website reviews

robwatts — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 14:47:11 +0000

Talk about your friends and help them in to the bargain!

Today I was flicking through the blogosphere in search of a little inspiration. It’s hard at times to release the old creative juices, it can get a little tiring.

I didn’t want to complain about a service or talk about the launch of some new product or service, or reference a blogger with a cool idea that I liked, or take a good look at a google algo aspect or even point to some a-lister in the hope of some little mention or other.

Its funny how I just did all those things, but yet by reading these people today I was able to arrive at the point of where I am right now. An aspect of the beauty of how things are created is how things can just pop into your head like a little light brightening a darkened room- ping!

So, here is the idea.

This is what I don’t want to do.

I don’t want to review or look at a blog. Blog software is pretty standard with lots of tools that you can plugin and play with, I just don’t really want to look at tagging and hacking themes and generally dealing with all that stuff that so many others talk about so eloquently already.

No, what I’d like to do is look at something a little different. A standard ‘ordinary’ hand built website made by some random person out there who for whatever reason decided to build something from the ground up. They might be a friend of a blogger, or a business associate or just some resource that people need to know about yet just doesn’t show up in the serps for what they should or at least could.

Lots of sites out there merit a place in a kw related SERP somewhere. Yet an ever increasing reality is that the competition for available slots gets increasingly more competitive.

Whilst a site might have great content, its very design and layout and accessibility to spiders and indexers may inhibit its ability to perform how it ideally could.

In many ways basic SEO can help these sites perform so much better. Be it via original title tags for each page, better structured content, better copy, a few more links, better internal navigational structure, inaccessible flash, over use of graphics, a little PR…the list could go on.

There is a little difficulty with this request as most of the people who read the stuff I gab on about are either SEO’s, bloggers or savvy shrewd marketers, but I know that this isn’t entirely the case either so, we shall see.

Whats in this for me I hear you ask..

There’s lots in it for you.

Straight away it gives you a new idea to write about.

What better way to spend a Sunday or whenever, than helping someone you like or admire even?

Ok sure I can think of a few selfish alternatives, but hey – isn’t there just a bit of appeal in a “give out a little love and get it back tenfold” mindset? Giving beats receiving every single time.

What should you do?

You can write about a site that you think is really cool, or a site that you use daily that isn’t mainstream and that people should know about. It could be one of your own sites, or it could be a site of a friend or a relative even. By writing about them you will be raising an awareness and giving them some all important link juice too.

If you’d like me to consider the site for a review then all you gotta do is link back to this post and hopefully I’ll pick it up and have a little look. In an ideal world you’d choose one of these sets of phraseology, “Rob is offering the chance for some Free SEO Advice ” or “Rob is offering a website review“, but I’m cool with a rob or a yackyack or a click here even!

I’ll let things run for a week or two and select a site that I feel could do with a little help, I’ll then write up a few words offering suggestions and ideas for improvement and forward it to the blogger who wrote about them. I can’t help everyone so please, dont be offended or narked if I don’t pick you, its nothing personal. :)

If you participate then great have fun with it, I look forward to seeing you pop up in the blogosphere.