Determining Your Website's “Validation” Point:
How Trustworthy is Your Site?

Most unsuccessful webmasters/site owners spend thousands of dollars on design, development, marketing/promotions, optimization and advertising with out giving any thought to whether they would trust their own site when it comes to buying products or services online or even sharing information with that site. 

If you aren’t getting the return on investment that you set out to attain, consider determining your web business's Validation Point  - the degree that a user believes your message and the point at which they are ready to trust you enough to take you up on your unique proposition. By understanding some very basic principles about human behavior we can learn what it takes to become “valid” in the eyes of prospects.

How do Users Find You?
Surfers tend to trust websites that they find nearer the top of search return lists or through respected site that they are familiar with. 

Traditional Search Engines:
Since premium placement in search engines is difficult (if not in some cases impossible) to attain, sites that appear in the 20th, 30th, or even 1000th spot really have to make an extended effort to show not only that their products are of equal or greater value but that their business meets or exceeds the visitor's expectations.

Standard Link Referrals:
Traffic sent from other websites is also a valuable commodity. When webmasters or site owners believe enough in what you offer to feature your site in their newsletter or within their Web pages, you build credibility and trust in the eyes of prospects. By building your overall Internet popularity, your reputation will precede you as a business that offers premium products, services or information.

Are You Real, Virtual or Both?
While e-commerce technology has come a long way since its first implementation, most people still would prefer to make purchases in person or at least speak with someone on the phone. This gives the prospect the sense they are receiving personal attention. Since sites that offer addresses and phone numbers typically perform on a higher level, it is important to express to visitors critical information such as details about the company, contact information and easy to understand privacy policies. These are important parts of a website because open system almost always outperform closed ones. Who would you trust more: the person selling watches from a storefront or the one selling them from the trunk of their car?

Do others find you Trustworthy?
One of the most profound mistakes web site owners and managers make is not proving their trustworthiness to their visitors. Sites that sell successfully online realize the importance of earning visitors' trust through a policy of open communication. By providing secure billing pages and explaining and abiding by the content within your sites' privacy policies, earning trust with prospects becomes exponentially simpler.

Finding the secret to being trustworthy is more simple that most people think. By being what users expect you to be (honest, truthful, reliable, dependable) you increase the chances that you will earn visitors trust. The next time you look at your site, ask yourself, "Do I trust this business?"

Sign up for the Uniterra Newsletter:
Receive articles like the one above every week via email. Great information from the best online business authors on the Web writing about hundreds of Internet topics.
Click here and receive an issue every Friday!

When it comes to security on a site, SEO can play a big part in the security of your site and bar hackers and others of that ilk from hijacking your site and certificate. Nothing is more frustrating then to have a site and certificate hijacked. So how can you use SEO to prevent this from happening? Well, you have several ways to do so. First, make sure that you always have a back up for the site in question. If you have a complete loss of data, you can be in serious trouble in the first place.

When it comes to security, you need to be sure that any programs that you use that may be third party are always updated. Upgrade immediately as soon as a threat is discovered. This can also prevent you from being hacked and the resultant loss of SEO and ranking that could take you months to recover from both by restoring data and undoing the damage that the intrusion has done to your site. Going back to the back up for a moment, remember that even the smallest loss of data may not be discovered until it is too late.

Developers can also be another security weak spot. Any developer of a system MUST be doing the basics in order to keep the site in question from being hacked. If they are not doing their job, then your site is a probable victim for anyone wanting to either hack into or use information from you site for illegal reasons such as ID theft. As anyone who has a business on the internet knows, your security is only as good as the people behind the scenes. Most of these tips are pretty common sense and don't require knowledge of advanced SEO.

They however need to be implemented as a part of any SEO that you are doing to your site. If these suggestions are not incorporated, you could be a potential victim of a hacker. Losing business is a heck of a way to find out your security is not only shot, but completely non-existent. This is a very painful way to learn about security and what to do and not to do when it comes to securing a site on the internet. Remember, hackers are always testing sites and looking for ways to break in to sites.

The last tip that you really need to know is make sure that no matter who you have as a host, the administration of the system must have a competent person behind the scenes. If any part of the equation is compromised, then you are completely vulnerable and may indeed lose business. Following these tips may not sound like advanced SEO, but take a look at how many people using SEO get hacked because they do not do these common sense things. Addition of these into any type of SEO will prevent your site from being hacked and you not only losing rank but also money and time as well.

If you're trying to boost your sites exposure, try to find experts that offer a Social Bookmarking Service. This can be the best way to get a quick