Blog Audit Black Friday: How to Be Irrisistably Attractive

Welcome to my new Blog Audit Friday!

For those of your who live outside the U.S., a note about what today is.

The Friday after Thanksgiving day (which was yesterday) is called “Black Friday“.

Why?

It’s the biggest and the most insane shopping day of the year!

By “insane” I mean people will sleep outside in sleeping bags waiting for stores to open, which happens as early as 4 am. As soon as the doors open, they flood stores trampling everyone in the way, including the poor store clerks.

So if you are joining me here today - thank you for choosing to make money with me rather then spend it in Black Friday madness.

Speaking of making money: there is a great webinar going on today, which I HIGHLY recommend you join.

Traffic has more marketers stuck-in-the-mud than anything else…and Facebook has TONS of it. (It even has more than Google according to CNN and The Associated Press.)

This webinar is all about Facebook traffic and how to get hold of your fair share of it.

So definitely check it out right now and I hope you are not too late!

==> http://bit.ly/LearnBlackFriday

Back to Blog Audit Friday…

Today I am looking at:

AttractionMarketingOnline.com

November 26, 2010

From the laptop of: Ana Hoffman

Dear Mavis :

You are one of few people who saw the very beginnings of Traffic Generation Cafe and always showed your undivided support, encouraging me every step of the way - thank you.

I remember how you contacted me for the first time via my YouTube channel because you liked one of my videos. There is a lesson here to learn for all of us: reach out to other marketers and bloggers out there and you never know what great beginnings and long-term friendships might come out of it.

My brave soul - you volunteered your blog to be reviewed by me, although I am not surprised: you always strive for excellence and it shows in everything you touch.

So here it is; I hope you’ll be as excited to read it as I am to write it.

***

General Stats

URL: http://attractionmarketingonline.com/

Title: Attraction Marketing Online | Fundamental Attraction Marketing Strategies

Description: Transform YOUR Online Business With Simple, Cutting-Edge Attraction Marketing Strategies And Explode It In 90 Days Or Less!

Google PageRank: 4

Alexa Rank: 138,905 - top 0.47% of ALL websites!

Indexed pages in Google: 360

Domain Age: 1 year 6 months

First Impression

1. What I liked about your blog

Love the blue color!

I am not sure if you knew it, but psychologically blue color invokes trust - not a bad feeling for a network marketing blog!

Your picture in the blog heading shows confidence and knowledge; I already feel like I am in the presence of an expert.

Great use of your header; I know exactly what kind of blog I am at within seconds - extremely important to keep your targeted website traffic right where it belongs, on your blog.

2. Design changes to consider

I must say, you left me speechless here. I am sure I can come up with a couple of things here and there, but I won’t. It looks great the way it is.

Your next step though is to start split testing different elements on the page to see which changes bring better conversions.

It’s both fun and extremely insightful to do that - you never know, a different color titles just might bring a 50% traffic conversion increase!

3. Home Page Load Speed

Anywhere from 8 to 11 seconds.

Not horrible, but could definitely be improved.

I can see quite a few plugins that are being loaded with the page; I would suggest you consider their usefulness to a reader vs causing your site speed problems.

As you saw me do it on my blog, I stripped away most of the plugins I used to have; it gave me a cleaner and more uncluttered look and definitely increased my site speed.

Up to you.

4. Navigation

I like it.

It’s clean and sharp and I love it that you included “In The Press” tab - gives you even more authority in your readers’ eyes.

The only thing I would change is “Sitemap” tab. Not too many people know what it means, and those who do know would never click on it because they would picture the kind of sitemap that helps search engine spiders navigate your site.

Your sitemap here is more of an archive page as far as the average reader is concerned and is actually quite useful. I would name it to reflect that.

Content/Niche Analysis

Your niche is clearly expressed everywhere I go - Attraction Marketing.

1. Are you in a good niche?

You and I have talked about this numerous times.

I’ve done some more thinking and research on “attraction marketing” niche and I changed my mind.

In the past, I advised you that you might want to reconsider your niche for various reasons.

Now I think you need to stay right where you are and here’s why:

• The competition is relatively low: roughly 600K results at the time of this post. That’s not bad at all.
• There are a lot of advertisements on the page, which usually indicates that searchers are clicking on the links and advertiser are making money - always a sign of a good market.
• My Market Samurai research told me that the first organic spot in Google for “attraction marketing” can achieve as many as 137 clicks per DAY - quite a good number.
• I analyzed your first page competition for the keyword, once again using Market Samurai (I definitely HIGHLY recommend you get your own copy now) and saw many weak websites ranking there and many opportunities for you to push your site to the first page.

I will email you my research, Mavis, for you to compare your blog to the ones that are already ranked on page one plus all the links for your top competitor. This way, if you can get all the same links that they have, you will great improve your chance of beating them to spot #1!

2. Niche keywords

I always loved your blog content, Mavis - you always give your readers a lot of brilliant advice and that’s why they keep coming back for more.

