Essential Elements of a Web Site

[Andy]

I think Mastercard.com reveals some of the essential items of a web site that will help for high ranking in search engines. Obviously this site has lot's of inbound links (I didn't check) but it has a Google PR of 7 which shows that nothing on the page is bad, only good. So we can learn from this site what to include in the skeleton of our new web sites don't you think?

For example, they have a "Privacy Policy", "Terms of Use" and a "Contact Us" page. These maybe help determine if your web site is an authority-like page or some kind of half-hearted made for adsense effort?

[Queen Bee]

For example, they have a "Privacy Policy", "Terms of Use" and a "Contact Us" page. These maybe help determine if your web site is an authority-like page or some kind of half-hearted made for adsense effort?

I generally think that these 3 elements are very important parts of each web page. Privacy Policy and Terms of Use pages show that the webmaster has taken time to inform their visitors about legal procedures and user obligations, while a Contact page is their way of saying "We are here to serve you."

I have no idea how Google (or Adsense) reads this information, but I know it is important for client/user relations.

[jbladeus]

Provacy policy, terms, contact page don't do much regarding search engine worthiness of a web site, however should be given as they assure the audience about your authenticity as an online entity.

[Teflon]

Hmm wish i owned that site and the company for that matter now that would be priceless.

[Andy]

Provacy policy, terms, contact page don't do much regarding search engine worthiness of a web site, however should be given as they assure the audience about your authenticity as an online entity.

As webmasters, you should check out the terms of the affiliate programs and also Google Analytics if you host them on your site.

Basically, you need to have a Privacy policy if you track visitor movements on your site which explains how you track visitors with Cookies etc. So it could impact on your rankings later if you don't consider these things. If you don't then you may have problems with services that you use that use visitor tracking data.

I would hate to see you behind bars for simple editing mistakes on your site.

So, this is the crap I scratched onto the cell walls in my Mexican jail:

http://www.readingfreeads.co.uk/privacy.php

Feel free to copy it and adjust to your own needs and feed back to me input from your lawyers.

Darn, I missed the opportunity to invite people to regularly check for changes to my Privacy Policy  an RSS feed could fix this issue maybe?

It is very important that every visitor to any website first checks and completely agrees with the privacy policy. I can't stress this enough, before you read a word of any site you visit, please read and fully understand the privacy policy before you view any content on the site!

I think I have adequately warned and briefed potential visitors to my site as to how their privacy may be affected if they dive straight into my site, but I really hope they will go directly to my privacy policy first to get comfortable with the situation they will be in once they enter the actual site. Ideally, they will seek legal advice before making any decisions at all.

[eons]

I agree with these three being very important elements. The Contact Us, especially. It helps you come up with leads.

[coloradoseo]

It depends upon what type of website it is.  If it's an ecommerce site then a security seal is mandatory for instance.  Contact pages are a must and it's even better to have an autoresponder response sent to the prospect to their email address and the simplest contact form that has an autoresponder is Royalresponder.com in my opinion.  Beyond that, you need at least three or four primary pages that are important enough to take lots of time optimizing and creating useful and informative content on, in order to create some website authority to support your head keywords or primary keywords.