Feb 14, 2011
Does your blog make the grade?
So you’ve started your blog, you are getting traffic and people are engaging with you by leaving comments, tweeting about you and posting about you on social media sites.
You have also begun to litter the web with your website URL so the search engines can track links back to your site.
You are checking Google analytics to see how your traffic is growing, where people are coming from, what they are interested in, how loyal they are and how deeply they search your site.
Which is fantastic, but how do you know what your performance is like compared to other blogs?
Perhaps one of the most satisfying blogging tools I have found is website grader by HubSpot. Amazingly this is a free service and they have some other cool resources for bloggers too.
Click on the website grader link above, enter your website, add your competitors’ URLs and leave your email. Click ‘Generate report’, sit back for a couple of minutes and ‘voila’ you have some really useful benchmarking information about your site.
Unfortunately it only grades you against people who have already graded their site (only 3,263,768 so far!) but you get a very good idea about how your blog is doing and how you can improve it. Don’t get too hung up on the numbers – sometimes it doesn’t pick up all the data, but you can see the overall trend.
I just checked mine and found my sitemap wasn’t working. Fixed it and I went from 51 to 61. Small things really do matter for SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).
NewsFlash: I have recently checked my site and am now graded at 91!
26 March 2011
What do you get?
1. Website grade – see badge above.
2. Website Traffic
3. SEO information
4. Social Media ranking
5. MOZ rank (similar to Google ranking)
6. Conversion forms (Have you got RSS and newsletter sign up for instance)
7. Readability level – education level of writing
Plus a lot more. So I suggest you whizz over to website grader now and see how your site measures up. And don’t panic if you have a low score – it doesn’t take a great deal of effort to raise the bar and often it is just a matter of time before you start to race ahead of the pack.
When you do get your website graded let me know your score and what you learnt from the exercise?
Andy Britnell
Feb 14, 2011 @ 21:17:29
Does your blog make the grade? Benchmark your blog & find ways to improve it http://bit.ly/fBIblD
Feb 14, 2011 @ 21:21:09
You are just full of excellent advice and resources Andy – thank you
Feb 14, 2011 @ 21:39:52
What were your results like Sharon?
Andy Britnell
Feb 15, 2011 @ 09:28:08
Wondering how your blog measures up against the competition? Useful benchmarking tool only a couple of clicks away http://bit.ly/fBIblD
Judy Heminsley
Feb 15, 2011 @ 09:37:34
RT @andybritnell: Wondering how your blog measures up against competition? Useful benchmarking tool http://bit.ly/fBIblD
Feb 15, 2011 @ 11:20:22
cool! i got 59. not too bad for a newbie and an improvement on when i did it about a month ago (53). this is a great tool! i’m really enjoying your posts Andy. thanks!
Feb 15, 2011 @ 17:57:15
Super cool
59 is pretty good going Kirralee. Keep reading my blog and you’ll get to the dizzy heights of 95, which is where Judy’s Work From Home Wisdom site is ranking at the moment.
Takes time but you’ll get there.
Feb 15, 2011 @ 11:44:53
Andy I am absolutely loving this post, I am now trawling through my report and making the necessary changes… thank you !!!
Feb 15, 2011 @ 18:02:02
Thanks Anita-Clare.
Let me know how it improves your ranking.
Don’t get too obsessed by the numbers – great content is what your readers are really looking for. Googles aim is to reflect human choices for websites. Unfortunately it is not quite there at the moment.
You only have to google ‘Work from Home’ to realise that the sites that rank highly are not necessarily the best ones.
Feb 15, 2011 @ 23:29:30
Andy thanks for visiting HubSpot’s website grader – very excited you’ve already gotten some value out of the recommendations … it can get pretty addictive!
As a heads up, we’ll be releasing a new grader for all your marketing initiatives soon – if you’re interested, sign up for early access here: http://signup.marketinggrader.com/
Happy blogging and lead gen!
Cheers
Kirsten (a HubSpotter)
Feb 16, 2011 @ 14:32:45
Hi Kirsten Thanks for popping by and leaving a comment. I’ll certainly take a look at your new wesite grader.I’m sure my other readers will take the opportunity to sign up too.
Kirralee Baker
Feb 16, 2011 @ 04:15:47
Does your blog make the grade? http://t.co/q85kLOG
kirraleebaker
Feb 16, 2011 @ 04:15:47
Does your blog make the grade? http://t.co/q85kLOG
Feb 16, 2011 @ 16:14:10
Just checked mine and I have a grading of 91! Wondering how I did that?
Feb 16, 2011 @ 20:26:02
Content, content, content!
Great twitter rating (99)
411 indexed pages
41 Linking domains
SEO optimised pages
You still have some work to do on your blog. Keep on posting, add your posts to Delicious (and ask others to post it there) and generate more external links by posting on other high ranking blogs in your market.
Congratulations though – you are in the top 7.2% in Alexa rankings. That’s good going.
Next target top 5%
Feb 16, 2011 @ 20:26:43
Thanks for this useful tool. I got a web score of 61 and a blog score of 60. Now to see how to make that better….
Andy Britnell
Mar 26, 2011 @ 16:53:32
Does your blog make the grade? Don't shoot in the dark. – see how this amazing free tool can help you improve http://bit.ly/fBIblD
Andy Britnell
Apr 09, 2011 @ 11:41:02
Want to know how well your blog is doing? Check out http://bit.ly/fBIblD Since writing (2 months ago) mine has gone from 61 to 91!
Apr 22, 2011 @ 22:43:34
Great article Andy. Has come back with some useful points that I had missed.
Thank you
May 20, 2011 @ 10:55:56
Thanks Emma. Even when you have experienced setting up a blog you can still find value using this tool. It also helps to sign up for Google Webmaster to catch other issues such as broken links and site performance. Other aspects that could be affecting your position in Google search.