Analyze Your Site with Website Grader
In a recent post, Keyword Ranking for Dummies, I explained how keyword rank works in search engines like Google and Yahoo and why it is important to try to rank high in their listings. I also referenced a great tool that can instantly check your keyword ranking across several major search engine platforms. For information about that be sure to check out that article, Keyword Ranking for Dummies.
In the comments section of that article I received an excellent question that is exactly the response that I was looking for. Let me share it with you.
How do you get key words for a blog? I did Mike’s Marketing Tools and I came up 0 for each key word I entered. How could I remedy that?
This is exactly the plight of every blogger as they begin their journey into blogging. Let me provide for you a very easy introduction to the world of Search Engine Optimization. Today I am going to provide you with the very first tool that I use to improve my performance on Google and Yahoo: Hubspot’s Website Grader.
As soon as you visit Hubspot’s Website Grader you will be presented with a form to fill out in order to have your site analyzed. The only field that you have to fill out is the first one. Simply enter the website address of your blog or website and press enter. It will take a minute or two in order to process its analysis of your website as it needs to gather information from your site and several other sites. When your report finally loads the fun is ready to begin.
At the top right of the page you should see a large number. This is the percentile of sites that your sites ranks above as compared to how many sites they have analyzed. In other words, if you score a 75 it means that your site is better than 75 percent of all sites that they have checked.
Below your score you will find an extensive report detailing the good and bad points of your website. This report will cover your meta data like title, keywords, and description. It will provide feedback about how long your domain name is registered for and about the readability of your site. The report will detail Google’s view of your scale using Google’s 1-10 scale called Page Rank.
This report will also provide information about how many links are pointing back at your page. It will show links for the entire web as well as links from Digg, Delicious,Yahoo Directory and other popular directories and social bookmarking sites.
Hubspot’s Website Grader is the perfect tool to begin your journey into the world of Search Engine Optimization. It is the best place to get a good look at where your site stands in its readiness to impress Google and other search engines.
In future posts I will be spending time discussing the benifits of link exchanges, utilizing social bookmarking sites, getting your site listed in directories, optimizing your meta data and much more. Stay tuned because this single topic of ‘Search Engine Optimization’ is vital to getting traffic to your site.
sbcjr said:
Excellent resource. I love website grader, and use it often.
Thanks for sharing!
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
sbcjr » Great! I use it all the time also. It really is an amazing resource.
Kate said:
Excellent article. I scored an 83%, which is odd because I lack in key words. Are you able to teach me where, what and how to enter key words? I’m a novice so this is all new to me.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Kate » What do you use to power your blog? Is it WordPress? Joomla? Drupal? TypePad? Blogger? If you tell me that, then I can give you some more advice specific to your situation.
Kate said:
I use WordPress. Thx!
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Kate » Great! That’s what I’m using here at Site Sketch 101. Make sure that you are upgraded to the latest version of WordPress which is 2.8 right now. Then in you plugin manager click on “Add New.” Do a search for “All in One SEO Pack” and install that plugin. Activate the plugin and then go back to your article manager. If you create or edit an article you will now see several fields at the very bottom of the page that include title, keywords, and description. On each article, you will want to fill out the last two at least.
Also you should change your website urls so that they do not display like this: http://www.sitesketch101.com/?page_id=1 but instead let’s make them look like this: http://www.sitesketch101.com/about. Here’s how we do that: Under the setting panel click on permalinks. Select custom structure and input the following code (just put in what comes after the equals sign into the fields):
Custom Structure = /%category%/%postname%/Category Base = category
Tag Base = tag
These two tips should help you out a lot to get the ball rolling. Also remember that once you begin this that it will take several days or even weeks before Google begins to take notice of you.
Kate said:
Thanks!!!!
Evan said:
I didn’t know that service was out there. I scored a 62, but now have many suggestions for improving my site. Thanks for posting this. I love your site design, by the way.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Evan » Thanks so much. I’m glad that this link was a help to you. I know that it has helped me out a ton.
wowcss said:
nice article thx for sharing!
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
wowcss » I’m glad you liked it!
ZXT said:
Really useful tool. It gives some advice to improve your blog. I got 88/100.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
ZXT –> Good score. Take the advice that it gave you and keep growing.
Ruchi said:
Thanks for sharing such a great site , i just gave it a try, i got 83/100.
Nicholas Z. Cardot said:
Ruchi –> That’s pretty good. Great work!
Kok Siong Chen said:
Thanks for sharing! I got 97 for website grade! However, i still have some small problems need to be fixed in order to make my blog better. Thanks again!
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Vinish Parikh said:
Didn’t knew about that thanks for sharing
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Tiffaney said:
Thanks for writing the long help file, I got the plugin, but didn`t really know what to do with it until I read your instructions. Thanks for helping some of us not so tech-savy bloggers.