Please review my site

STBW · 29-06-2009, 05:16 AM

My site is an online writing site and we just launched it officially on Friday. I am doing pretty well moving up in the Google Ranks as I have a page 1 ranking in one service and a page 2 ranking in another one. However, for the main keywords, article writing service and article marketing service, I am in a battle and do not expect to climb for quite some time with so many other services out there.

Anyway, please check it out and let me know what you think as a consumer. I am especially interested in what you have to say when comparing it to other writing services. Thanks!

SimplyTheBestWriting.com

zookx · 29-06-2009, 10:29 AM

Site template looks good. Need to fill in some areas, the 'Article Marketing Tips' area is completely blank on all the pages, as is your blog.

The only other thing that caught my eye was the text and logo of your designer in the footer aren't very well aligned from a design perspective.

Also I don't know if you could organise the opening paragraph into a couple of lines that are a little more punchy and informative. I can see you've used a lot of keywords in there but it makes reading it a bit of a chore.

Good luck with the project.

fisicx · 29-06-2009, 12:24 PM

I think the layout looks trite and dated, almost homemade. The background is particularly naff (maybe it's a USA thing but nobody in the rest of the world does this).

I also agree that the copy is weak and difficult to read - the small font and brown background doesn't help.

Where can I see some examples of your work, the copy on the site isn't very inspiring.

In SEO articles you mention LSI. since this is a computing function connec ting related information sources I'm not really sure how you can write an article with LSI concepts.

The blog headers seems to have gone awry, what is home module 2? The 'featured content' category is full of puff.

There are no contact details on the site. Who are you, where are you, what's your email address or telephone number?

And laastly, because you have gone for the cheap godaddy hosting the sites is sloooooowwww to load.

STBW · 29-06-2009, 02:11 PM

The Blog and Artilce Marketing are one in the same and I just have to load that up with some entries. That will be taken care of this week. In regards to the blog modules, this is a problem that we are working. There was an issue with the programming and the latest WordPress update.

I was really surprised to see the comment about the design of the site though as that was one of the things that tested incredibly well. In fact, your comment was the first negative comment that I have heard about it. We had several different designs in mind and this is the one that was an overwhelming favorite.

The email is all over the site, so I am not sure what you are talking about there. info@simplythebestwriting.com I will also have some press releases coming out shortly that will have all of my contact information on them and I will have links to them on the site.

Regarding LSI, it is implemented into the article writing by using synonyms for the original keywords in the copy instead of dominating the content with one keyword over and over. We do the research on google adwords and come up with a list of recommended additional keywords that we can use to put into the article.

I am very interested in what you have to say about the copy. How do you think it could be better? The first gentleman said it could use a little more punch, but in what way? The second gentleman just said it was weak, but what do you think it needs to be more effective?

I look forward to your added input, thanks!

fisicx · 29-06-2009, 02:51 PM

As I said, maybe just a USA thing but image backgrounds are not popular in the rest of the world. Who did you get to do the testing? A pensioner will have different opinions to a manager or small business. Did you split test between male and female, look at demographics and social standing. Who is your target market?

The email isn't on your contact page nor is it in the footer or any of the other usual places. I see no address or telephone number, these are required by law if you are running a business.

What you are describing isn't LSI:

Quote:

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) is an indexing and retrieval method that uses a mathematical technique called Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) to identify patterns in the relationships between the terms and concepts contained in an unstructured collection of text. LSI is based on the principle that words that are used in the same contexts tend to have similar meanings. A key feature of LSI is its ability to extract the conceptual content of a body of text by establishing associations between those terms that occur in similar contexts.

LSI uses collections of information not single pages. Google hasn't got it to work despite years of effort and is still recruiting LSI experts (degree level mathematicians).

But back to the content. Yours it just so dry, there are grammatical errors and spelling mistakes and most importantly no evidence that you can deliver on your promises.

And the font is still too small, you have too many words per line and fog index of 13 which is the widescale reading index of 12 (universal undestanding requires a inxed value of 8).

STBW · 29-06-2009, 03:18 PM

I am not sure why you are not seeing the email address on any of these pages as it is on almost every page and is most definitely on the contact page.

In regards to the LSI, I have the same understanding as to what it is. If we are using the words associated with the keywords so the article is not oversaturated with one word, are we not making use of the LSI concept? Maybe I am misunderstanding it, but that is where we are going with this.

In regards to spelling and gramatical errors, if you could point out examples it would be very helpful. I have gone over these pags numerous times and have had several other sources check them as well. We thought we caught everything, but I guess we are wrong.

The test groups were both male and female and consisted of current customers and feedback from people at several different business expo's. This was far and away the favorite format for the site.

Now if you had to correct the content issue, what would you do. Again, I am really surprised because I tested this as well and the feedback was that it was informational and exactly what someone who does not know that much about the whole article writing niche would want to see. Specific examples would help as right now I am just getting a broad critque and am not hearing anything specific other than the line about the opening paragraph on the site.

STBW · 29-06-2009, 03:48 PM

I just went through the site again and could not find any grammatical or spelling errors on there. Someohow I am wondering if you are seeing an older version of the site because when it was initially put up, it was loaded with stuff that had not been proofed yet, we were just filling it to see how it looked.

On a different note, while reading through everything, I definitely agree that the font is way too small and I have already contacted my web designer to get that corrected ASAP. I had looked at it so many times that it just became normal too me.

fisicx · 29-06-2009, 04:32 PM

Typical, can't find any of them now! There was definately a wiht and a there instead of their but I can see some poor misplaced commas.

But it's really the length of your sentances that you need to condsider. Do a chack on your fog index.

Another thing to consider is your justification, left justified reads much easier then full justification.

Have a look at webstyleguide.com

Do you have any thoughts about my other suggestions?

And this page for example: http://www.simplythebestwriting.com/...atured-content needs something doing to it.

STBW · 29-06-2009, 04:38 PM

The page that you are talking abou there will not typically be viewed. That is specifically for the slide show on the home page. They are meant to be headlines and one line blurbs about the different services we offer so I would not be too worried about that.

In regards to the justification, this again came from feedback from customers that thought it would make the site much tighter in appearance and that is why we changed it. I did initially have it set up that way and then changed it because of the feedback. To be honest, I agree with you on that one, but went with what the perception of the possible client would be.

I will look at the length as again, I noticed some rather large sentences when I was looking over the content. When I write articles, my goal is to keep the sentences from 15-20 words and only 3 or 4 sentences per paragraph. I have found that to be the easiest format for people to read. However, it would appear as though I have violated my own rule on several occassions, lol.

And I really apprecaite all the feedback as I want this site to be the best around. These are helpful suggestions and I will definitely use several of them to make the site better.

STBW · 29-06-2009, 04:49 PM

I just checked some of the fog index and while I absolutely understand the concept, a lot of the words that they recommend changing are key to description. For instance, it does not like the word business because it has 3 syllables, but that is a key word in several of the services that we use. The word services detracts from the overall rating.

To me, and I could be wrong, I think the copy has to read more intelligently because we are going after business owners, not random people. These are going to be more intelligent readers that are looking for a reason to choose you over all of the other writing services out there.

Again, I could be wrong in this and look forward to your repsonse to this one. I ran several pages through this program and other than a word here and there, I don't see how I could change the wording and not come off as an idiot.