However, you need to narrow the focus of your blog.

Right now you write about everything internet marketing related. The only section of your blog that is actually dedicated to “attraction marketing” is Attraction Marketing category.

Now imagine you rank on the first page of Google for “attraction marketing”. I am a searcher trying to learn more about the concept. So my search leads me to your site and… I don’t find any information about attraction marketing, other than your blog headline and URL. Since I am not going to waste my time digging deeper into your site, I simply end up leaving. Opportunity lost.

Solution: I am not saying that every one of your posts should be about attraction marketing.

However, I would create a page dedicated to attraction marketing and add it to your navigation bar as a tab. That way whoever is searching for the info will clearly see it on your site.

Plus, properly optimized, that page will have a good chance of ranking in Google all on its own - and you will effectively double your traffic.

SEO Analysis

1. Meta Tag Structure

This information is mostly used by search engines to determine your rankings; it’s also what you see in the search engine results pages (SERPs).

Here’s the easiest way to check on meta data of ANY site:

Step 1: While on the website home page, go to “View” ==> “Page Source”

Step 2: A new window showing HTML source code will show up.

By the way, this source code is how search engine bots read your site. They don’t see your pretty graphics or cool images; all they see is how well those cool graphics are coded.

This is what your HTML code looks like, Mavis. (click on the image to enlarge)

The highlighted portion is the meta title for your website.

META TITLE:

The way your users see it is when they are:

A) on your website; all the top at the top of the browser window.

B) when conducting a search for your site:

Suggestions for your meta title:

First of all, it’s too long. That’s why you see “…” at the end of your title. Suggested title length is 65 characters.

I don’t have time to link to the research right now, but I’ve read studies that indicated that the searchers are less likely to click on the link if it ends with “…” at the end.

I love the fact that you added your main keyword to the very beginning; good job on that. However, I don’t think you need to repeat it at the end as well.

META DESCRIPTION:

You can see it right under the title in the previous image.

And here it is in your source code (click to enlarge):

Problem: you should always try to mention your keyword at the BEGINNING of the description. Search engine will always give the words at the beginning more weight.

META KEYWORDS:

You can see your keywords right after your meta description in the previous image.

A note on properly using your meta keywords:

1. Many argue that meta keywords are not as important these days. I agree with that. However, it doesn’t mean that we should forget about them altogether.

2. You need to remember that search engines treat your home page as a PAGE and NOT an entire website.

In your case, Mavis, you are telling the search engines (SEs) that you think your PAGE is about ALL these different keywords, thus diluting your true focus of “attraction marketing”.

3. For those of you who do keyword search (and you ABSOLUTELY should): NEVER add your researched keywords into your meta keywords information.

Why?

Because you make it extremely easy for your competitors to steal them; after all, all they need to do is to look up your page source!

Add more generic keywords in your meta data, but never your money keywords.

2. Heading Tag Structure

These are headings and subheading you use in your posts, sidebars, etc.

Here’s your current tag structure:

[h2] Blogging - Understanding The BIG Picture!
        [h2] Blogging Tips - Top 10 Ways To Promote Your Blog
        [h2] WordPress Blog Optimisation - Link Building Exposed!
        [h2] WordPress Blog Optimisation - The Must-Have Plugins For Your Blog!
        [h2] Blogging - How To Get Rid Of The Writer's Block **Part 1**
            [h3] Affiliate Marketing: How To Get It Right And Cash In
            [h3] Is Your Blog Plagued By Spam Comments?
            [h3] 10 Effective Ways to Get More Blog Subscribers
            [h3] Making Money Online – How Fast Can You Make It?
            [h3] 60 Ways To Increase Your Influence Online
            [h3] 10 Effective Ways To Build Your List
            [h3] 5 Simple Ways to Open Your Blog Post With a Bang!
            [h3] Attraction Marketing Online In The Top 50 MLM Blogs Contest!
            [h3] How To *Magnetically* Increase The Opt-ins On Your Blog!
            [h3] Attraction Marketing Online On Killer Blogging Tips

What it should be for your home page - ideally:

• H1: Blog’s name
• H2: Your blog’s tagline - should be keyword-rich
• H3: Your recent posts
• H4: related content in the sidebar, like the heading of an “about” widget.
• H5: Unrelated headings in your sidebar, footer, etc.

What it should be for your posts:

• H1: post / page title
• H2’s and H3’s: subheadings and sub-subheadings
• H4: your blog’s name, and possibly related widgets
• H5: same as above: sidebars etc.

Side note: if you want to check your own blog structure, just go to http://validator.w3.org/, add your URL to validate your code and make sure you check the “Show Outline” box - that’s what will give you your blog outline at the very bottom of your page, along with all HTML code errors you’d better fix!

I am always in favor of outsourcing this part of blog repair; $30 would be a reasonable amount to fix the above and other technical issues you might have with your site, like all those HTML code problems (in your case, Mavis, your have about 179 errors - quite a bit).

