One of the worse things that you can encounter when you are shopping at a brick and mortar store is a rude attendant. You reasonably expect that because you are spending time and money that the attendant would extend courtesy. When the attendant is rude instead it makes many of us feel a little angry and determined not to revisit that store.
Rudeness is not just isolated to offline stores. It also happens online. When websites are rude they cause the site visitor to have the same feelings of someone who visits an offline store that has an attendant that is rude.
There are consequences of having a website that is rude. The feeling that the visitor has about a rude website is not the only consequence. Google has started assessing penalties to websites that are rude.
Hopefully your website is not rude. However, just to be safe, consult the following paragraphs to make sure that your website is not rude.
Websites that load slowly are considered rude. The internet creates a fast paced atmosphere where people expect data to be available in an instant. This is not unreasonable because it is what we are accustomed to. It is very annoying when you go everywhere else and pages are loaded in an instant and then you go to a website and it seems like it takes forever for the site to load. Google agrees. Google is taking note of how long it takes for a website to load and is factoring this information into its quality scores. The lower the quality score of a website the lower the page ranking.
Websites that appear in search listings for topics that don’t apply to that site is considered rude. It is exceptionally annoying to ask for one thing and be given another. This is what happens when the same Meta tags are used for each page in a site even as the different pages in the site have different content. Some times this happens by mistake and other times it is done intentionally. Whether it’s done intentionally or not, if it’s brought to your attention you should fix it immediately. Search engines are not inept and are constantly being upgraded in ways that will allow them to spot activities like bait and switch. Also, remember, that your competition has access to your website and will be more than happy to alert Google of your error.
Websites that go down temporarily are considered to be rude. I am sure that we have all had the experience of going to a shop eagerly looking forward to purchasing something only to be confronted with an “Out to lunch” sign on the door. This is the same type of disappointment encountered when someone goes to a website and it is temporarily down. You may not know if your website constantly goes down unless you can monitor it. SiteUptime at http://siteuptime.com/index-2013-12.php offers monitoring and notifies you by SMS and email when your website is down.
Websites that move to a different web address or that changes the location of pages in a site without giving forwarding directions or offering a redirect is exceptionally rude. When you are making location changes with your website, use the HTTP status code 301 permanent redirect. This way your site visitors will be able to find the pages that they are looking for.
Online or offline, rude is rude. There is no place for rude behavior. Website users will go elsewhere if your website is rude. So take the time to make sure that your website is behaving properly.
Some of the facts for this article are brought to you via Charles Ogwyn at http://myinternetmarketingpartner.com/2012-04/is-your-website-rude/