn good resource with a spreadsheet included for $20 via clickbank. I almost put it in without an affiliate link (then decided that would be pretty dumb), so I’m writing this small disclaimer instead. I bought it myself, and it seems like a pretty handy little guide for the price. You can get the ebook valuation guide and spreadsheet for $20 here.

A simple rule that sums up most of this post: “write what you know and what everyone else is thinking but hasn’t said yet, but don’t give away the gold”. A blog is a great asset, but can create liabilities if you don’t approach it properly.

Blogging really isn’t easy. Well, it *is* easy to spew a bunch of mindless bullsh*t onto a page and expect that a bunch of unemployed zombies will find some entertainment value in it. What *isn’t* easy is developing value-added material that vistors will find genuinely helpful and valuable to their personal needs.

To make things even more difficult, there is a delicate balance between creating good informational blog posts and being a straight up fool giving away information that is of extremely high value for a relatively short period of time (algo loopholes, niche opportunities, arbitrage opportunities, etc.). This is a dilemma that has faced folks long before blogs in the SEO/ webmaster forums as well. Since I was lucky enough to be taught by folks with an “abundance mentality”, I try hard to keep one myself, but sometimes a post just DOESN’T justify the link value (would a stock broker that knew the value of a link post his best information?).

Knowing what to blog is difficult. I’ve went through several phases myself, but what seems the most useful to me is aggregated lists of quality information to use as reference points when I need them. When I asked people to introduce themselves, many of them mentioned that the Mr. Ploppy SEM Tool lists were part of what kept folks coming back. I have to agree that they are extremely useful, and the intent of creating those lists was not entirely altruistic. I knew that they would be a valuable resource for ME to reference as well. The point is that they are valuable because I spent time to research and build lists of what I thought was good. Anyone could do a search and compile lists. It was quite time consuming, but it has been very worthwhile both in terms of traffic, and having effective personal reference points.

With lots of new folks entering the blogosphere all the time, I think it’s worth noting some things to keep you from making mistakes that some of us have made in the past.

Do’s
Blog about…

• What you know
• A specific niche topic
• How to balance user experience and good search rankings
• How to improve your website
• How to improve rankings with long term strategy
• Applications of marketing to SEO
• Emerging SE trends
• Speculation of SE updates
• The state of the SEM space
• Your personal insights on whitepapers
• Non-bias reviews of web technology vendors

Don’ts

Don’t blog about…

• someone else’s idea without asking that someone’s permission
• an unsavory story you heard 3rd hand
• brand new techniques that aren’t talked about on panel sessions yet
• an array of specific niches
• how bad other SEO’s techniques are
• sites that quality control engineers will torch an hour after reading your post
• how great the affiliate garbage you’re hawking is

I think Barry and Rand both have some nice opinions on the topic, but I couldn’t seem to find either of their posts when I dug for them (I hate when I forget to bookmark stuff right). Special thanks to Jason for his questions and discussion on the topic.

I often find myself accidently lumping in everything internet marketing with SEO. To me, SEO is just what you call someone with an insatiable hunger to learn about marketing online. The day you truly become an SEO could be the first time you read something that makes you say, “damn, this is pretty easy and I can do this, but it’s hard enough where I’m going to learn more and more about it everyday”. So maybe there should be better names for “meta-webmasters”, or “online project managers”, but for now, SEO still just sounds cool. With all the intro babble aside, to most online marketing folks, it’s all about the bottom line. In simplest form, there are three questions that I try to answer with every site: How will it get traffic? How will it convert? How will it profit? If you constantly improve on these questions you’re golden. One way to increase on the conversion question is to increase credibility. To me it makes sense that if it adds credibility for the user, it’s eventually gonna be rolled into an algorithm somewhere as well.

Every tip for credibility by it self may only create marginal benefits, but the sum total of their effects is improved credibility which equates to improved conversion. It’s not a bad idea to run through these with most of the places that YOU buy from online as well.

21 Tips for Better Online Credibility

1. About page
Show your history. “…since 1945″ looks real nice to someone wondering if your legit or a dropshipper with a markup and no customer service. People are going to skim online. Don’t waste words and highlight the most important things.

2. Pictures of REAL people
Even if your kinda fugly show your smiling mug. Using photoshop for zits is okay.

3. An 800 number
Preferably with someone that actually answers it (at least during business hours).

4. Contact page with physical address
If you can show your building even better. Just on your contact or about page though please. If I’m never coming to your business I really don’t care about your beautifully landscaped watergarden no matter how immaculate it is. Your physical local wll not DRIVE your online business.

5. Quick responses to customer service requests
You can build a reputation that will drive an entire company on just customer service alone. Many have done it before.

6. Confirm transactions or signups
Autoresponders are some times annoying, but what’s even more annoying is if you buy something or sign up for something and about the time you’re expecting it to arrive you get a call from Cletus the dropshipping monkey telling you that you didn’t fill in your fax number. If someone accomplishes an action on your website, let them know you recieved it, and that you understand the ball is in your court, and you are taking care of it.

7. References
If you can talk a real good client into allowing you to publicly post them as a reference it adds huge credibility. No matter what you do, if you have a third party that is willing to spend some of their time helping to sell you on your account - then you’re doing something right and prospects will recognize that.

8. Citations of brilliant people on your site
I don’t mean Albert Einstein needs to be quoted on every site on the web, but cite the brilliant people WITHIN your industry, and write articles that backup what they are saying, or expanding on ideas that you though were exceptionally creative. Demonstrating that you know your industry and the latest changes adds HUGE creditibility for any site, and is fundamental part of most successful sites on the web.

