Blog Audit Friday: Hail to Video Marketing Queen

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And so it’s Friday again - a beautiful day here in sunny Arizona, I might add.

Allow me to introduce the target of this Blog Audit Friday: Susanna Hess and her blog SusannaHess.com

SusannaHess.com

December 10, 2010

From the laptop of: Ana Hoffman

Dear Susanna :

Congratulations on your one year blogging anniversary - quite an achievement!

Whoever said blogging was easy has never started their own blog.

I know you’ve been a little cautious about letting me take a swing at your blog - understandably so, considering the word “tact” is not in my vocabulary.

Of course, the only way we can ever improve to to learn what we need to improve upon first and that’s exactly why we are here today.

So without further ado, here’s your anniversary blog audit.

***

General Stats

URL: http://susannahess.com/

Title: Internet Video Marketing | Business Branding | Susanna Hess

Description: Internet video marketing is one of the fastest ways to develop your business brand, even if that brand is you. Susanna Hess is a video and branding consultant.

Google PageRank: PR 1

Alexa Rank: 112,933 (in the top 0.36 % of all websites!)

Indexed pages in Google: 748

Domain Age: 11 months +

First Impression

1. What I liked about your blog

I am a big fan of simple yet sophisticated colors, uncluttered layout, and clear navigation.

You get points for doing all of the above, Susanna!

2. Design changes to consider

The header area could use a couple of changes, and here’s what I would do.

1. I would rework this part: “Susanna Hess: Internet Video Marketing & Business Branding“. Not really the wording, but the look. Make Internet Video Marketing & Business Branding part stand out more; after all, that’s why most people come to your blog and that’s what will make them stay.

2. I never say “You need to spend money to make your blog look more professional“. However, whether we hire a professional designer or do it ourselves, our header should be done to impress.

My main problem with yours is your picture. It wasn’t cropped very well and clearly doesn’t flow with the rest of the header. There’s nothing that will make me run faster from the blog than amateur-looking design.

Take a look at my outsourcing post here and I bet you can find someone to do a decent job for you for peanuts.

Also, your optin form needs some work for the same reason as above. Looks a bit amatuerish and doesn’t have a strong offer.

3. Home Page Load Speed

I know you’ve been working hard on this one, Susanna, and I must say you did great.

Your average loading speed on my computer is 2-3 seconds.

What a difference from 20-25 seconds it used to take!

To learn more about improving your site speed, take a look at these posts:

• Need for speed: Search Engine Ranking Chase Gains Momentum
• Need For Site Speed: Why I Wish I Had This Fruit Stand Owner’s Problems
• Need For Site Speed: Practical Guide For The Average Blogger

4. Navigation

Clean and clear.

I do see that you display testimonials in both your sidebar and on a page through your navigation menu. One too many?

If you do choose to keep them in the sidebar, I would move them down and keep your popular and recent posts at the top. Better for keeping your readers on your blog.

Content/Niche Analysis

1. Are you in a good niche?

Internet video marketing is what you decided to focus on.

According to my Market Samurai research, the first listing for this keyword gets about 91 clicks PER DAY: not a bad number at all.

The total VALUE of traffic for “internet video marketing” for Google organic spot #1 is $817.

Note: if you want to know more about the value of traffic, refer to keyword research posts I mention below.

2. Niche keywords

As of right now, your site does not rank for your primary keyword.

Since you’ve just recently done your keyword research, it’s understandable.

Here’s what I recommended Susanna reads on keyword research:

• Internet Marketing 101: The Telltale Signs of Profitable Markets
• Internet Marketing 101: Will Your Target Market Bring You Profits?

Your competition is strong, but certainly not unbeatable.

Your plan of action to get ranked for your primary keyword should be as follows:

1. Make sure your meta title and description include your main keyword. (check)
2. You need to create a video marketing “theme” on your blog, meaning most of your content should relate to it one way or another.
3. You need to BUILD MORE LINKS!

As I mention in my free 7 Steps to Complete Search Engine Domination report, effective one-way link building will just about guarantee your search engine ranking success.

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).

You did a great job including your main keyword in both your title and description tags.

However, I need to have a word with you about your descriptions, Susanna: they are WAAAAY too long (many of them, anyway).

To write an effective page/post description, remember to keep it under 150 characters (that’s all that the search engine listing will show), be concise and to the point, and entice your potential reader to click on your listing instead of your competitor’s.

