There are several ways to do this, and this post will show you a few ways:
Proving to the world that you are who you say you are, is a big deal in a time in history where you receive fake emails, people create fake webpages and more.
Quit simply, verification proves you are who you say you are. As an example, on some Twitter accounts you will see the verification mark. Twitter verifies many celebrities, and other public figures so people aren’t confused by fake accounts. You see this for actors, politicians and more. But, they also will verify other accounts. As an example, Twitter verified my account @roosites (see image). Facebook also verified us as well. So if nothing else when people come to my pages, they know I am who I say I am.
Testimonials are great way to show people that your company is a legitimate entity and also allow you to brag without having it come directly from you. But, here are some important things to know about testimonials. Testimonials which are vague or don’t show a person’s whole name or their company our next to useless.
“They are a great company”
~Bill
(This may not be fake, but it sure looks fake!)
What I do is I recommend to my clients that when they show testimonials, only if the person allows them to show their full name, their company as well as their title. As you can see below, this is a real person from a real company having a real review testimonial. Nothing legitimizes a company like great testimonials from real people. See below, here is an example from my testimonials page.
Most people search for things by location. So if you are looking for a plumber, you don’t typically just type in ”plumber”. You typically will type: My Town + Plumber as an example.
By having your company listed in local directories, This will further legitimize your company. In the old days people would just pick up there yellow pages and that’s how they found you. But as we know, those days are gone. However there are still local directories, Google My Business, YP.com (The old Yellow Pages ), as well as a bunch of other local directories. Start with Google My Business, this will give you a listing that appears right when people are searching for your business or similar businesses like yours on Google Search and Maps. See my Boston listing below as an example. We can recommend several ways to gain local business citations. Contact us for assistance.
These are just a few simple ways to add legitimacy to your small business. There are of course many different ways to do this, and we would be glad to help you. All of our support plans include time each month for working on your company’s credibility through time-tested methods.
