Today I was reading an interest article from Danny Sullivan at www.searchenginewatch.com on how some search engines look to other search engines for help in powering their searches. An interesting flash representation of a Search Engine Partnership Chart is provided by www.ihelpyou.com .
Way Better than Making the Honor Roll: Good Grades on Website Grader
61%. A lousy 61%. When my friend Mark Bové sent me a link to WebsiteGrader.com, with a little note: “Cool tool! Try this out.” I jumped on the chance to have someone give me objective feedback on my site(s).Like most info marketers, I’ve discovered the long learning curve and the unending to-do list involved. Content creation, marketing tasks, SEO, SEM, PPC, JV’s – the initials alone are a little overwhelming. With the help of an internet marketing mentor, I went from barely knowing how to right click to being able to build my own sites. (Which, by the way, are about to be professionally re-done by Mark’s team. He’s so funny – he sent a little note saying he’d been looking at them and that if I ever needed some help, he’d be happy to turn his team loose on them. Tactful and gracious. And if I’ve learned one thing in business it’s this: don’t be too proud to accept feedback and help. Only your true friends will tell you the truth.)Anyhow, there’s always this nagging feeling that I’ve forgotten something in building my sites. Something important. Something I don’t even know that I don’t know. So, given the opportunity to run some quick, free tests on my sites, I couldn’t wait to get started.
You just type in your URL, type in your email, and wait a few minutes. You’ll get an email with a link to your report. At the top of the report, you’ll find your site’s overall grade.
That’s where it got ugly.
61% is a failing grade no matter how generous the curve. And this was on a site with a top 15 SERP for my primary keyword. After an initial “What the?” I dug into the meat of the report.
The report’s broken up into sections. Each section gives a little explanation about how a particular aspect of your site should work, shows what your site has, and identifies ways you can improve it.
Some areas you’ll see on your report:
Meta and page info: keywords, titles, descriptions, and the length of your descriptionHow many images on your site, presence (or absence) of alt textInbound links301 forwards (there’s an explanation in the report – something I never knew about!)
How many pages Google’s indexed
Your page rank with Google
Whether you’ve got a blog connected to your site (and whether it’s being hosted appropriately – another matter that was news to me)
How you’re doing on Alexa and Technorati
Whether your site is listed on DMOZ and Yahoo
Whether you’ve got functioning subscription (or other) forms on your site
and more
Oh. Oh boy. Time for some site maintenance and repair.The gauntlet was thrown. Report in hand (er, in window), I started on the list.Some of the items were really easy to fix. Shorten this description, add keywords on this page, add some alt text here and there. Some of the items are beyond my skill set right now. Some seem to involve some money (getting listed in Yahoo seems to cost a few hundred dollars? still looking into that).But after about 25 minutes of tweaking and fixing, I republished and re-ran the Website Grader.76%. Hey, it’s not an A, but it’s a solid C (a “Gentleman’s grade” as my husband referred to it in college). And as I figure out how to tackle the other items in the report, the grade will go up – and along with it, my traffic and profits.
Kind of gives new meaning to the well-worn internet marketing advice to “test, test, test” – and when the site finally gets an A, I’m putting that report up on the fridge.
Sue LaPointe
Triumph Communications, LLC
Choice words to help your business succeed
#1 ranked writer on Guru.com
www.triumphcom.com
www.workingwriterhappywriter.com
What are you worth…that is, what is the average Salery in your area for your job description? I stumbled upon this great little tool by careeronestop.org in a effort to advise a friends daughter that was interested in going to college to possible enter the Marketing field.
Here is what I found:
This information is backed up Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment Statistics Program. The OES is a semi-annual survey that provides wage and employment statistics for the nation, each state, and sub-state regions.
