This is a good tip for a web presence in general. I spend an awful lot of time surfing around the net in my quest for podcast-related content to comment on and think about. When you view 200 sites a day (some days) trends start to stand out. For me, I've developed two pet peeves.
Names
An almost shocking amount of bloggers don't put their names on their site anywhere. Of the remainder that do, many of them use a handle. Honestly, if you want credibility, if you want people to talk to you and link to you, then the bare minimum you need to provide is your real name. Nobody wants to write "The Masked Hamster over on Podcasthings.com has noted...." and nobody wants to have to write "Some unknown author over on podcasthings.com wrote about...".
About Pages
When did these go out of vogue? Are we just supposed to know what a site is all about by it s URL and main page? While a lot of sites still have some sort of 'about' or 'who are we' page, many do not. The final straw today was Podcast Mayhem. Other than the syndicated content on the first page and some icons for podcasts, I have no idea what they're all about. Are they a directory? A host? Something else entirely? No idea and I'm not going to go through the pain of registering just to find out.
Bottom Line
When you've got your site up to where you want it, get several people who don't know what you're doing to look at it. Post a request for reviews in a local forum or something and get feedback. Silly things like posting as the Masked Rathead and the site having no information about its purpose in life will come to light pretty quickly.
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