Supported by their research, the Stanford Guidelines web site provides 10 rules for "boosting your web site's credibility?"
When I first reviewed their guidelines I focused on their use of the word "organization" and the recommendation of listing a physical address. This recommendation became a stumbling block for me. I am in the process of trying to build a web site for my husband's pest control business. Using a physical address became a hang-up for me because he rents a garage. I do not feel that I can list that as the business physical address, especially since it is just a garage, not a store front. However, after re-adjusting my focus, I did recognize the value this article provides for "personal" web site credibility.
The ten items of advice are:
1. Accurate Information
2. Provide Legitimacy
3. Display Expertise
4. Honest and Trustworthy
5. Easily Accessible
6. Look Professional
7. Easy to Use
8. Frequent Postings
9. Avoid pushy ads
10. Avoid Errors or Misspellings (caught me!)
When evaluating the various blogs I am working on I feel they all have accurate information to the best of my knowledge. The quit smoking blog, QU graduate corner, and the HowTo links to credible third party materials. When I have a linking idea, I spend a great deal of time "looking around" and choosing the site that I feel is the best. I don't link haphazardly or just for the sake of linking. Also when linking to other team mates blog I try to take a creative approach in order to entice the reader to link over to the other site. All posts are written with a sincere honest intention. I am willing to share my opinions and thoughts. I also respect that, perhaps, you might not agree with me, and hopefully give the impression that the door is always open for discussion. I feel that all blogs have a clean, crisp and professional visual look. The quit smoking blog purposely used a gray theme in order to convey the smoke theme. We decided on a two column format for the HowTo blog since we wanted a wider column to hold "how to" verbiage. On the QU corner we used blue for the school colors. We also want to get some pictures on the header, but have yet to tackle that. The blogs are updated frequently, although it's demanding to keep up with three blogs. I have noticed that on two occurrences responses to comments disappear. I kid you not. Don't know what I am doing or not doing but, whatever it is, I have it mastered, since it has happened on more than one occasion. None of the blogs have any annoying promotional ads. I too, hate those interrupting pop ups.
What can be improved? Well, I still have an issue with trackbacks and am working on trying to get that mastered so that all links are working. Spelling and tense jumping has always been a challenge to me. I originally liked to draft my post in word and use the tools available to Word. I find typepad word processing tools limited and a bit cumbersome. However, I have discovered many issues when cutting and pasting from other sources. I still need to go back and correct some issues, such as verbiage listing in the post but not displaying or not being able to add any links because the entire post gets translated to HTML and the compose post area can not be used. Some clean up work still exists, but eventually, I hope to have all areas error free. In addition, I would like to add some more pictures, helping to convey that "real person" image. The "about you" areas have not been tackled and need to be defined. Finally, some forms of submissions are needed as side links. Once these few items are addressed, I feel that the blogs will pass the Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility.
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