Felister Wamaitha

Website Credibility Mistakes to Avoid and How to Side-Step Them Having a good-looking website, a loyal customer base, and a strong social media following are all great things. But they don’t come easy. You have to intentionally build a website that instills credibility in your brand to achieve this. See, credibility is important. It can help you establish trust, improve your search engine rankings, build your brand reputation, enhance your user experience and gain a competitive advantage. And while you can have the most well-intentioned business, you can still erode your credibility by committing small, subtle mistakes which will hurt your bottom line. This is especially true since some things can slip through the net when it comes to website content. But don’t fret. Here are some spoken and unspoken blunders you should pay attention to and avoid at all costs. Outdated Copyright Year It’s very easy to forget to update the copyright year in the footer of your website, especially at the beginning of a new year. However, failing to update the copyright year can make users question the timeliness and relevance of the information on the website, potentially causing them to leave the site and look for a more current source of information. An outdated copyright year can also give the impression that the business behind the website has a low level of engagement and customer service which can cause users to bounce off and look for a more active and responsive business. To side-step, this, remember to update the copyright year as early as January. Having Outdated Blog Content Blogging about related topics around your industry is a great way to generate website traffic. However, giving up on your blog at some point can do the complete opposite. An outdated blog clearly tells your readers that you’re not staying up to date with the latest industry developments. This can also mean that the information on your site is not standard and, therefore, not 100 percent credible. What’s more, an outdated blog can hurt your search engine rankings. Search engines like Google reward websites that regularly publish new, relevant content. This means without new blog posts; your business may not be taking full advantage of the SEO benefits that a blog can provide. To avoid this, aim to expand existing content and add more content. Don’t let your blog sit without new content for 12+ months. Embedded Feeds with Outdated Social Content Using embedded feeds used to be a cool strategy for directing website users to your social channels, but there’s less of that now since it can slow down your site and affect your ranking on the search results. Something else, if your social channels are not updated regularly, using embedded feeds on your site can make it feel outdated, which can raise the question- is your business still open? Can you be trusted to deliver as expected? To avoid this problem, keep your social media channels active and up-to-date to maintain your credibility in the digital world. Or else, do away with embedded feeds. Unfinished Content on Your Website Unfinished content, in this case, refers to those pages where there’s no-to-little content. For example, just a paragraph of text. You may have made these pages live when your website was created with the intention of adding more content in the future. However, time has passed, and you’ve not added any content. Having unfinished content on your site can make your business look unprofessional and unprepared. Your website visitors will be disappointed to click on your page only to find half-baked content. This can make them question your level of customer service. What’s more, unfinished content can signal search engines that your website is not being properly maintained. This will negatively affect your search engine optimization efforts which will cause less traffic and less revenue for your business. It’s much wiser to always update your pages from time to time to ensure your website is serving only the finest, fully-baked content for your readers to enjoy. Having Ancient References Ancient references on your website will give your readers the impression that you’re out of touch or behind times. It’ll make them feel you’re not actively in the business anymore. It can also cause confusion. For example, if you’re updating a blog post on summer events this year and reference the 2016 Olympics as an exciting event your readers should look out to, it can raise eyebrows and dent your content credibility. You should aim to check your website on a semi-frequent basis to ensure that you’re not accidentally making references to times that have long passed. It’s even better to reference an evergreen source of information. This way, it’s easier to manage the content on an ongoing basis. Having 404 Errors A 404 error is an error message that a website visitor sees when they click on a link where the content was deleted or moved to another URL. When your readers visit your site and see this type of error, they’ll likely term your site as unreliable. Search engines are also not likely to trust you because you’re offering a bad user experience to your readers. The good thing is you can check and do away with 404 errors fast and easily. To do this, log into your Google search console account and go to Pages. Scroll down to check why pages aren’t indexed. Under this, you can find all the 404 errors your site is experiencing. To fix this, check the specific links that have a problem and go back to your website to remove those links or update the links to point to the correct pages. You can also redirect the links to point users to a similar page or the homepage. This way, users can still get access to the information they are looking for. Note that you can also use tools like Ahref or broken link checkers to identify 404 error pages on your site. Build Your Website Credibility Establishing your business as an authority in its field requires you to build credibility. And while you may think it’s an easy task, there are several small, subtle mistakes you can make on your website that can affect your reputation. Take the above tips into consideration and implement a strategy to help you avoid these problems. If you would like help with your web design, SEO, or business strategy, we can help. At Peak Performance Digital, we offer a 360-degree view of your business needs. We first listen and then recommend. The best part, our solutions have been proven to work. Elevate your website credibility today by letting us help you.