2 Free Tools
To Rank & Grade
Your Blog or Website
How well is your website doing? Is it getting traffic? Does it have SEO problems? How popular is it in social media?
Website Grader & Blog Grader
Hubspot offers Website Grader & Blog Grader websites that produce a rather interesting combination of reviews on your site.
Website Grader is a LOT more thorough and has a LOT more information than Blog Grader, but the two seem to fit together.
Website Grader produces a report that looks like this sample report and has a TON of things you can work on to improve your score!
Hubspot actually produces a whole range of free grader-type tools. Some like these are very impressive and others like the twitter score I was unimpressed with.
Cleaning Up Bad Grades
When I first got my Website Grader score I was NOT happy!
Don’t be surprised if you do NOT like your original score!
I have worked on my score on and off for a couple weeks adjusting little things to slowly build it up.
Website Grader still does not detect my blog, and Blog Grader still thinks I have zero traffic and a number of other hiccups still exist. These can be annoying but don’t let them put you off using these to your advantage. (My Blog Grade is still terribly low because its not being detected properly, but some links and information on the page still make it worth sharing.)
However, I’ve learned a ton just working to improve this number. Its been great to have a solid number that let me see definable progress! It’s so nice to be able to make a couple changes and see a definitive number go up!
I think you’re going to love these new toys! Let me know what you think, how you do and if you have questions about any of the sections. Please tweet, facebook share or better yet onlywire syndicate this post and leave your comments below! If you’ll stop back by after you score and work on it a while, I’ll be glad to help you with questions! Let me know what you think!
Kimberly
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I personally not believe in such great. I only trust Google Analyst in term of traffic stat. However, I test this and it really give me a great point – 99.8 . Oh! I miss two point.
.-= Arafat Hossain Piyada´s last blog ..Facebook will see another privacy policy change – Zuckerberg give hint =-.
Arafat, its definitely far from perfect! All of these are simply little tools, complete with their flaws, that help show people steps to take in the right directly. Definable, easy to alter metrics are important in helping people have something they can directly measure and see improvement on. Google Analytics is definitely king, but patience is required to see improvement and parts of the interface are cumbersome. Congrats on your great score though you’ve obviously done some work on yours by other means!
.-= Kimberly Castleberry´s last blog ..2 Free Tools To Rank & Grade Your Blog or Website =-.
Hi Kimberly, my first thought was, ‘wow, if Kimberly’s blog rated poorly, imagine how mine would rate’.
However I can see the benefit here, anything that can point out area’s to improve on, has got to be good. Thanks Kim, great share.
Stay well
Toni
.-= Toni King´s last blog ..Taking Time Out. =-.
Toni, I just had a look at yours and you don’t really score that badly. There’s a lot of suggestions of things you can fix and that would be GOOD for you to fix. You will enjoy seeing that number go up as you fix these things. Also, it correctly detects your blog so you have even more information (and points) than I originally did. I still have no clue why it does not believe I have a blog.
Kimberly
Hey Kim,
I love using Website Grader! Individuals that never used it before are going to love it.
Chat with you later…
Josh
.-= Josh Garcia´s last blog ..Little Known Ways to Create Backlinks… =-.
Definitely Josh! Thanks for taking the time to stop by! It was fun to check out your blog, you have some great stuff going on over there!
I just graded mine Kimberly and I got a 99. I’m quite surprised really because I know it needs some work, but at least that score made me feel a little better so that I can put some of that work off for a later date.
.-= Sire´s last blog ..WassupBlog’s Milestone 300th Post =-.
Hi Kimberly,
Wow, I hadn’t heard of this before. I’ll have to go check it out.
Thanks!
Susanna
Kimberly,
I appreciate the information on these free analysis tools. My grade was pretty good and I see where I can improve my marks. It’s always good to check out different grading sites as each one seems to utilize different markers and tool tips.
Thanks again,
Val
Hey Val thanks for stopping by! I’d be interested to know what other grading tools you are enjoying! You’re definitely spot on accurate about them all using different measurement styles. Its really about just using them to learn from and moving on rather than stressing about one singular score. Good stuff!
Kimberly
Kimberly Castleberry invites you to read…Social Media Metrics, Measuring Your Impact for Maximum ROI
hmmmm… i’ll check it out, but i have a feeling it’s gonna feel like stepping on the scale after the holidays. here’s goes nuthin! …
.-= Melissa McCloud´s last blog ..Are You Tweeting in Vain? =-.
Wow Kim!!! This is an extremely value laden post. I’m headed over the grader now…can’t wait to see my report card (the good and/or bad). Awesome to know what needs to be fixed to boost our exposure and rankings. Thanks for always sharing this value.
Krista’s latest post: Recycled Dreams
Hi Kimberly,
I hadn’t heard of either of those. Will have to check them out. I use Google Analytics and am very happy with the results.
Thanks for sharing!
Have a great week!
Ilka
Ilka Flood invites you to read…3 Costly Mistakes To Avoid If You Are Blogging For Business
Another incredibly valuable article Kimberly! Thank you so much for sharing. Looks like I definitely have a lot of work to do!
Thanks again Kimberly! You are such a gem!
