Guest Post: Do You Know Your Website’s Grade? by Doug McFaddin
Thanks to a little help from Doug McFaddin at PhotoOne Software, we’ve got a great blog on SEO. You can’t be in business today without a website, but more important, what good is a great website or creating the greatest images of your life if nobody can find you?
So much has happened in a year’s time in the way businesses are approaching SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Google has done a fabulous job interjecting SEO into our culture with phrases such as: keywords, metadata tags, page ranking, and 301 redirect. Our lives revolve around The Search . . . not the yellow or white page kind, dropped off at the end of our driveways, but the search through the incredible amount of information at our fingertips provided by the internet. This weekend I was watching the Vikings/Packers game and I asked which college Adrian Peterson had attended. My son was at the computer and did a quick search for the answer-– 15 seconds later: University of Oklahoma.
There is an endless amount of material describing SEO and why and how to incorporate it into your business. The new marketing approach, using SEO, is titled, “Inbound Marketing” versus the marketing we grew up with which is “Outbound Marketing.” Outbound Marketing is a “push” approach using print ads, marketing calls, email blasts, trade shows and mailings. Inbound Marketing is a “pull” approach based on good rich content provided by your website, blog, podcasts, Facebook, Twitter and landing pages.
As a photographer, the amount of time and effort you put into your website, blog, and podcasts can result in significant long-term dividends. Over 90% of the brides searching for a wedding photographer on a non-referral basis will use a search engine to put together a short list of wedding photographers in her area. Whether or not you will be on the short list is largely determined by SEO. It’s very important to be on the first page of any search because it’s rare that the reader will go to the 2nd or 3rd page.
One of the key ingredients to ensure that your business shows up on the first page is to analyze your site to determine whether or not it’s being favorably viewed by the search engines. There are many free tools out there to analyze, diagnose, and improve your website.
The tool I’ve found to be most useful is Hubspot’s Website Grader. Hubspot is a marketing consulting firm that is working with small to medium-sized companies to reengineer their approach to marketing. They have put together several “Graders” to assist their clients in measuring the effectiveness of websites, Facebook, Twitter, press releases and blogging. The Website Grader asks for your URL address and then analyzes your website using many of the metrics devised by Google to crawl your website for SEO purposes. Although Website Grader isn’t perfect, it’s a pretty effective check to see what’s working and what isn’t. Then you can get with your webmaster and refine your website and rerun the site through Website Grader to measure the various improvements.
Check to see what your Website Grade is today with an eye on improving your SEO.
This post has 6 comments
November 9th, 2009
I’ve actually have been looking for a company like Hubspot to help me optimize my site for that “Inbound Marketing” approach that you were talking about. It’s amazing how having a great website with great content is just not enough these days, now we have to finish the job by completely optimizing our sites for SEO purposes. Without that component, we’ll never be found. Thank you for letting us know about Hubspot.
November 17th, 2009
Roberto – you are exactly right. Clearly the bellwether for SEO effectiveness is your page ranking given a set of keywords. Google Webmaster tools can assist you with keyword optimization.
November 12th, 2009
This was a terrific article. I went to Hubspot and got my rankings. (scored 90) Not to sound like the village idiot or anything.. but with all of the data collected, how do I determine which to follow up on first.
November 17th, 2009
Bambi — I think the best way to attack the feedback is starting with the On-Page SEO. Page Title, Meta Description and Keywords are pretty simple to fix or modify and are critical inputs for SEO. The next thing I would focus on is the ALT text for images. Photographer websites are usually image intensive so you want to get this right from an SEO standpoint. I would also make sure your blog is being properly accounted for by the search engines. This is perceived to be a premium aspect of any website since it usually contains rich content, is updated frequently and provides valuable links. Hope this helps.
November 13th, 2009
I’ve had high scores from website grader in the past but my hits were fewer; applied some SEO and now my score is lower but I show up on Google’s first page for my keywords and I needed to defy website grader’s suggestions to get there. You tell me therefore if I should be concerned about such scores.
November 17th, 2009
G.E. – If you have moved up Google search then the steps you have taken are heading you in the right direction. As the blog post mentioned, the Website Grader tool is just that, a tool. It should be used in conjunction with other tools — like Google Webmaster tools.