1. Site Reviews
Methodology and Examples for Web Marketers to Perform Quick Reviews of Websites.
Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz | October 2011

2. A Framework for All Site Reviews

3. Why Does this
Website Exist?

4. Who Cares?

5. What Motivates, Inpsires &
Interests this Audience?

6. What’s the Client
Worried About?

7. What Should A Review Cover?

8. User Experience

9. Design Usability
Conversion Stickiness

10. Content

11. Usefulness Interest Alignment
Quality Share-ability

12. SEO

13. Accessibility Keyword Targeting
Content Optimization Link Authority

14. Social

15. Social Value Channels
Incentives Social Optimization

16. User Experience Content
SEO Social

17. Springest.co.uk

18. http://www.springest.co.uk

19. Why Does this Website Exist?
http://www.springest.co.uk

20. Springest helps connect people to training & education that can better their lives

21. Who Cares?
http://www.springest.co.uk

22. Anyone running a training course/program

23. Anyone seeking to learn in a professional training environment

24. What Motivates, Inspires & Interests
This Audience?
http://www.springest.co.uk

25. The Pain! Oh, the Pain!
For training organizers it’s empty seats

26. Marketing opportunities

27. And market analysis (what are people saying about their events and how do they fare vs. the competition)

28. For those seeking to learn, it’s finding the right path

29. And exploring potential options with feedback, ratings and ROI analysis they can trust

30. User Experience
for Springest

32. Auto-detect? Save Us a Step!

33. Do users care about this?
Doesn’t sound impressive…

34. Do you get lots of traffic/searches?
Impress these providers!

35. Charity donation is
cool; but the message is
muddled/hidden.

36. Not sure “News” is the
right headline here…
“Why Do We Trust a
Website?” sounds like
killer content. Several
others do, too, but
they don’t necessarily
sound like “news.”

37. This could surely be more
compelling and receive
higher engagement.

38. “Stay tuned?”… I’m also a bit
confused on the relevancy of
these articles, why they’re
separate from news and how they
fit with the site/users’ goals.

39. “0” replies/comments on
any of the Q+A? So sad!

40. Who’s going to answer? Why?
Do other questions have good
answers? Has someone asked
a similar question?

41. Start typing and Quora starts
figuring out what I want and
showing me… It’s powerful.

42. Hey! Where’d the rest
of the site go?

43. What about quality?
Reviews? Value?
Ability to get a
job/raise/fulfillment?

44. Can editors somehow review these? Can we infer something from
comments made around the web? Can we get statistics from the
provider? Anything to make this more useful + convincing.

45. Found this on the Netherlands site and
loved it… Couldn’t find it on the UK site.

46. Content for Springest

47. Feels a bit thin here…

48. Technically, this is “good content.”

49. In reality… It likely has high
bounce rates, low
engagement, doesn’t drive
subscriptions and doesn’t
encourage sharing.

50. Yikes...

51. Also Yikes.

52. Content Idea #1
Incent users (both event organizers and seekers)
to contribute to the articles/q+a section.

53. Content Idea #2
Turn the articles section into a blog. Give it
multiple authors. Create a feed where folks can
subcsribe. Tweet, Facebook, Google+ those
pieces. Make sure no post has <2 comments.

54. Content Idea #3
Subsidize those attending professional events if
they’ll review them on Springwise. Find them via
Twitter, Lanyrd, Meetup and the event sites
themselves.

55. Content Idea #4
Whatever you’re doing in the Netherlands rocks.
Do that in the UK, and make the stats
embeddable on other people’s sites.

56. SEO for Springest

57. If it were me, I’d go
vertical by vertical.
Build the most
comprehensive,
amazing resource on
“web design courses”
then move on to
“photography” then to
“languages,” etc.

58. #1: I’d likely reverse
the title tags to put the
keywords at the front.
#2: Videos, star ratings or
any rich snippet info would
help these stand out.
#3: Be very cautious about
using non-unique content or
generating bamboo pages here.

59. Who will link to this
page and why?

60. These are your
partners. They just
don’t know it yet 

61. And these guys.

62. This group is going to
help share and
promote your
content/Q+A

63. SEO Idea #1
Professional events calendar that all the events
want to earn a listing from (and that require an
embed on their events page to “prove” they’re the
official organizer).

64. SEO Idea #2
Contests to get into events free for the person
submitting the article that earns the most tweets /
Facebook / LinkedIn shares.

65. SEO Idea #3
Find unemployed bloggers (Google blog search,
LinkedIn lookups and RSS search can help),
reach out and ask them to become contributors to
content and Q+A. In return, sponsor their event
attendance.

66. SEO Idea #4
Embeddable badges for the positive reviews left
on Springest that events can put on their sites.

67. Social for Springest

68. This account should help promote
the events, reviews and people
involved with your site.

69. The LinkedIn audience in hyper-relevant for
your business. Get a page here, answer
questions, connect to event providers,
recruiting agencies, etc.

70. Great place to share
event photos, interesting
blog content and have
discussions on news
around
employment/training
issues.

