10 Website Trust Signals That Will Help Your Website Rank on Google
The more trustworthy your website looks, the higher chances it stands to gain higher google rankings. There are specific trust indicators that your web visitors will be looking for. For instance, bombarding your website with a lot of pop up ads, poor designs and unappealing images will make your website visitors paranoid about whether to trust your website or not. Similarly, having an SSL certificate installed on to your website, good graphics, appealing images and a social media presence are some of the features that will make your website trustworthy. And it is a good thing to have your website hold such features which are commonly known as the trust signals. Trust signals play a significant role to the success of your website. They can make or break it. Apart from just increasing the trust that your website visitors hold to your website and improving your ranking in search engine results page, trust signals also play a crucial role in improving the conversion rates of your website.
It is essential for your website to hold such trust signals that will help it improve in website ranks. Below are ten of the trust signals that will help your website improve in google ranks.
- Perfect Website Design
What first impression is your website going to give your web visitors? That is a critical question that you should struggle to answer when designing your website. First impression is the very first appearance of your website when a visitor takes a first glance at it. A study shows that it takes only 0.05 seconds for a user to form an opinion about your website from the first time he/she sees it. Another research report conducted by Adobe indicates that 38% of all web visitors who find a website unattractive are less likely to visit that website again.
First impression is, therefore, a kind of a decision factor that your website visitors will use to decide on whether to stay or leave your website. Impression is built around one major thing, the design of your website, simply put, how your website appears.
Go for a professional design that will make your web visitors to have an easy time while navigating your website. A good web design will also speed up the loading speeds of your website. Website speed is one of the vital ranking factors that are considered by google.
- Install an SSL Certificate
One of the key objectives of google is to ensure that users are safe and secure when browsing through websites. One thing that ensures that the users are secure is the SSL certificate. SSL certificates encrypt the information that is send by the users and protects it from being intercepted by millions of hackers that are in existence today. To ensure that web visitors are safe, google took to enforce the SSL certificate policy by making it as one of the topmost ranking factors. This announcement came in 2014. Ever since, google has ranked HTTPS websites higher than the HTTP websites.
Looking to improve your google ranking, start thinking about acquiring an SSL certificate for your website. One very crucial thing that you should take into consideration is the acquisition method. It is suggested you acquire an SSL certificates from Certificate Authorities and SSL certificates providers. Some of them include Comodo, Symantec, and Geotrust SSL Certificates.
- Having an Active Social Media Presence
Having an active social media presence can act as effective marketing strategy. It also strengthens your brand especially in the younger generation that is constantly using social media. Having the social media icons on your website is a perfect signal of trust. Social media presence has been identified as one of the most important trust signals. 45% of your potential customers are likely to exit if they do not see an active social media activity. So it is not about just having social media accounts but how active those accounts are.
- Visible Contact Details
Having your contact details on the website is an important trust signal. It is a sign that your website is legitimate and real. Contact details such as phone number, physical location and email address is an assurance to your website visitors that they can reach out to you for a solution just in case something went wrong. It also plays a key role in local rankings. Having your website display the physical location and the address of your location helps in the geographic searches which is a big plus to local rankings. So, if you want to improve in google ranking, start thinking about putting your contact details on your website.
- Use Familiar Payment Method
Having familiar payment methods instils a sense of trust and confidence in your users, make use of payment method that are popular and which your users are familiar with. Such methods include PayPal and American Express. Your users are sure to get proper assistance just in case something went wrong.
- Having Clear Terms and Conditions Section, and Privacy Policies
Spell out the terms and conditions to your users. Terms and conditions act as the guiding principles that your website visitors are expected to adhere to. Similarly, you should have a privacy section that tells your visitors how secure their information is. Having clear terms and conditions and privacy policies are trust signals that establish confidence in your web visitors and provide them with an assurance that their data is put into appropriate use.
- The About Us Page
Users want to know who you are, what you deal with and how long you have been operating. This is what the about us page is all about. The about us page will make their experience with your website a lot more personal. The moment your web visitors see the story behind your brand, they become less sceptical and assured of a perfect interaction with you.
Therefore, the About us page plays the role of humanising your site and assuring web visitors as well as google that there are indeed human faces behind the website. Most website users who intend to make a purchase will want to first see an about us page before going ahead to make the purchase.
- Use Unique Images
Using unique images for your website makes your website users to consider your website more authentic and secure. Using stock images, on the other hand, has negative effects to your website. Users have learnt how to identify stock images. Stock images usually give a bad impression. They are a sign that you are not upfront with the current happenings of your company. Most users have been said to have mistrust issues with websites that have stock images.
Similarly, google will have issues with stock images. A study shows that websites that use unique images are usually ranked higher than those that use stock images. This, therefore, means that if you want to improve your ranking, then it is about time you started using unique images.
- Having an Affiliation with Trusted Websites
Having a connection with a more trusted website improves the trust that website visitors will have on your website. Affiliation can be achieved by having a collaboration with a more popular brand or store. You can have some of your products stocked in such a store.
Most web visitors are likely to trust your website if it is in collaboration with another store on the grounds that, if that store can trust you, what can make them not to trust you?
- Having Recognisable Trust Seals
Just like having an affiliation with a recognised store, having recognisable seals also play a role in establishing trust in your users. Users are more likely to feel comfortable on your website if it displays a seal from trusted sites such as TRUSTe. This makes your website legitimate and thus increasing the conversion rates.
Conclusion
It is worth noting that not just one trust signal will give the impression that your web visitors expect and help in improving the google rankings of your website. Using them all in a tandem will just be a perfect move for you. Put in place the above mechanisms and see yourself rank high in search engine results page.