SEO 101 – Website Grading

Search engine ranking has been a discussion topic for years. Nowadays you’ll find dozens, if not hundreds of websites focusing solely on providing SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, services. When looking into your own SEO needs, whether you’re looking to improve your site’s search engine rankings yourself, or you’re looking for someone to do the optimizing for you, you’re likely to discover that there are just as many different opinions of your site as there are resources available to grade your site.

Having trouble making sense of it all?

Rating your site helps you to understand what areas of your website need attention. Rating sites attempt to take what knowledge there is available to the public regarding the general understandings (search engines are never going to reveal all their secrets) of how the majority of web search engines function (not all search engines are made equal), and turn that knowledge into tangible data that relates directly to your website. One of the most well known SEO tools is optimizing keywords and website descriptions. Some of the other more popular data concern amounts of traffic your site enjoys, how many websites link to your website and what type of conversion tools you have in place on your website, such as conversion tools. Many also grade your use of social media such as Facebook, twitter, and blogs on your website.

There are three resources I use myself that I have found to be particularly useful for grading this website, and those we provide service for, and all are free to use (although they all have additional services available at an additional charge). The three I I’ve found to be most useful are HubSpot’s WebSiteGrader, SEOWorkers’ SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Analysis Tool, and Reach Analysis’ Quick Analysis.

They all have their weaknesses, and as stated before, they all have their differences of opinions, which makes using only one tool convenient, but less worthwhile.

The biggest plus for all of them is of course the free services they provide, which are also very easy to use. Without any subscription process, one can simply insert a URL, click the link provided to submit the URL, and away their application goes, crawling the URL provided and returning results within a matter of seconds. They also all have unlimited usage, and easy to read and easy to understand results. All results are returned in what amounts to a to-do list. Simply go down the list and start working on each of the items the application alerts you to. They also all provide not only information on what they’ve determined to be wrong, these websites also give reasons why they’ve given you an alert and also information on how to remedy the problems.

One disadvantage to these grading tools is, as stated before, the contradictory messages you may receive. WebSiteGrader for instance may say that your blog isn’t doing so well, but if you grade your blog separately with their Blog Grader, you may get a different score. One may say you have too many keywords or images and one may say you don’t have enough of either.

They also aren’t necessarily accurate; you may make a change, reanalyze your site, and still get the same results. You may even “fix” a problem, just to have the grader return a lower score than you had before.

One thing that these graders have in common, and have in common with the majority of blogs and other information regarding SEO you’ll find, is that they all agree to some major points regarding today’s search engine rules and modern search engine optimization philosophies. One key note is that as people figure out how to optimize their sites, search engine programmers learn what “tricks” are used to get sites ranked well. As more sites show up that shouldn’t necessarily be showing up at the top of search results, search engine programmers retool their algorithms. After all, search engines stay in business by returning to professional web designers and the average user alike the same service; relevant search results.

This is most notable in popular keyword optimization strategies. Not long ago, web designers would load the bottom of their pages with hundreds of words, usually made invisible via font colors matching the background color. Keywords were also duplicated hundreds of times. Both of these tactics usually result in penalties, not rewards, by current search engine algorithms for the rankings of these types of web pages.

Other keys to successful SEO are having a long term domain, a registration that expires more than a year into the future, and many inbound links from other long term domains. This brings to light a very important point. One can no longer create a website within a matter of days and expect it to have outstanding search rankings, no matter what keywords or niche you’re marketing to.

Internet search engines are becoming wiser than ever; they may be robots, but they’re certainly not programmed by robots.

The most important thing to know about search engine optimization is like most things in life, great rankings don’t come easy. Arm yourself with lots of knowledge, even if you hire a professional to do the work for you. Why is this important? You need to know you’re getting what you pay for. You need to know what’s free, and you need to know what promises are realistic, and ones that just don’t make any sense.

If you’d like to know more about how we can specifically help you personally, even if it’s more insight to arm yourself with knowledge, don’t hesitate to contact us! Like this blog, we don’t mind giving free advice. If you need someone to handle the work for you, we’d be happy to help!