71. Answer questions that fit
into the training/events
world on sites like Quora

72. Social Idea #1
Become a resource to event marketers and
connect with them over social networks. As you
share content, they’ll be very likely to help it
spread via Twitter/Facebook/etc.

73. Social Idea #2
Use Facebook events and Facebook ads; do the
same with promoted tweets that are geo-targeted
and LinkedIn ads. Show results and share with
event marketers (great way to grow your social
reach and get great content).

74. Social Idea #3
Run contests via Twitter / Facebook / LinkedIn for
ticket giveaways that require a follow/like. This
won’t bring tons of followers, but they will be high
quality.

75. Social Idea #4
Watch for people using particular words/asking
questions on Twitter around events, networking,
training, etc. Helping them find good stuff (even if
you’re not linking to your site) will build goodwill
and followers.

76. BathandUnwind.com

78. Why Does this Website Exist?

79. To Bring Happiness
to
Beautiful
Women
Like These

80. Who Cares?

81. Everyone without a
“Y” Chromosome.

82. What Motivates, Inspires &
Interests This Audience?

84. User Experience
for BathandUnwind

85. Great brand
messaging… But
does that convert?
Help bounce rate?
Bring users back?

86. Do these categories
line up with your
products, or with how
your visitors actually
shop?

87. Seems like brands
would be an essential
way of shopping… But
it took me a while to
find how to shop by
brand from this page.

88. There’s no message about connecting to the community/social or
getting involved with content. Is that intentional? Has it been tested?

89. At default resolution,
there’s no products
visible above the fold!

90. Reviews = awesome. Strikethough
prices = awesome. No way to shop by
“on sale” or seasonal = less awesome.

91. Wow. This is really
top notch!

92. Content for BathandUnwind

93. I found a hidden
blog!

94. Great content; just
hard to find and
not well promoted.

95. Content Idea #1
Identify 30 blogs in the womens/beauty space that
are medium size/influence that would be receptive
to outreach. Start commenting, engaging,
interacting and relationship-building with them.

96. Content Idea #2
Create a “best bloggers in beauty” awards that
you give out annually. Make badges and physical
awards to mail them. They’ll all link to you like
crazy. Oh, and make the nominations based on
tweeted votes 

97. Content Idea #3
Reward reviewers with visibility – give top
reviewers/contributors a leaderboard, points, etc.
This could also apply to blog comments.

98. Content Idea #4
Head:Head faceoffs of beauty products that claim
to perform a specific function. Run a test every
week or month and publish the results, with
photos ala Oyster fakeouts. Which skin cream
performs better? Super luxury expensive one? Or
low-priced basic?

99. SEO for BathandUnwind

100. These are all
duplicate(ish)
content/titles. Might
want to address.

101. Clicking these links uses AJAX. If users
copy/paste/link, the juice flows to however
they originally landed in the section, rather
than where they intended.

102. Those nasty URL params stick around even after
I go to product pages (which isn’t ideal either)

103. Damn Zappos and their
brilliant videos!

104. Son of a @#%!

105. Everyone’s using the same
title and description for the
product (likely from the
manufacturer). We’ll need
to fix in order to rank.

106. SEO Idea #1
Get unique content written about the products and
remove the duplicates. Consider even writing
unique title tags and meta descriptions for each
one, as these can help you stand out in search.

107. SEO Idea #2
Pull in the attributes most used about the product
in reviews (you can even do this from reviews off
your own site). This can create unique content
and positive keyword associations, plus be useful
to users.

108. SEO Idea #3
Use the Urbanspoon “Spoonback” strategy. Find
bloggers who’ve written about any product you
carry and offer to feature that review on your
product page if they’ll “spoonback.”

109. SEO Idea #4
Work with beauty schools, training courses and
work-from-home reps who have websites to do
sponsorships, content creation, guest blogging,
bizdev partnerships, etc.

110. Social for BathandUnwind

111. You get lots of interaction and
likes on Facebook. Perhaps
integrating FB features more
onto the site (even using the FB
comments plugin on product
pages) would work.

112. Nice work building an audience on
Twitter. More interaction/engagement
here, including outreach, will likely
earn you even more traction.

113. Sign up for Pinterest and start building
some boards on here. Very strong site
with your demographic.

114. Social Idea #1
Connect with independent producers having a
hard time getting their lines of products
distributed. Be a featured shop for them, and let
them help you promote their product.

115. Social Idea #2
Do a video or online “how not to beautify” series
(like “what not to wear”). Use Facebook/Twitter to
accept nominations, votes, suggestions, etc. and
share the story as it’s in progress.

116. Social Idea #3
ID professional aestheticians with any social
following and reach out to them, requesting that
they help build a “best of XYZ category” via a
survey. Then publish and ask them to help share
it. They’ll be likely to participate and to share,
because they helped create it.

117. Social Idea #4
Use Facepile/Facemash. And get the Facebook
comments plugin that’s indexable onto your blog
(also possibly test it on your product pages).

118. Go Forth, Review
and Help Others Prosper!
Rand Fishkin, SEOmoz | October 2011