A Methodology for Site Reviews
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This document provides a framework and methodology for quickly reviewing websites. It outlines key areas to examine such as user experience, conversion/stickiness, content, SEO, social, and provides specific recommendations for the example site Springest.co.uk. Reviews should analyze why the site exists, who its audience is, what motivates them, and address client concerns about user experience, content quality, SEO optimization, and social strategies. Example reviews are given for additional sites BathandUnwind.com and specific ideas to improve their content, SEO, and social presence.
A Methodology for Site Reviews
- 1. Site Reviews Methodology and Examples for Web Marketers to Perform Quick Reviews of Websites. Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz | October 2011
- 2. A Framework for All Site Reviews
- 3. Why Does this Website Exist?
- 4. Who Cares?
- 5. What Motivates, Inpsires & Interests this Audience?
- 6. What’s the Client Worried About?
- 7. What Should A Review Cover?
- 9. Design Usability Conversion Stickiness
- 10. Content
- 11. Usefulness Interest Alignment Quality Share-ability
- 12. SEO
- 13. Accessibility Keyword Targeting Content Optimization Link Authority
- 14. Social
- 15. Social Value Channels Incentives Social Optimization
- 16. User Experience Content SEO Social
- 17. Springest.co.uk
- 19. Why Does this Website Exist? http://www.springest.co.uk
- 20. Springest helps connect people to training & education that can better their lives
- 22. Anyone running a training course/program
- 23. Anyone seeking to learn in a professional training environment
- 24. What Motivates, Inspires & Interests This Audience? http://www.springest.co.uk
- 25. The Pain! Oh, the Pain! For training organizers it’s empty seats
- 27. And market analysis (what are people saying about their events and how do they fare vs. the competition)
- 28. For those seeking to learn, it’s finding the right path
- 29. And exploring potential options with feedback, ratings and ROI analysis they can trust
- 30. User Experience for Springest
- 32. Auto-detect? Save Us a Step!
- 33. Do users care about this? Doesn’t sound impressive…
- 34. Do you get lots of traffic/searches? Impress these providers!
- 35. Charity donation is cool; but the message is muddled/hidden.
- 36. Not sure “News” is the right headline here… “Why Do We Trust a Website?” sounds like killer content. Several others do, too, but they don’t necessarily sound like “news.”
- 37. This could surely be more compelling and receive higher engagement.
- 38. “Stay tuned?”… I’m also a bit confused on the relevancy of these articles, why they’re separate from news and how they fit with the site/users’ goals.
- 39. “0” replies/comments on any of the Q+A? So sad!
- 40. Who’s going to answer? Why? Do other questions have good answers? Has someone asked a similar question?
- 41. Start typing and Quora starts figuring out what I want and showing me… It’s powerful.
- 42. Hey! Where’d the rest of the site go?
- 43. What about quality? Reviews? Value? Ability to get a job/raise/fulfillment?
- 44. Can editors somehow review these? Can we infer something from comments made around the web? Can we get statistics from the provider? Anything to make this more useful + convincing.
- 45. Found this on the Netherlands site and loved it… Couldn’t find it on the UK site.
- 47. Feels a bit thin here…
- 48. Technically, this is “good content.”
- 49. In reality… It likely has high bounce rates, low engagement, doesn’t drive subscriptions and doesn’t encourage sharing.
- 50. Yikes...
- 51. Also Yikes.
- 52. Content Idea #1 Incent users (both event organizers and seekers) to contribute to the articles/q+a section.
- 53. Content Idea #2 Turn the articles section into a blog. Give it multiple authors. Create a feed where folks can subcsribe. Tweet, Facebook, Google+ those pieces. Make sure no post has <2 comments.
- 54. Content Idea #3 Subsidize those attending professional events if they’ll review them on Springwise. Find them via Twitter, Lanyrd, Meetup and the event sites themselves.
- 55. Content Idea #4 Whatever you’re doing in the Netherlands rocks. Do that in the UK, and make the stats embeddable on other people’s sites.
- 57. If it were me, I’d go vertical by vertical. Build the most comprehensive, amazing resource on “web design courses” then move on to “photography” then to “languages,” etc.
- 58. #1: I’d likely reverse the title tags to put the keywords at the front. #2: Videos, star ratings or any rich snippet info would help these stand out. #3: Be very cautious about using non-unique content or generating bamboo pages here.
- 59. Who will link to this page and why?
- 60. These are your partners. They just don’t know it yet
- 61. And these guys.
- 62. This group is going to help share and promote your content/Q+A
- 63. SEO Idea #1 Professional events calendar that all the events want to earn a listing from (and that require an embed on their events page to “prove” they’re the official organizer).
- 64. SEO Idea #2 Contests to get into events free for the person submitting the article that earns the most tweets / Facebook / LinkedIn shares.
- 65. SEO Idea #3 Find unemployed bloggers (Google blog search, LinkedIn lookups and RSS search can help), reach out and ask them to become contributors to content and Q+A. In return, sponsor their event attendance.
- 66. SEO Idea #4 Embeddable badges for the positive reviews left on Springest that events can put on their sites.
