Blog Reviews Offer

first of all thanks to everyone who grabbed a copy of the “$365K Blog Traffic Formula” report recently, you can read the full details here if you missed it: –

$365K Blog Traffic Formula Blog Review Offer

As a bonus for people buying through my link I offered to write a quick review of their blog and publish 5 (of my choice here).

I’m going to actually publish 6 in total, to show you the kind of spectrum out there, although I believe you will notice some “similarities” across the board, especially in my advice.

I’ll also do a quick summary of the blog reviews at the bottom of this post as well.

I should also point out that the “positives” and “negatives” are my opinions, based both on my experience and personal taste, so feel free to disagree!

there also tend to be more negatives than positives as I tried to concentrate on finding what is “wrong” (imho) with the blog, as correcting some basic stuff can make a huge different to how well a blog does…

so on to the reviews, in no particular order…

~##~

1. Expert List Building

Negatives

The theme expands to the full width of the browser window, not good on a wide screen, better to have a fixed width theme

The affiliate links for Clickbank products and aweber in sidebar not cloaked
Note: see the video on cloaking links on Internet Marketing Videos

There are contradictory adverts – AWeber v Getresponse, choose one or the other

There miss-matching “EA Expert” badges, choose the same version for consistency

“Title” text above ads and EA expert badges, not really necessary
too many ads, with some repeated

Positives

The blog sub folder name is keyword based

A targeted custom header that looks ok

The highly visible email subscribe offer in sidebar

Affiliate links in posts are cloaked

The lightbox drop in for email optin capture

The main domain home page is highly targeted product sales page

There’s a link for the main product sales page at bottom of related posts

A good mix of content posts mixed and promotional posts

Suggestions: -

Add an image to lightbox optin and some color in the text, plus decrease spacing and remove everything below “get more info” button

Remove “Title’s” on ads in the sidebars

Remove duplicate ads and focus on the important ones

Use the tag or Post Teaser plugin to show a snippet of the post on the home/index page
The Post Teaser Plugin is No. 10 on the WP plugins page
~##~

2. Health Biz Blog

Negatives

Permalinks format – http://amadavit.com/healthbiz/?p=559
[see suggestions below]

Using sub folder for blog, when there is nothing in the main index folder!

The “self improvement mini-Course” offer doesn’t catch attention, it needs to stand out more…

the theme stretches across whole window, making for a very “wide” post on large screens (like mine) see example pick from the previous blog review above

Why are there keywords “stuffed” at the top of the page? They really shouldn’t be, especially as they seem unrelated to a degree…

The site seems to be a little hectic/unfocused in what it’s covering, it might do better if it was more “targeted”, at least until the blog is more established

The Twitter widget sticks out of side of the theme

On recent post – need to make images left hand side aligned so that the text wraps around them – e.g. post – http://amadavit.com/healthbiz/?p=565

Also on the same post, personally I wouldn’t approve comments where someone puts the likes of “How I Make $5000 a Month Posting Links on Google” as their “name” on a comment. It’s fairly obvious they’re just spamming for the links and a comment like “Loved your latest post, by the way” isn’t really adding much to the conversation, so why reward them?

Different font used than standard in post – http://amadavit.com/healthbiz/?p=544
it’s possible that this is from the post being written in word then “copy & pasted” – always copy to a text pad first to remove any excess formatting tags that some word processors tend to put in. You won’t see them until you post unless you check the “html” view.

Positives

good quality posts, with some personal touches, but could use a bit more “personality”

Suggestions: -

Add a graphic and some headline text to the free mini course offer for getting people to optin

Change the “Health, Wealth & Creativity Product Resource”s to individual product pages with more info on each one and a separate link for each one, this will also allow you to refer to them individually more easily in posts, as well as have an image link for each one in the sidebar

use the tag in posts or the Post Teaser Plugin to just show post snippets on the homepage, see details in previous blog review above.

Change the permalinks structure – my preference is /%postname%/, see the The Best SEO Permalink Structure for WP Blogs video

~##~

3. Shrimp Scampi Recipe

Negatives

The sidebar seems to have been thrown to the bottom of the page in my version of internet explorer, again this could be the version I’m on, but I recommend checking it out: -

Note: it does appear fine in Firefox

The subject of the blog it possibly a bit too tightly “niched”, it could become difficult to find sufficient topics/recipes for new content. If I was setting up a blog in this “market/niche” I would probably have targeted a more “broad” term, such as recipes, then used categories and posts to dig down to more tightly focused keywords.

Whilst it is good to see you using clickbank’s new cloaked links (see my video on Mat4.com/videos) I still believe it would be better to put that link within a redirect html page of your own.

Could use better spacing on posts, don’t be afraid of line breaks and some white space.