3. Images

Your home page has 39 images; 7 of them don’t have an ALT tag.

Side note: an ALT tag tells the search engines what your images are about - since SE bots can’t see images the way we do.

Thus, it’s extremely important to add ALT tags to every image on your page.

I won’t be able to go deeper on how to add/change your image ALT tags in this post - it’s getting pretty long as it is.

Just Google the term if you need additional information, and I will make a separate post on this in the nearest future.

Back to Mavis’s blog: most of the home page images missing ALT tags are banner images.

Link Structure

1. Internal Linking

Here are your 10 most link-to pages internally (100% being ALL internal, also referred to as “deep”, links within your blog).

1. http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/feed/ 5.2%
2. http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/comments/feed/ 5.2%
3. http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/free-marketing-training/ 4.9%
4. http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/connect-with-me/ 4.9%
5. http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/blog-plagued-spam-comments/ 4.9%
6. http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/affiliate-marketing-get-right-cash-in/comment-page-1/ 4.9%
7. http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/affiliate-marketing-get-right-cash-in/ 4.9%
8. http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/about/ 4.9%
9. http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/60-ways-increase-influence-online/ 4.9%
10. http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/10-effective-ways-blog-subscribers/ 4.9%

Why is this so important?

You can improve search engine rankings of a certain page by means of linking to this page from other pages of your website.

Read more on internal deep linking in this post:

• How to Rank Well For Your Inner Pages

The list above can help you figure out if your website’s internal links are directed right to the pages you want to rank high in search engines.

And you need to plan your internal links accordingly.

2. Incoming Linking

The ratio between your internal links (links that point to different pages within the blog) and external links (links that point FROM other sites to your blog) is 64% to 36%.

I’d love to see that number change significantly.

This and That

There are a couple of other things I wanted to point out, Mavis; i.e. build more quality one way links!

1. Canonicalization Issues

WWW vs non-WWW versions of your blog is what I am talking about here.

In short, http://www.attractionmarketingonline.com/ and http://attractionmarketingonline.com/ are one and the same site to us, the users, but are 2 COMPLETELY DIFFERENT sites to Google and other SEs.

So as it stands right now, Mavis, all the links going back to your site from other sites are split between the 2 versions of your domain name - www and non-www versions. That obviously has a potentially serious effect on your rankings.

What you need to do is set a preference as to what version of your website you prefer or make it “canonical” in SEO terms. It doesn’t matter which one you pick (it’s purely personal preference), as long as you let Google know about it.

There are 2 ways to do it. (actually, I recommend doing both of them)

1. In your WP admin panel, go to

“Settings” ==> “General”

See where it say WordPress Address in the image below? Make sure it’s not blank - add your preferred URL in that window.

2. Set your preference through Google Webmasters Tools.

If you don’t have a free account with them yet, you should get it: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

• First, you will need to make sure that both WWW and non-WWW versions of your website are verified - just follow the directions to do that.
• After that is done, go into your preferred site version; choose Site Configuration, then Settings.
• Set the URL you prefer to be your canonical URL.

That should do it!

Now all your external links, whether they are linked to your WWW or non-WWW versions, will go to the one you choose.

2. DoFollow Links

I definitely support your effort to keep your blog DoFollow, Mavis (readers: that’s a PR 4 DoFollow blog!!! Read it and comment on it - meaningfully, of course - often and you will get some great DoFollow links!)

Here’s a cool Dofollow Blog Finder Tool to help you find more great DoFollow blogs:

• The Ultimate DoFollow Blog Finder Tool

However, some links just don’t need/deserve to be DoFollow.

Links like your signature at the end of your posts, badges, banners, etc.

So check every link you have on your home page and add a NOFOLLOW attribute to any external ones that you don’t need to pass your PR to.

This is what your links look like right now:

<a href=”websiteyoushouldn’tgiveadofollowlinkto” target=”_blank”>

I want you to add this code to your links: rel=”nofollow”, so your links will look like this:

<a href=”websiteyoushouldn’tgiveadofollowlinkto” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”>

By the way, you don’t need to link to your signature image at all; just save it to your desktop, then upload it to your blog and add it from there. This might actually speed up your blog as well.

Marketing Takeaway:

Overall, great blog, Mavis, and with a few little tweaks you can make it even greater!

To My Readers

Thanks to your ultimate support of this series, it took off like a wild fire!

I am very pleased to see it and happy to fill the need.

One thing I am struggling with, however, is HOW BIG of a need it turned out to be.

As you can imagine, time is short, and there are simply not enough Fridays or hours of the week to address all the requests.

But don’t fret; for those of you who really want to improve your blogs and are willing for me to tell you what you need to do to accomplish that, I am now offering a paid Blog Auditing Service.

I will put up a page dedicated to it in the future, but for now simply use the contact form to let me know you are interested.

And now, my dear readers, it’s your turn. Go to http://www.AttractionMarketingOnline.com/ right now and let Mavis know what you think of her blog in general and point out the things you would change.

Mavis and I are listening!