At first glance, there’s a huge difference between an e-commerce site selling heavy machinery, a cooking blog packed with delicious recipes that make me feel like a drooling puppy, or an internet marketing site offering advice on how to build a better business.
However, if you think about it, we all want the same.
We want for our perfectly targeted customer to find our site, like it, take the action we want them to take (buy, sign up, join, etc), and come back for more.
Telling their friends would be the icing on the cake.
In this blog audit I did for Colin and Duncan Gray from LawnsForYou.com, I will show you the key points you need to evaluate when looking at your own site - whatever the niche.
LawnsForYou.com
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The keynotes from the video:
1. Overall “Stickability”
Make your traffic take action - and make sure it’s not clicking back to wherever they came from.
To achieve that, your site should, among other things:
- Be visually appealing (very subjective, but that’s what split testing is for);
- Be clear on what your site is about (both in the title and tagline);
- Give few options.
2. Calls to Action
Determine what your most important call to action is and focus on funneling your readers towards that goal.
It’s OK to have a secondary goal, but don’t spread yourself thin.
3. Know Your Reader!
What sources generate most of your readership?
Offline customers? Search engines? Paid ads?
Gear your offer towards that specific customer.
SEO Analysis
1. Google is at it again
Yes, Google is saying “Be afraid!” yet again.
They are in the process of implementing many changes that makes us all question if our site would be the next one to tank under Google’s iron glove.
Here are some good reads on what’s going on if you care to learn more (and you should since this might affect any and all traffic you are getting or would like to get from Google):
1. Google is coming down on blog networks:
- ALN lost 5,297 Domains in 1 week (Hat tip for the link: Chris Fong)
- R.I.P BuildMyRank - BuildMyRank.com
- Private Blog Networks Getting De-Indexed? - Linkbuildr.com
- OMG! The Sky Is Falling!?!?! - PotPieGirl.com
2. “Over-Optimization” Penalty
- Too Much SEO? Google’s Working On An “Over-Optimization” Penalty For That - SearchEngineLand.com
- 2012 SXSW Transcript with Matt Cutts, Danny Sullivan, & Duane Forrester - RobSnell.com
What am I going to do about all this?
Nothing.
Keep my nose as clean as I can, continue to write epic content, build relationships with other bloggers (thus doing more natural one way link building and increasing referral traffic), and adapt to the changes as they come.
Tools I Used during the Blog Audit
There are really only two internet marketing tools I currently use for all my keyword, competition, and backlink research:
- SEMRush - an awesome tool that allows me to find out what keywords I am currently ranking for (the only one I know of that does that), what my competitors are ranking for, and find great ideas of keywords in demand.
See why I love SEMRush and how I use it to increase SEO traffic for Traffic Generation Cafe, read my SEMRush review.
- Market Samurai - despite all the latest controversy, MS still remains my SEO tool of choice; mainly for SEO competition and backlink checking.
See why in my latest Market Samurai review.
Marketing Takeaway
There’s always room for improvement for ANY site.
There are always things that could work better.
There’s always more money to be made with our businesses.
Colin: I hope you found this audit helpful and will put my tips to good use.
All other readers: ditto.
And if you want a chance for me to audit YOUR site, don’t forget to join TrafficGenerationCafe.com community. Now.
PS Do share this post with your social media circles!
Image credit: incredible photography by Kira Rozanov
Interesting… Yours is the first blog I see on blog.com platform; good to know they’ve got monetizing options covered.
I think the take-away of continuing to write epic content may be one of the more important aspects going forward. Spun articles, for example, may not be worth the time and money to post. BTW; How would you compare SEMRush to SEOmoz?
Especially with all the changes Google is currently implementing, content becomes more and more important; you are definitely right, Phil.
My absolutely favorite thing about SEMRush is the fact that it tells me what keywords any of the pages of my blog are currently ranking for, period. Most rank tracking tools (including SEOMoz, I believe) only track the ones you WANT them to track.
So you are much less likely to learn about any “accidental” rankings you might have.
Plus, the way SEMRush allows you to see what your keywords your competitors are ranking for helped me find some great highly searchable keywords I never even thought of focusing on.
