Fridays are always exciting for most of us (I say for “most” because there is always a Friday pooper in the crowd; go figure).
For me and my Traffic Generation Cafe blog, it’s becoming an even more special day, since that’s when I publish my new series “Blog Audit Friday”.
In case you missed my last Friday’s blog audit of CleverMarketer.com, what I do in this series is find a blog that I feel like tearing apart, looking at all nooks and crannies, and making suggestions on how to make it better.
This week’s volunteer is my good friend Oliver Tausend.
AskOliverTausend.com
November 19, 2010
From the laptop of: Ana Hoffman
Dear Oliver:
I’ve told you before in private and now let me shout out to thousands of my readers how much I appreciate your friendship, endless support, and constantly putting people first in your network marketing business.
It’s a truly rare commodities these days and I appreciate you showing it to all of us on a daily basis how it should be done.
This blog audit is my little token of appreciation of who you are.
***
General Stats
URL: http://www.askolivertausend.com/
Title: Believe it or not, you don’t really have one (will explain later).
Description: See above (first one for me, for sure).
Google PageRank: 0
Alexa Rank: 95,314
Indexed pages in Google:1070
Domain Age: 6 months
First Impression
What I did first was simply took a look at your blog like any visitor would, to see whether it looks good enough for me to stay.
1. What I liked about your blog
The first thing I notice is your smile - a huge plus; I definitely like you already.
Your image of holding a piggy bank on your tie is also very unique and makes me want to take a closer look at it.
I like your very clean gray background; definitely emphasizes the content and is great for conversion.
2. Design changes to consider
My eyes were inundated with many small things, like a zillion of social media icons and the Wibiya bar at the bottom.
As far as Wibiya bar is concerned, I feel partially responsible - I know I turned many of my readers to using it since I had it on my blog for a while. However, I did decide that the stats it was showing did not nearly match the amount of irritation it caused my readers - I would definitely take it off.
So, let’s make a dirty laundry list here - my recommendations for your home page:
- get rid of the majority of social icons; leave only the ones you know your readers use the most. Remember, too many choices = no choice made.
- in your header, “Welcome to Oliver Tausend’s Blog” is in bigger font than the tagline underneath. I would switch them around - make the latter bigger than the former, since your readers are more interested in what this blog is about.
- above your sidebar I see this: “Welcome to Oliver Tausend’s Blog: Welcome to the one-stop-shop for your success in your MLM Network Marketing business. Free MLM Network Marketing Mentoring through education and teamwork.” I would get rid of it; 3 welcomes above the fold are 2 too many.
- your opt-in form is not very appealing and doesn’t draw much attention. Your call to action is repetitive and not well formulated. I wouldn’t opt in.
- I like your sidebar widgets, like recent posts, comments, etc. It’s a great way to engage your readers. However, the entries are very blend. I would change the font for the names and/or post titles to make them stand out more.
- your footbar is a wasted space right now. It’s a bit blend and doesn’t provide much content I would want to click on. This is valuable real estate you are missing out on!
3. Home Page Load Speed
Great news here: your page loading time is 7-8 seconds, which is definitely a good number for a blog!
4. Navigation
Your navigation is uncluttered and easy.
My only concern is that your tab names are not very self-explanatory and wouldn’t entice me to click on them.
I would suggest taking a look at your Google Analytics account to see how your readers are navigating through your website; whether they are using your navigation tabs. You might generate more clicks and decrease your bounce rate if you change the titles.
5. You have no home page!
As I mentioned before, this is a first one for me.
When I add your URL to my browser, it redirects me to http://www.askolivertausend.com/2010/05/generate-leads-mlm-business/.
So essentially, it means you have no home page.
That’s not good at all - not for your users and certainly not for the search engines.
From the user’s point of you: I come to what I think is your home page and I see a post dated back to May. What I immediately think is “this blog hasn’t been updated in month; I am out of here!”
Here’s what your blog looks like in search engines:
Not something I would ever click on.
So whatever your reasoning behind this was, I would strongly suggest you change your home page to home page.
6. Outgoing links open in the same window
Many of your links, for instance the ones that lead to your social profiles or “Vote for my blog” button in your sidebar, when clicked on, open in the same window.
