Lessons in Web Site Optimization Using Website Grader

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Our first effort at a live HubSpot webinar was better than we expected (thank goodness!).  We were prepared with a few web sites to review with the 1500 registrants of our live optimization event and we were able to call two marketing managers and discuss what they were trying to achieve with their website and get real-time feedback. 

Mike and I enjoyed it so much that we’re going to do this weekly and we’ll do everything live! 

Company: Information Mapping – Website Grader score: 96 

With a score of 96, you’d think there might not be much room for improving. Wrong!  Mike and I both found a few areas we thought this website could do better.  

Our suggestions for improvements:

1. Start a blog.  With a blog providing regular content they will be able to generate more inbound links.

2. Reduce the amount of Call to Action clutter on their Home Page.  So many offers, it is very distracting.

3. Stop using Information Mapping in the title tag and on every page, and start utilizing descriptive, long-tail keywords was an easy fix and one to surely juice up their SEO presence.   

Company: Mesiro & Fink – Website Grader Score: 6

This is a three-month-old site and has been nicely optimized by an SEO firm they hired, so their score of 6 came as a bit of shock to Cynthia when we talked to her during the webinar.  She’s concerned that this site is not generating the number of leads that they expected.  Here’s a few things that Mike & I thought might be helpful:

1. Put a telephone field on the form.  The form is nice and visible but the immediate need for someone with their skill set might necessitate a telephone call instead of an email.

2. Attach the social media efforts they are making to the website and make sure the name of the firm is being used in their Twitter handle.  Currently, they are using a more generic name to tweet.

3. Contribute more actively to their blog and make sure the posts are more educational and less self-promotional in nature.

Company: BT-TelConsult – Website Grader score: 44

This is a big company.  British-Telecom could afford to do just about anything they wanted, right?  Well, it appears that they might want to consider a few tweaks to their site if they want people to contact them.

1. They had a telephone number on their site (if you looked for it) but wouldn’t an email form be better if someone was looking for consulting help?  

2. No Blog!  A company of this size is perfectly poised to leverage their army of consultants in talking about the Telecommunications vertical.  They could have tons of blog posts that would help them with the next key point.

3. Only 162 indexed pages.  Clearly, they need more content, more frequently which would give them more inbound links (currently just 29!).

Company: Photos by Orion – Website Grader Score: 21

This new site has a very passionate business manager, Katherine.  We were able to talk to her about this site at great length and it was great to have an opportunity to understand how a creative person sees the web.  There were a few points we wanted to help Katharine with and most of them had to do with design. 

This is a new site and we wanted her to do more than a few things in order to optimize it.

1. Move away from frames in the web site.  The difficulty of having two bars to navigate can be confusing.

2. Eliminate the knocked-out white on black background, a favorite of designers around the world, yet notoriously difficult to read.  

3. Connect the blog that has some excellent content on it directly into the website.  The content would be a terrific lead generation tool for this site.

4. Add geographical keywords to the title tags.

5. Use more pictures of portraits and wedding photography in the site, especially on the home page.  The beautiful butterfly is nice, but it is not their business.  

Join us on Tuesday, April 6 at 1 PM for our next Live Optimization Webinar.  Please submit your site and we’ll look forward to talking to you live!

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