Blog Audit Week 2 Winner - McBilly.com

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Congratulations to McBilly for winning week 2 of the Winning the Web Blog Audit Contest. Every week, I will be choosing a lucky winner and providing a blog audit - including SEO, monetization, and site structure. If you’d like to win next week, make sure you submit an entry for the Weekly Blog Audit Contest.

Now onto McBilly.com…

First of all, I’d like to say that the blog layout and design is simply beautiful. I really like the custom banner you have on the top. The colors are engaging and your attractive design makes me want to learn more about your blog. Nice work.

Since this is a blog audit, below are some of my initial thoughts on how you can improve the blog.

• Permalink structure
  Use a simple permalink structure in Wordpress that does not include dates. This is better in terms of SEO using a simple keyword-rich URL structure and also in terms of usability as you don’t want your posts to be tied down to specific dates. For example, it would be optimal to use mcbilly.com/akismet-defensio-anti-spam-review/ rather than mcbilly.com/2007/11/16/akismet-vs-defensio-anti-spam-review/. If you do decide to change your structure, be sure to 301 redirect your old URLs to their respective new versions.
• Optimized home page title tag
  Your current title for your blog is “McBilly dot com on Blogs, Technology, and Ways to Make Money!”. However, you want to tailor your title tag so that the most important keywords appear closer to the front. Something like “Ways to Make Money with Blogs & Technology - McBilly dot com” would serve you better in terms of search engine ranking potential for profitable keywords.
• Missing h1 tags
  Your site currently does not make use of h1 tags. All post titles are enclosed between h2 tags and h1 tags are nonexistant. This may be a missed SEO opportunity because keywords held between h1 tags are given more weight for the page. It may be worthwhile to change your header tag structure using 1 h1 tag per page with h2 tags underneath.
• No robots.txt file
  Your site currently does not make use of an optimized robots.txt file. This file is important because it sets boundaries on where search engine spiders can and cannot go on your site. You want to ensure that link value is being funneled to the most important pages on your site so that they have the most ranking potential. This can be done by blocking certain pages on your site that you don’t want indexed by the search engines. Such pages include your login pages, Wordpress plugins, and backend files. If you need an idea on how to structure your robots.txt file, here’s what I use on this site:
  User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /wp-admin
Disallow: /wp-includes
Disallow: /wp-content/plugins
Disallow: /wp-content/cache
Disallow: /wp-content/themes
Disallow: /trackback
Disallow: /comments
Disallow: /category/*/*/*
Disallow: */trackback
Disallow: */comments
Disallow: /*?*
Disallow: /*?
Allow: /wp-content/uploads
• Upgrade to Wordpress 2.3.1
  I noticed that you are still using an old version of Wordpress (2.2). It may be worthwhile for you to upgrade to the new version and all Wordpress plugins that you own as well. The new version takes care of redirecting your URLs, fixes security vulnerabilities, and has a built-in tagging system.
• Missing sitemap page
  You currently do not have a site map on your blog. This is important because it will give search engine spiders easy access to all of the posts on your blog. Spiders will therefore be able to crawl your site more efficiently and give your pages the most ranking potential as possible. I suggest using a plugin like SRG Clean Archives to build out your sitemap page. Also, be sure to submit an XML sitemap to Google through its Webmaster Tools program.
• Mix up link anchor text
  You want to create an internal linking structure that tells the search engines what your pages are about. This will help your site to rank higher for the keywords that you are targeting. Links like “Home” really have no value because they don’t describe the page they are leading to. You want to be as descriptive as possible and include your main keywords. I recommend that you change “Home” to something more like “Technology Blog” or “Blog” at the very least.
• Footer too large
  This isn’t really a critical issue, but your footer is very large and I would imagine that a visitor would completely ignore it. Popular Posts is a very important section and I suggest you move it to the right sidebar. I also recommend you get rid of the “XHTML” and “CSS” validation links as these have no value for the end user. You’ll then be able to either shorten your blogroll or spread it out more evenly to conserve space on your site. (after adding Winning the Web to the list, of course ;-))
• Unnecessary links
  Other than the validation links, there are other links on your page that really have no value and only dilute your site’s total page rank and link value. You can get rid of the “Register” and “Login” links as you don’t require your visitors to register before posting comments or using features on your site.
• No category counts
  Having category counts with the number of posts contained in each would be helpful for the user.
• Missing byline
  Who writes your posts? All of your posts currently do not have a byline. We want to know who’s writing all of this great content, so make sure you display your name or the posts’ respective authors.
• Sponsored links label
  Anytime you can get away with not announcing a ’sponsored link’, you should go for it. Google Adsense units are obviously advertising and I don’t think you need to label them as such. This will only turn visitors away from viewing them and I don’t think that this is what you want. Lose the label and your click through rates will go up.
• Ad placement
  Most of your advertising and Adsense is below the fold. Move up your ads up if possible and integrate them into your posts and content. You will see higher click through rates and you’ll be able to make more money without disrupting the user experience. You also want to change the colord of your Adsense link text to match the color of the links on your site. This will blend the ads into your content and further improve your click through rate.
• Post date image
  The small image to the left of your post dates is confusing. It looks like there is a ‘7′ in the box, but the date usually doesn’t refer to the 7th.
• Focus your social media options
  You’re using a Wordpress plugin that displays 18 different social media and bookmarking sites. Although it would be ideal to be included in all of these, displaying all of the buttons only confuses the visitors and discourages them from submitting your content at all. I suggest you focus on a couple high-converting social media sites and display only those buttons. StumbleUpon is a great option.
• Confusing search bar
  The search bar on your site is confusing and does not look like a search bar at all. It blends into your design and is difficult to distinguish. I recommend you add some sort of search button to go along with the text field and also to preload some text into the field to guide users. Something like “Search McBilly” would work well.
• Comments radio box
  I don’t know whether or not this was done purposefully, but the radio button for subscribing to comments by email is not accompanied by any descriptive text.
• What’s a preblogger?
  You refer to “prebloggers” on your Money Makers page. Was this a typo?

I hope that helps. You have a great blog on your hands with a wonderful design. Add good content as well and you’ll have a winner. If you have any questions about the above recommendations, feel free to comment to this post. This goes for anyone who’s interested.