9. Guest authors
If someone is willing to help assist you with your work just to associate themselves with you then you are on your way to success. Successful people surround themselves with successful people.

10. Site last updated tag
Simple, silly, and effective. Have something that page last modified date. It works.

11. Go light on the ads
This is a tough one, as ads generally bring in the money. Too many advertisements lowers your credibility with users. Have a dedicated advertising/ editorial policy page, and tell people that are interested about how you select and treat advertisers.

12. Please update your homepage.
If you have something static on your webpage you need to climb out of 2001, and throw a blog, newsfeed, or the like on your homepage. No matter what you do there is SOMETHING that you can update weekly and easy ways to set it up. This is your direct link to reach many of your customers (and cut down on the e-mails you have to respond to). Don’t act like you’re too good to talk to them.

13. Sign up with some credible folks
Join organizations, donate some time, and show that you DO care about more than just the bottom line. There is a reason most good businesspeople display some altruism. Karma comes back to you, etc. etc.

14. Link to good people.
If you haven’t heard about link neighborhoods, Jim tells it better than I. Link to other good places with topically relevant information. You probably don’t want to link to competitors, but if you’re really GOOD, and you DO, that definitely adds some serious credibility. There are a handful of “SEO buddies” that I’m happy to send prospects over to and vice versa. Most the time we have too much work, and we all depend on one another for a variety of different things. Find people in your industry to count on and link to them.

15. No 404’s
One of my biggest pet peeves is the default IIS 404 page. It drives me crazy that people don’t create custom 404 pages because it’s very easy. This is one of the first things I do on nearly any sites. You’re bound to goof up, and tell people when you do. Don’t make them feel stupid by giving them some crazy technical looking page that was written by the same person who programmed the OS for your webserver. Ugh. Get something likexenu and check your site for broken links once a month or so. Watch your logs for 404’s and figure out why. Why waste traffic on stupid mistakes?

16. Write like a real person
Don’t have your PR person write your site. Take time and get personal with your readers/ customers. You’ll be amazed how many people want to continue the conversation when you use a conversational tone. Don’t waste words. Use bold and bullet points, and cut your articles DOWN. I’m certainly guilty of this one here. I should edit more. Look at your log files and pay attention to how long people actually READ on your website. If you tell me more than two minutes you’re damn lucky. Write and highlight what is important. Bold and bullet point what is really important.

17. Strong Web Design
I like to say “ugly sells” too…and it probably does for high traffic affiliate work. Affiliates are not exactly the epitome of credibility though (nor do they really want to take the effort to be in most cases). If you stop to ask REAL people who don’t live on the web all day about websites, the design is the first thing that they will comment on. Get a print designer with years of experience and have them design a template portrait style. Now get a CSS guru to turn it into something usable. That or just get a good designer that knows what the hell they’re doing. You can start with ugly, but stunning will improve your credibility and conversion. Even those that don’t live on the web, get a subconcious “feel” for good design and well developed sites. If you need inspiration, try something like this.

18. Speel correctly
Okay, I’m a hypocrite…I don’t use spell check on this site, but my urge to use a conversational tone and my sheer laziness of not wanting to copy and paste to word outweigh my desire to preserve my site’s credibility. If you’re a grammar/ spelling nazi, I’m sorry that I suck at this one. I also don’t sell a highly specialized product or service with a high ratio of intelligent people purchasing my service…errr…damn…time to get that plugin working right.

19. Privacy policy
If you really want to be a filthy bum that sells e-mail lists, then at least create a page with really tiny typeface for those that are willing to spend an hour and a half figuring out what it really means. Be sure to have your lawyer write it so that even if someone DOES try to read it they will give up in frustration and just fork over their e-mail so you can give it to every pharmicist, pr0n site, mortgage lender, and Nigerian prince that you know. If you don’t sell your e-mail address to others, then you should probably tell your users that in a simple conversational tone as well.

20. Display a contact e-mail prominently.
This way if you sell their e-mail address, at least they can get back at you. Be sure to use a mail that you can turn off or change like “info@yoursite.com” and just forward it. You really don’t want to clean out junk all day, and every six months or so you can change it to ease the load.

21. Have a freakin’ sense of humor
When you start joking around you will definitely offend someone. That is everyone’s fear. Ya know what…who cares? You’re only going to offend the people you probably didn’t want to work with anyways. There’s also a line between offending someone and being an as*hole (please let me know when I cross this line). When you do offend someone apologize and find out why. Sometimes making someone laugh is the best way to get their business. If you enjoy your work, and your website, and your visitors, you will improve your credibility, and your overall happiness. Take time to laugh, poke fun at yourself, and make others laugh as well. Show people that you’re human and not a corporate drone. Not only is it good for your soul…it’s good for credibility and your business.

Do I do all this stuff on ALL my sites? Nope. But you can bet if I had only ONE site, or even a couple for that matter I would be doing every little thing like this that I could find to improve my credibility and conversion. As users get smarter…you had better too.

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
- Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia

Resources:

• Web credibility report
• Google newsletter on credibility for librarians
• Justilien posted a few ideas before I published this
• By the time I got this posted, the brilliant minds at Stanford had some new ideas, along with some commentary at WMW **supporter’s thread

**note to self, don’t wait so long on going live with posts.

Silly smoochy thank you’s for inspiration:
graywolf
seobuzzbox