We have talked about compete.com as a good tool in the past, but I have found Hubspot’s web site grader to be more valuable in the analysis of my web sites.
Of course, Google analytics is the gold standard for analyzing your web site, but, web site grader offers one of the most complete and easiest to understand free reports on the web. You can create reports about your web site as well as those of your competition.
It is important to know what your competition is doing. Such information is a guide to understanding what you are doing correctly, what other sites are doing better and how you can improve.
Some of the important metrics offered in the report are traffic rank, inbound links and the type of links attached your page (such as digg and del.icio.us) as well as other search engine data. Web site grader offers a numerical grade , based on over 50 metrics, compared to the other sites it has ranked (New media photographer ranked 95/100).
I would assume blogs would rank much higher on average. My photography web sites ranked about twenty points lower. It looks like I have some work to do.
As a photographer you may wish to ignore the fact you have “too many photos.” But, do consider resizing them for faster loading.
Hub spot offers additional valuable analytic graders such as twitter grader, press release grader as well as small and medium size business web marketing support.
Rosh
Tags: analytics, blogs, business, compete.com, competition, digg, grader, hub sport, inbound links, rank, traffic, twitter grader, web sites
I also find that google.com/webmasters is a good visual for seeing how many inbound links you might have and also where you rank for certain terms. Granted you can’t pick the terms, it’s terms which google sees that you already register for.
Some local Phoenix arizona guys started http://authoritylabs.com/ which is a simple ranking tool to see where you goggle for certain terms, then charts your progress. They also have a free version. I haven’t signed up but am going to to play around and see my stats.
Later,
Adam N
http://twitter.com/acmephoto
adam,
Thank you for the comment.
Absolutely, Googles webmasters is mandatory for anyone wanting to keep tabs on how Google views their web site and how it can be improved.
I’ll have to check out authoritylabs.com – thanks for the link.
Rosh
[...] … . Videos are a great way of promoting your online business product or service range How does your web site measure up? – newmediaphotographer.com 12/17/2008 We have talked about compete.com as a good tool in the past, [...]
You mention you expect blogs to rank much higher than web sites. My experience is that they are nearly the same, example: http://www.oceanlight.com/log/post-up-shoot-score.html (98.8 vs 98.7)
@phil that just means you are doing it right.
Blogs tend to lend themselves to what google is looking for in a web site – updated fresh, good content with lots of quality links inbound and outbound.
Rosh
PS – If Google is giving you a score of 6 – you are doing incredibly well.
Rosh, I am pretty sure that eventually a website’s score can be brought right up alongside the score of the blog that is paired with the website. You are right of course, blog software these days is really Google-friendly and the static parts of our websites need SEO work to keep up. When I first tried websitegrader it gave me several good suggestions, and once I implemented them the score went up a fair bit. Its a great tool. Cheers, Phil