2. Heading Tag Structure

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

Your current tag structure is just about perfect with 2 exceptions:

1. Your first H1 tag is “Susanna Hess” - it needs to include your main keyword.

2. I said “first” because you have 2 H1 tags on your home page. The second one is “Video Marketing Is Hot.” This is not crucial, but it’s always recommended to have only one H1 tag per page.

You need to change that to include your main keyword in it.

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

This area of your blog can definitely use some work.

I’ve mentioned in my previous Blog Audits that the way search engines read your blog is completely different from how we see it.

For instance, here is a screen shot of your blog home page as seen by search engine bots:

Since they don’t read the page the way humans do, you need to let them know what the images on your blog are about. Plus, this is yet another opportunity to optimize your blog for SEO purposes by using your keywords in your ALT tags.

That’s exactly what most images on your blog lack: the ALT tag.

The way you add an ALT tag to your image when writing a post is pretty simple.

Your ALT tag is “alternate text” in your “insert image” window.

This is what it looks like as HTML code - it’s helpful to know this when you are a adding an image to a place other than a post, like your sidebar, footer, header, etc. (click on the image to enlarge)

Link Structure

1. Internal Linking

For some reason, the various tools I use to compile these blog audits are letting me down today by not giving me sufficient information on your internal linking.

However, I did manually check several of your posts and it looks like you are doing just fine in that area.

2. Incoming Linking

Most bloggers do know that:

A. they need links
B. the links should be from high PR sites.

Wouldn’t it be great if it were this simple…

Just getting links from high PR sites is not going to do the trick.

As you can imagine, there are many other factors go into consideration when it comes down to determining a true link value. Sometimes I wonder if Google itself has any idea what goes into that…

I am definitely not Google. All I can do is guess to the best of my knowledge how to get the best links possible for my site.

Here are some factors you DEFINITELY need to consider - even though some of them might be for “just in case”:

• relevancy - this is a huge one;
• dofollow or nofollow - but don’t shy away from nofollow;
• how many comments are already on the page;
• do those comments look like spam;
• the age of the page - the older the better, but don’t ignore newer ones.

So, back to you, Susanna.

Most of your incoming links or backlinks come from low-value pages.

My dear friend, you don’t stand a chance of bringing much traffic through search engines if you ignore this step.

You need to learn link building the right way and you need to do it now.

Here’s some reading to pay attention to:

• Link Building Mixology: Your “How To Do It The Right Way” Guide
• Treasure Island of Link Building: How to Find the Best Links Every Time
• How to Dig up the Juiciest .edu and .gov link that stick (Alex Whalley)

Of course, I will also email you a report containing your best competitors’ links, so you can start your link building the right way - by stealing all their links.

This & That

1. 404 Not Found Error

Susanna: please get rid of these 2 pages on your blog, since they don’t exist any longer:

http://susannahess.com/personal-mentoring/

http://susannahess.com/work-with-susanna/

2. Traffic Conversion

Making it easy for your readers to read your posts is imperative to a successful blog.

The choice of font, size, color, white space, bold and italic fonts - everything goes into play here.

It’s not enough to bring traffic to your site; you also need to learn how to keep your traffic engaged, but even more importantly, how to get them to perform the action you want them to take, whether it’s opting into your list, buying your products, or sharing your site with others.

Traffic conversion is an EXTREMELY important part of your overall marketing strategy.

Read more about improving your traffic conversion:

• 7 Can’t Miss Ways to Kick-Start Better Traffic Conversion
• Best of The Web: 30 Ultimate Tips To Dramatically Reduce Blog Bounce Rate
• Top 10 Split Testing Tips to Increase Your Landing Page Conversion Rates

Now back to your blog, Susanna - I bet you are wondering what all of this has to do with you by now.

Overuse of bold font. It’s overwhelming, it’s difficult to read, and it makes me thing that every other paragraph is extremely important. Result? I stop paying attention altogether.

3. Domain Expiration

Not too many people know that Google pays attention to not only the age of the domain, but how far in the future you registered it for.

Yours will expire in 3 weeks or so.

This shows lack of commitment to your blog on your part and yes, it does affect your ranking - however small that effect can be.

I always recommend to register your domain name for a couple of years ahead, at least.

We are talking about $20 or so here and a lot more credibility; just do it.

Marketing Takeaway:

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

This post brought to you by Ana Hoffman

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