10+ best practices for webmasters

1. Provide an "About Us" page for your website and provide a link to it from the bottom of all pages in your website. See the About Us link in the bottom of this site for a sample.

2. Provide a "Contact Us" page for your website. If your website is run by a registered business entity, provide the name, address and registration number of your business. Listing a contact phone number in this page will add more authenticity to the website. Others should be able to report copy right violations, trade mark violations, intellectual property violations etc in your website and you should respond to them in an adequate manner.

3. Provide a "Privacy Policy" page and link to it from the bottom of all pages. Even though most people do not read the privacy policy, it matters when it comes to legal issues. Also, if you are using advertisements on your pages, most advertisers require you to have a Privacy Policy.

4. Moderate the user generated content. You are responsible for any content in your website, no matter who posted it. In case of active discussion forums etc, holding the content for moderation before it is published will ruin the spirit of discussions. In such cases, you can allow publishing content without moderation but make sure you review them within 24 hours.

5. You should be able to delete any text or image posted in your website. Make sure you have the admin facilities to reach out and delete/edit any content including your own content and user generated content. This include the profile page and even the name of the members of your site. I had gotten in to trouble with Google AdSense in the past for having a member posting a nude picture as his profile photo and I did not have an admin feature to quickly delete it when Google informed it to me.

6. Do not allow anonymous posts and posts without some kind of login. If you allow posting comments without login, make sure they are not published before moderation. Anonymous posts can invite lot of spam and offensive content.

7. Do not post or allow others to post reproduced content, even if the original owner of the content allow you to reproduce them in your website. Search engines, especially Google, hates duplicate content.

8. Respect the privacy of others. Do not post private information of other individuals including phone number, address, email id, photos etc. Celebrities have a lot "less" privacy privileges (that is what they lose while making money out of the celebrity status), so in most cases, publishing their photos are allowed.

9. Do not publish any email ids in a form automated bots can read them. If you publish email ids in your website, spammers will send automated bots to retrieve all email ids from your website. This causes multiple problems. One is, all those people whose email ids are displayed will become victims of spam. Second reason is, your website will be overloaded by several automated bots continuously reading your websites in an attempt to retrieve email ids.

10. Focus on the content. This is the great key to success. Post fresh and original content at regular intervals. Post new content at regular intervals are better than posting several posts in a day and then take few days break. When search engines see some change every time it visit your site, it will learn your site is frequently updated and eventually they will start looking for new content more often.

11. Don't shrink to your own world. Open up your eyes and watch your competitors. See how they are doing. Don't try to imitate everything they are doing, but carefully learn what you are missing.

12. Do lot of guest blogging. Every webmasters like content. So try to post some articles in other sites with some relevant links to your own websites. Most webmasters allow such content.

13. Participate in relevant forums and communities. Do not abuse them to promote your websites, but use good opportunities. For example, when others ask questions, you can guide them showing relevant examples from your website.

14. Focus on the subject of your website. If your website is all about a specific theme, avoid posting content not related to that topic. That way, search engines will consider your blog as a niche site for that topic. Instead, you like to have a general blog or website, you can post anything you want, but you will have much higher competition since you lose the specific niche advantage.