One Sure Way To Preserve Your Site’s Credibility

Preserving your site or blog’s credibility is much easier than you may think. I’m going to illustrate this with two personal examples:

1. After writing my recent article on StumbleUpon traffic, I took the time to review it and compare it to the sources of information it was based on. I thanked myself for doing this: I quickly spotted some inaccuracies in my post. All I had to do afterwards was to correct the wrong bits of info, rebuild some sentences and add a few others. Of course, I took these simples measures before hitting the “publish” button. Then I reread everything again and compared the fixed article to my sources one more time. I only published the post after making sure that there wasn’t a single piece of info in it that I couldn’t claim to be true to the best of my knowledge.

2. Last week I started an article on a linkbuilding technique that looked great in theory. I had read about it on other blogs and decided to write about it too. Luckily, I had also decided to try the trick myself and see if/how it worked before writing the definitive version of my post. Now I’m glad I did it: my test showed me that the technique just didn’t work. Had I simply repeated what I had read on other places, now I’d be hating myself for having published a valueless article (and I’d have to deal with all the negative comments that the smartest readers would certainly leave).

Now can you see what’s the best way to preserve a site’s credibility?

I’m sure that by now you have realised it. But it can never be stressed enough, so I’m going to write it down: never ever publish inaccurate, flawed information on your blogs or sites. Not consciously, at least. We all make mistakes, but try to spot yours before you make your pages publicly available. Review all your material once again after it’s published and be ready to fix everything if need be.

In case you really can’t spot any flaws and still your visitors point out inaccuracies on your pages, edit them. And include your sincere apologies to your audience, emphasasing that you had written all in good faith and never meant to mislead anyone.

In sum: be honest, be humble, don’t be lazy. This is how you will sustain your site’s credibility.