- 68. This account should help promote the events, reviews and people involved with your site.
- 69. The LinkedIn audience in hyper-relevant for your business. Get a page here, answer questions, connect to event providers, recruiting agencies, etc.
- 70. Great place to share event photos, interesting blog content and have discussions on news around employment/training issues.
- 71. Answer questions that fit into the training/events world on sites like Quora
- 72. Social Idea #1 Become a resource to event marketers and connect with them over social networks. As you share content, they’ll be very likely to help it spread via Twitter/Facebook/etc.
- 73. Social Idea #2 Use Facebook events and Facebook ads; do the same with promoted tweets that are geo-targeted and LinkedIn ads. Show results and share with event marketers (great way to grow your social reach and get great content).
- 74. Social Idea #3 Run contests via Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn for ticket giveaways that require a follow/like. This won’t bring tons of followers, but they will be high quality.
- 75. Social Idea #4 Watch for people using particular words/asking questions on Twitter around events, networking, training, etc. Helping them find good stuff (even if you’re not linking to your site) will build goodwill and followers.
- 78. Why Does this Website Exist?
- 79. To Bring Happiness to Beautiful Women Like These
- 80. Who Cares?
- 81. Everyone without a “Y” Chromosome.
- 82. What Motivates, Inspires & Interests This Audience?
- 85. Great brand messaging… But does that convert? Help bounce rate? Bring users back?
- 86. Do these categories line up with your products, or with how your visitors actually shop?
- 87. Seems like brands would be an essential way of shopping… But it took me a while to find how to shop by brand from this page.
- 88. There’s no message about connecting to the community/social or getting involved with content. Is that intentional? Has it been tested?
- 89. At default resolution, there’s no products visible above the fold!
- 90. Reviews = awesome. Strikethough prices = awesome. No way to shop by “on sale” or seasonal = less awesome.
- 91. Wow. This is really top notch!
- 93. I found a hidden blog!
- 94. Great content; just hard to find and not well promoted.
- 95. Content Idea #1 Identify 30 blogs in the womens/beauty space that are medium size/influence that would be receptive to outreach. Start commenting, engaging, interacting and relationship-building with them.
- 96. Content Idea #2 Create a “best bloggers in beauty” awards that you give out annually. Make badges and physical awards to mail them. They’ll all link to you like crazy. Oh, and make the nominations based on tweeted votes
- 97. Content Idea #3 Reward reviewers with visibility – give top reviewers/contributors a leaderboard, points, etc. This could also apply to blog comments.
- 98. Content Idea #4 Head:Head faceoffs of beauty products that claim to perform a specific function. Run a test every week or month and publish the results, with photos ala Oyster fakeouts. Which skin cream performs better? Super luxury expensive one? Or low-priced basic?
- 100. These are all duplicate(ish) content/titles. Might want to address.
- 101. Clicking these links uses AJAX. If users copy/paste/link, the juice flows to however they originally landed in the section, rather than where they intended.
- 102. Those nasty URL params stick around even after I go to product pages (which isn’t ideal either)
- 103. Damn Zappos and their brilliant videos!
- 104. Son of a @#%!
- 105. Everyone’s using the same title and description for the product (likely from the manufacturer). We’ll need to fix in order to rank.
- 106. SEO Idea #1 Get unique content written about the products and remove the duplicates. Consider even writing unique title tags and meta descriptions for each one, as these can help you stand out in search.
- 107. SEO Idea #2 Pull in the attributes most used about the product in reviews (you can even do this from reviews off your own site). This can create unique content and positive keyword associations, plus be useful to users.
- 108. SEO Idea #3 Use the Urbanspoon “Spoonback” strategy. Find bloggers who’ve written about any product you carry and offer to feature that review on your product page if they’ll “spoonback.”
- 109. SEO Idea #4 Work with beauty schools, training courses and work-from-home reps who have websites to do sponsorships, content creation, guest blogging, bizdev partnerships, etc.
- 111. You get lots of interaction and likes on Facebook. Perhaps integrating FB features more onto the site (even using the FB comments plugin on product pages) would work.
- 112. Nice work building an audience on Twitter. More interaction/engagement here, including outreach, will likely earn you even more traction.
- 113. Sign up for Pinterest and start building some boards on here. Very strong site with your demographic.
- 114. Social Idea #1 Connect with independent producers having a hard time getting their lines of products distributed. Be a featured shop for them, and let them help you promote their product.
- 115. Social Idea #2 Do a video or online “how not to beautify” series (like “what not to wear”). Use Facebook/Twitter to accept nominations, votes, suggestions, etc. and share the story as it’s in progress.
- 116. Social Idea #3 ID professional aestheticians with any social following and reach out to them, requesting that they help build a “best of XYZ category” via a survey. Then publish and ask them to help share it. They’ll be likely to participate and to share, because they helped create it.
- 117. Social Idea #4 Use Facepile/Facemash. And get the Facebook comments plugin that’s indexable onto your blog (also possibly test it on your product pages).
- 118. Go Forth, Review and Help Others Prosper! Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz | October 2011