Permalink format: -
http://shrimpscampirecipe.org/2009/06/red-lobster-shrimp-scampi/
*See answer in previous blog reviews above

Post name for earlier isn’t “keyword” targeted: -
http://shrimpscampirecipe.org/2009/06/instructions/

Positives

Clean tidy looking theme, although possibly a little “bare”

Very tightly “niched” blog so should be easy to get high rankings

Monetization fits in very well with topic of blog

Suggestions: -

Change the permalink structure, see previous blog reviews above

Get some more content posted, the blog is obviously very new and could use some extra posts

Add some form of lead capture to start building an email list

~##~

4. Motivational Cartoons and Sports Quotes

Negatives

The formatting is totally messed up in my version of internet explorer: -

Permalink format, see previous blog review answers
http://motivationalcartoons.co.uk/2009/07/02/cartoon-how-to-avoid-negative-people/

The sidebar doesn’t show up on individual posts in Firefox

Positives

This is generally a good looking blog with a very nice clean theme and custom header

Not too “busy” or cluttered with ads

subscriber options are at top of the sidebar and easy to find

The “ads” are well targeted to the topic and “eye catching” without looking out of place.

Suggestions: -

Make the RSS and email sign up options more visible

Offer an “ethical” bride of some sort to start building a newsletter, perhaps a “top 10 motivational/inspirational resources” report

Make the Twitter follow option more visible

use the tag (or post teaser plugin) to limit the amount of the post displayed on the first page, see previous blog reviews.

Move the “pages” list further down the sidebar it doesn’t really need to be at the top.

cloak the clickbank affiliate links, see the cloaking video on Internet Marketing Video Tutorials

There appears to be a broken link/insert under/after BlogCatalog -
BlogCarnival Submissions

4.b. Sports Quotes

I’ve got a couple of extra’s for this 2nd, related, blog: -

Negatives

Permalink format – http://sportsquotes.biz/?p=62

The ads in the sidebar need to be centered

Positives

same as MotivationalCartoons.co.uk

Suggestions: -

Give the categories a name, using related keywords

Put recent posts and categories above archives in the sidebar

~##~

5. Andy Beveridge

Negatives

The email optin for the free report should be under the free report offer, not further down the page

Need more line breaks in posts, get more “white space” in there as it makes posts easier to read, so make sentences shorter and put some spaces between the paragraphs, and keep the paragraphs short

Some older posts seem to be all in BOLD

Some recent posts are a tad short, e.g. outsourcing post

Positives

Good header graphic

Free offer in place and at top of sidebar, with rss subscribe

Uncluttered with ads, focused on content

Suggestions: -

Make the free video marketing course offer more prominent, make the text bigger and put the heading in red

Add to blogcatalog, technorati, mybloglog

Correct and cloak affiliate links
e.g. – https://paydotcom.com/r/21977/XXXXXXX/
unless “XXXXXXX” is your user name on paydocom you are not going to get credited for any commissions…

~##~

6. It-Takes-Work.com

Negatives

Header graphic is a bit too large and perhaps too “personal”, although that can work, it’s just not my taste

The sidebar is broken with “most popular” sticking out of the side (in Firefox), this is probably from a missing tag to close a div tag set

There are clickbank ads straight underneath the free report offer, they could distract people from signing up, keep your main aim focused, leave the ads to further down the page/sidebar

Very long post titles e.g. -
http://www.it-takes-work.com/2009/07/rip-michael-jackson-farrah-fawcett-and-its-vacation-time/
* I would have split this in to 2 separate posts e.g. “michael-jackson-and-farrah-fawcett” &” “vacation-time” although I might have tried to go for something more keyword targeted for the vacation post, as “vacation time” is not a great search term for attracting “useful” (i.e. likely to be converted to buyers, subscribers or repeat visitors) traffic

The “Tags” widget takes up way too much room

After the “most popular” widget there seems to be a formatting error where there should be 2 columns to the sidebar and there is only one.

Positives

Great images with posts, that fit well and catch the eye

Free report for optin immediately visible

Not cluttered with ads

Good “personality” infused posts

Suggestions: -

When you link out to another blog post from a post use the target=”_blank” setting to open as a new page, that way the visitor is not leaving your blog
e.g. http://www.it-takes-work.com/2009/03/no-funny-quips-this-just-ticks-me-off/”

and put some description of what the post is about.

Add to blogcatalog, technorati, mybloglog etc.

~##~

Some general observations: -

I was surprised to see so many formatting errors, possibly caused by the choice of theme, as opposed to the blog author messing anything up.

It does show that it’s important to check out how your blog looks in InternetExplorer & Firefox at least, obviously trying to check them out in old version of the browsers could be a bit time consuming, but may be worth doing when your blog starts to get a lot of traffic.

It’s good to see most of these blogs have a free offer to get people to sign up to a newsletter in place, this is one of the most important things you can do for improving your income, just make sure you do follow up with regular emails and offers…

Try to get some personality in to the posts and blog itself somehow, a pic of yourself can help “personalize” the blog and help people identify and connect with you and the blog.

Sidenote: it would make more sense on an “SEO” basis for me to have posted each of these reviews as a separate post, giving me 7 to 8 days of content based on the blog reviews, instead of just 1 long post.

I’ve chosen to keep it all as one post to make it easier for people to be able to compare the different blogs all in one place, instead of having to jump backwards and forwards between separate posts.

I mention this simply as the separate posts option is what I would generally advise anyone else to do with such posts.

Tags: Blog Reviews

Share This

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!