There are so many articles and blog posts about how to build traffic, income, etc. but not a lot about building credibility — another critical component of online success.

After all, if your audience doesn’t trust you and see you as a credible source in your niche, generating an income will be difficult.

Here are some tactics you can use to help build credibility…

About Me Page

An About Me page is a must-have. It should not only provide your name and a photo, but should briefly explain the motivation behind your site.

This shows how you’re connected with your topic and can explain what motivated you to create your site or blog. The more detailed you can get, the more genuine you will come across to your visitors.

If you have a special offline connection to your topic, this is a great time to explain it.

Let’s say you have a site about diabetes. Perhaps you or someone in your family has this disease. Your “About Me” page could explain your personal motivation for creating a site on this topic. This is a great way to help your audience connect with you.

Now they can see you are a person who is personally involved with your subject matter, so they are more likely to take your advice and see you as a credible source.

Video

Video has been a wonderful asset to my online portfolio. It allows me to show my personality and it’s a nice way to give your visitors a break from a lot of reading.

I believe it helps build credibility because it says to people, “Hey, this Webmaster is not afraid to show who they are.” With so many faceless websites out here, people find video a breath of fresh air.

Another plus is that it may help extend your “length of visit” statistic. This is important when getting traffic from organic search.

When people find your site via Google for example, Google monitors the time it takes for that person to return to their results.

The longer it takes for them to return to their results, the more relevant your site is perceived to be for that keyword phrase. This could help boost your ranking over time.

Adding a relevant video near the top of your page will ensure your audience won’t miss it and will hopefully entice them to watch, thus increasing the amount of time they spend on your site.

Limit Your Ads

It annoys me when I view a site and the ads are the center of attention. Some sites are so bad that you have to scroll down just to read the main content.

Not only does this scream “Amateur!” but it lessens you’re credibility because people will feel your main goal is to sell them something rather than inform, entertain, or provide some other visitor benefit.

Remember, when people arrive at your site, they are subconsciously thinking “What’s in it for me?”

They don’t want to be bombarded with ads or annoyed by those flying ad windows that you have to chase down in order to close.

Dare to Be Different

How many articles and blog posts have we seen about building traffic or making money?

Most of the articles don’t really tell you anything new. It’s often the same material recycled and reworded over and over again.

People appreciate fresh content so if you’re going to write about a popular topic, that’s fine. Just try to add a new perspective to get people thinking in a different way.

Offer Useful Freebies

Everyone is so conditioned to believe that free comes with some kind of catch. So if you can develop some kind of useful, free offer for your site, that can really build respect and credibility from your audience.

And when I say free, I means really free. Not the free where you make them give you an email address or buy something first.

Don’t get me wrong, there are times when these strategies are very appropriate and useful. However, sometimes it’s good to give away something for free with no strings attached.

You may not get an immediate return from doing this, but people remember things like this and the long-term benefits will be worth it.

Just don’t insult your audience with a low-quality freebie or something that can be easily found on the Web.

Take The Good With The Bad

When reviewing a product you’re affiliated with, it’s tempting to only highlight the positives. You feel that if you call out anything negative, people will not want to buy.

Sure, negative points may deter a few people from buying, but I believe the net effect is worth it.

Your audience will take your reviews more seriously because they don’t appear to be too biased in one direction.

The long-term result of this practice equates to more credibility and sales for you.

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