That’s one of the most sure ways to loose your readers!
Once someone goes to check you out on Facebook, they are very likely to get distracted and never come back to your blog.
To prevent that, make sure you add to ALL your outgoing links this code target=”_blank” - this will force the links to open in a new window, while your blog window will remain open.
Content/Niche Analysis
1. Are you in a good niche?
From what I can see, your niche is clearly defined as MLM Network Marketing with Personal Development angle.
Looks like you have pretty good readership, so I’d say you are in a good niche, Oliver!
2. Niche keywords
Are there any juicy keywords you are currently ranking for?
Yes, as a matter of fact there is.
You are currently ranked as number 17 for “how to generate leads” (here’s one more in-content link with the right anchor text for you 
) - quite a competitive and high -trafficked keyword, so congrats, Oliver.
Now we need to get you on the first page for that keyword or better yet, in the first 4 spots.
I will email you a specially prepared report that will explain step by step what you need to do to improve your search engine rankings for that keyword - something I usually reserve for my paid clients only.
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).
Your biggest problem with metadata (your meta title and meta description) is duplicating them ruthlessly.
Side note: if you need to learn more about metadata, read this great post by Tia Peterson on WeBlogBetter.com:
For instance, the following title “How To Generate Leads For Your MLM Business | Oliver Tausend’s Blog” is used on 38 different pages!
This description “How To Generate Leads For An MLM Business: Generating leads for MLM businesses is no more difficult than Paint By Numbers.” is also found on 38 different pages.
It’s extremely important for your SEO efforts to use unique titles and description for EACH page and post.
2. Heading Tag Structure
These are headings and subheading you use in your posts, sidebars, etc.
Here’s your current tag structure:
[h2] How To Generate Leads For Your MLM Business
[h3] Related posts
[h3] 68 Responses to “How To Generate Leads For Your MLM Business”
[h3] Leave a Reply
[h3] Welcome to Oliver Tausend's Blog!
[h3] Get Your Free Copy Of “How To Get Rich Without Winning The Lottery”
[h3] Please click on the image and get the one-stop-solution for your success in MLM
[h3] Please vote for me !
[h3] Recent posts
[h3] Top commentators
[h3] Recent comments
[h3] NetworkedBlogs
[h3] Fan me on Facebook
[h3] Impressum gemäß § 5 Telemediengesetz
[h1] Impressum
[h2] Kontakt:
[h2] Verantwortlich für den Inhalt nach § 55 Abs. 2 RStV:
[h2] Haftungsausschluss:
[h3] Oliver Tausend's Blog
[h3] Pages
[h3] Stay In Touch
[h3] More
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.
The best post ever on heading structure:
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!
3. Images
You have waaaaay too many images on your “home page”, Oliver - 123 to be precise. My home page has 24 and it’s still considered a lot.
The biggest problem with your images from SEO point of view though is the fact that most of them are missing an ALT tag.
Take a look at this post to learn more about ALT tags and how to use them (includes a video from Matt Cutts of Google):
Link Structure
1. Internal Linking
You link way too much to your feed, Oliver.
Your most linked-to page is:
http://www.askolivertausend.com/feed/ followed by:
http://www.askolivertausend.com/comments/feed/
Here’s the advice I gave to Heather of CleverMarketer.com in my previous audit; this is the same problem she had with her blog:
Solution: I don’t think you are intentionally linking to your RSS feed page. The problem is that your RSS feed button shows up on every single page of your blog. Don’t worry; I am not going to tell you to get rid of it – of course you want to encourage your readers to subscribe! However, you can tell the search engines to nofollow those links. The easiest way to do it is to check your theme to see if it offers the option to nofollow certain links). For example, this is what it looks like in the Thesis theme, which I use on my blog:
2. Incoming Linking
You certainly have a good number of links pointing to your blog, Oliver; your great commenting and networking efforts are definitely paying off.
The only advice I would give you is to start building links from higher PR pages that relate to your niche.
Marketing Takeaway:
Well, I think it’s enough for today, don’t you think?
And now, my dear readers, it’s your turn. Go to http://www.askolivertausend.com/ right now and let Oliver know what you think of his blog in general and point out the things you would change. Oliver and I are listening!
. 
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