Good info as always Ana! Glad to see that link to Danny’s site. I would highly recommend staying connected with Searchengineland for anyone that relies on Google for traffic (that’s everyone right?) Danny Sullivan is the grand daddy of SEO in my opinion.
Among all SEO blogs out there, SEL remains one of my favorites, Jon.
Great post as always… thx… most of the websites I have seen … they always have a problem with call to action…. 80 percent are not really sure why they have a website I think…. have a great day
Henrik
I agree, Henrik - such a seemingly simple thing as a call to action becomes a stumbling block to many businesses.
Effective tips Ana! Sometimes less is more. Prioritizing what matters most to put into your blog to give readers user total experience. Sometimes blog usability, good and relevant content can take you a long way. I agree as well, MS is a very powerful SEO tool. Great review by the way! I’ve never used to SEMRush, but i’m going to check it out sometime. I think it would be a great addition to my SEO Tools.
I certainly agree, James - I’ve seen plenty of blogs with great, yet unreadable content and with owners wondering what they are doing wrong.
Making your reader work for it is never a good idea.
Although I might sounds silly I just recently realized that I need to value each and every single customer. They are not just “traffic” but those who bring action to my website. It is very lonely over there if nobody visits you LOL
So I changed a bit - I now try to value the next like, +1, subscriber, etc. more. Not that I didn’t do before but now I do even more and try to interact with each and every. Although I know I won’t be able to do that in future if the site’s visitors keep increasing I’m happy enough to keep up with them for now. And really, for me this has a lot of more value as well as I can learn tons from my visitors.
I am definitely with you, Monja.
It’s easy to start ignoring your readers, especially as your blog grows, and then you are in danger of turning into a big name without a face.
Hey so wife watching boring movie. I’m on phone leaving this comment. seeing how it took me twenty minutes to leave this… I wont be doing it again. Enjoyed your review. Have Happy Sunday!
Something wrong with my site or you are not a big fan of typing on a phone?
Wouldn’t be the first time Google’s done its dance, Astro.
It’s happened to me a few times in the past and I still have no explanation. Sometimes no matter how many links I built, I still wasn’t able to get back.
Who knows…
This is something I’ve been working on: getting my front page as streamlined as possible. It’s really difficult to do, so I’m thinking hard about WHAT I can do, then doing it slowly. I don’t want to barge in with a cleaning mop and start wildly cleaning up. I’m proud of what I’ve been able to do so far. Thanks for keeping me working on that, Ana.
Colin, all the best with what you have to do. I’m sure you can achieve it.
If I could make a suggestion for your home page, Anne: all I see above the fold (other than the header and your navigation) are AdSense and “Blogger’s Books Ads Board” in your sidebar. Notice the word “Ads” in it.
Makes me feel like this site wants to sell me something above all and thus I wouldn’t explore it any further.
Okay, Ana. Thank you. Will sort that out. The ads are Chikita (but I get what you mean). I’ll have a think about what I want in that space instead.
Ana, great work on the audit! As this is the small business owners are usually very keen about the results… but here in your takeaways there is one more thing I would like to add and that is consistency… Once the change has been implemented give it some time to digest by the audience and then keep an eye on reactions and results out of it.
Can’t help but agree, Richard.
Thanks very much for that audit, Ana - really really useful!
I think I’m going to give my front page a real overhaul based on this. When you point it out, it’s quite obvious that there’s far too much going on on there. I need to concentrate on getting people into the shop!
Thanks as well for the request for further advice from your audience, I’m sure there’s plenty of experts out there that could help. If anyone has any further advice, I’d greatly appreciate it!
Yours in gratitude,
Colin Gray
You are so very welcome, Colin, and do let me know if you have any questions!
Hi Colin,
I don’t know about the UK, but around here people looking for lawn care are very concerned that they don’t select the local drunk, or the heavy metal teenager with a pickup truck. They want someone reliable that they don’t have to shudder about every time they show up on their property. Perhaps you could include a photo of your smiling, wholesome, well groomed crew in a prominent place on the site.
Listen to Ana. She’s the “woman”!
Lou Barba
Thanks, Lou! lol
And yes, I agree: when providing more localized services, it’s always a great idea to be more personable and a photo will definitely help.