Aloha,
Kellie
Kellie Hosaka invites you to read…What Is “Spiritual Awakening” & How Does It Relate To My Business? – pt. 4
I’ve used WebsiteGrader in the past but didn’t realize they had a whole slew of grader tools now. My grade is a little below yours, Kim, but I’m pretty happy with the report. A few things I can work on, sure, but all in all, not bad. I’m glad to be reminded of it though, because it always helps to have someone else (even a bot) take a look at your site. It’s hard to see my own site’s faults, but it’s much easier when they are pointed out.
DazzlinDonna invites you to read…How To Quickly Assess The Competition In Any Niche
Hi Kimberly,
Came across this wonderful post of yours and managed to get my new website http://www.homejobsites.com from 31 to 65 and while improving it the score went back down to 59. I am kind of at a stand still where anything I am doing is not helping with the score anymore. Any suggestions as to what I should be working on? Please Help
Thanks
Shawn
Twitter: @HomeJobSites
There’s a couple steps, some easy some not so easy you can do to improve this score.
1. Enable or correct your missing RSS feed. Thats a biggy. Maybe even one composite feed and then specific category feeds for areas, given your niche.
2. Create a similarly named twitter account, putting your url in the website field under profile. Be careful not to spam it butyou may want to use the previously created RSS feed to start creating some content on it. That backlink from that page is important.
3. Do something to spike your traffic or otherwise generate interactivity. Your last google crawl date was a week ago – thats not good. Essentially you need to shorten up that time between times that google indexes/spiders your site. Generally this comes with lots of fresh content and plenty of reader engagement.
4. Get alt tags on as many images as possible. Make them keyword relevant if the image is relevant. Google likes alt tags for seo for accessibility reasons.
5. I just notice you do have a linked twitter account, I would suspect that part of the recognition problem may be tied up in this suggestion. You still have http://www.homejobsites .com and http://homejobsites .com existing in googles eyes as 2 seperate websites. Google hates that. You need to go to log into your hosts file manager (or via ftp) and either edit or create a .htaccess file and do a 301 redirect from the one you don’t plan to use, to the one you plan to use. That will tell google that they are permanantly the same site and give you much better SEO respect.
(That should clear up the htaccess/duplicate site complaint within a few days of being put in place. The twitter issue kinda looks like a bug now that I’ve looked at your twitter account.)
There’s a lot of fairly serious issues here I’m sure you can yet improve on. Tag me back as you get closer and I’ll gladly have another look!
Kimberly
Great article Kim. I have compiled a list of websites to help improve my blog. Now i just need to put them to good use to find where the problems are and improve my blog. Thank you.
Hi Kimberly
I’m actually writing this before I have even tried the tools – because I know mine will be poor. However, I am going to have a go because anything that tells me where I can make improvements has got to be useful. So I’ll say thank you in advance and will get to work.
Beverley Ireland=Symonds invites you to read…Welcome to Accelerated Training & Consultancy
Thanks Kim that was a great tool. Just brought some startling facts about my blog and pointed very correctly where I need to fix. The grade was not that bad though
Suresh Khanal invites you to read…Twitter Strategies That Works- NO Instant Followers Please
Checking it out now- thanks!
Carolee a.ka. Blogging Biz Mom invites you to read…Welcome
Hey Carolee, thanks for the comment! Those are some fun and useful tools. Not perfect by any means but a great way to get a quick assessment of some things that can be affecting your SEO and general “find-a-bility”. Let me know how they worked for you!
Kim
Hi Kim,
Great little utility that will help you get your online business foundation built for success.
thanks for sharing this valuable information with us…
All the Best
Your Friend
OnlineDon
I think it’s worth taking the data from tools like this with a pinch of salt.
Ultimately, different websites want to achieve different things – so many of the things your site is being judged on probably are not relevant to yours.
That said, it is good if it draws attention to areas which you may not have considered before (such as targeted reading age).
Richard invites you to read…How Much Does a Website Cost
Exactly true Richard. Most of the items were actually relevant to me though such as things like duplicate content, indexibility, etc. Some were not though. Its why use of tools are a helpful set of eyes to help us spot stuff but are no guarantee for certain! Thanks Richard!
Kimberly
Mine is 98. Don’t think I can better that. Oh… *blush* That’s Twitter Grade. Doh!
Thanks so much Kim, a great resource for someone like me who is just starting out!
Phil Drysdale invites you to read…Creating Secure Leaders
Hi Kim, I’m pretty late to this party but wanted to confirm the value of both Website Grader and Blog Grader. I, too, began with low scores but took the advice seriously. These *free* services check for basic functionality on your blog. Do you have an RSS feed? I didn’t. Do you have buttons for Facebook and Twitter? I didn’t. Do you have a contact form and an e-mail list sign-up form. I had neither. How many linkbacks do you have? Any .edu or .gov linkbacks? What is your Alexa ranking? Mine was lousy. I kept working on all these failings. My Website score is now 99 and Blog score is 95. My Alexa score has been dropping about 3,000 each day. These scoring sites are fun to use, and offer simple-to-understand remedies (including how hard they are to fix). Most importantly, they focus on relevant, critical functionality that every blog needs to get better.
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