Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz | October 2011

Site ReviewsMethodology and Examples for Web Marketers to Perform Quick Reviews of Websites.

A Framework for All Site Reviews

Why Does this

Website Exist?

Who Cares?

What Motivates, Inpsires &

Interests this Audience?

What’s the Client

Worried About?

What Should A Review Cover?

User Experience

Design

Conversion

Usability

Stickiness

Content

Usefulness

Quality

Interest Alignment

Share-ability

SEO

Accessibility

Content Optimization

Keyword Targeting

Link Authority

Social

Social Value

Incentives

Channels

Social Optimization

User Experience Content

SEO Social

Springest.co.uk

http://www.springest.co.uk

http://www.springest.co.uk

Why Does this Website Exist?

Springest helps connect people to training & education that can better their lives

http://www.springest.co.uk

Who Cares?

Anyone running a training course/program

Anyone seeking to learn in a professional training environment

http://www.springest.co.uk

What Motivates, Inspires & Interests

This Audience?

For training organizers it’s empty seats

The Pain! Oh, the Pain!

Marketing opportunities

And market analysis (what are people saying about their events and how do they fare vs. the competition)

For those seeking to learn, it’s finding the right path

And exploring potential options with feedback, ratings and ROI analysis they can trust

User Experience

for Springest

Auto-detect? Save Us a Step!

Do users care about this? Doesn’t sound impressive…

Do you get lots of traffic/searches? Impress these providers!

Charity donation is cool; but the message is muddled/hidden.

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.”

This could surely be more compelling and receive higher engagement.

“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.

“0” replies/comments on any of the Q+A? So sad!

Who’s going to answer? Why? Do other questions have good answers? Has someone asked a similar question?

Start typing and Quora starts figuring out what I want and showing me… It’s powerful.

Hey! Where’d the rest of the site go?

What about quality? Reviews? Value? Ability to get a job/raise/fulfillment?

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.

Found this on the Netherlands site and loved it… Couldn’t find it on the UK site.

Content for Springest

Feels a bit thin here…

Technically, this is “good content.”

In reality… It likely has high bounce rates, low engagement, doesn’t drive subscriptions and doesn’t encourage sharing.

Yikes...

Also Yikes.

Content Idea #1Incent users (both event organizers and seekers)

to contribute to the articles/q+a section.

Content Idea #2Turn 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.

Content Idea #3Subsidize those attending professional events if

they’ll review them on Springwise. Find them via

Twitter, Lanyrd, Meetup and the event sites

themselves.

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.

SEO for Springest

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.

#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.

Who will link to this page and why?

These are your partners. They just don’t know it yet

And these guys.

This group is going to help share and promote your content/Q+A

SEO Idea #1Professional 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).

SEO Idea #2Contests to get into events free for the person

submitting the article that earns the most tweets /

Facebook / LinkedIn shares.

SEO Idea #3Find 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.

SEO Idea #4

Embeddable badges for the positive reviews left

on Springest that events can put on their sites.

Social for Springest

This account should help promote the events, reviews and people

involved with your site.

The LinkedIn audience in hyper-relevant for your business. Get a page here, answer questions, connect to event providers,

recruiting agencies, etc.

Great place to share event photos, interesting

blog content and have discussions on news

around employment/training

issues.

Answer questions that fit into the training/events world on sites like Quora

Social Idea #1Become 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.

Social Idea #2Use 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).

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.

Social Idea #4Watch 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.

BathandUnwind.com

Why Does this Website Exist?

To Bring Happiness

to

Beautiful

Women

Like These

Who Cares?

Everyone without a “Y” Chromosome.

What Motivates, Inspires &

Interests This Audience?

User Experience

for BathandUnwind

Great brand messaging… But does that convert? Help bounce rate? Bring users back?

Do these categories line up with your products, or with how your visitors actually shop?

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.

There’s no message about connecting to the community/social or getting involved with content. Is that intentional? Has it been tested?

At default resolution, there’s no products visible above the fold!

Reviews = awesome. Strikethough prices = awesome. No way to shop by “on sale” or seasonal = less awesome.

Wow. This is really top notch!

Content for BathandUnwind

I found a hidden blog!

Great content; just hard to find and

not well promoted.

Content Idea #1Identify 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.

Content Idea #2Create 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

Content Idea #3

Reward reviewers with visibility – give top

reviewers/contributors a leaderboard, points, etc.

This could also apply to blog comments.

Content Idea #4Head: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?

SEO for BathandUnwind

These are all duplicate(ish)

content/titles. Might want to address.

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.

Those nasty URL params stick around even after I go to product pages (which isn’t ideal either)

Damn Zappos and their brilliant videos!

Son of a @#%!

Everyone’s using the same title and description for the

product (likely from the manufacturer). We’ll need

to fix in order to rank.

SEO Idea #1Get 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.

SEO Idea #2Pull 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.

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.”

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.

Social for BathandUnwind

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.

Nice work building an audience on Twitter. More interaction/engagement

here, including outreach, will likely earn you even more traction.

Sign up for Pinterest and start building some boards on here. Very strong site

with your demographic.

Social Idea #1Connect 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.

Social Idea #2Do 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.

Social Idea #3ID 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.

Social Idea #4Use Facepile/Facemash. And get the Facebook

comments plugin that’s indexable onto your blog

(also possibly test it on your product pages).

Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz | October 2011

Go Forth, Review

and Help Others Prosper!