Trey Pennington has agreed to put his website up for review. It’s never easy to hear people critique our websites, as I have found. Our websites our often our pride and joy; our babies. We don’t want to admit sometimes that our babies are ugly. Let’s look at Trey’s site and see where he needs improvement.
Trey Pennington is a well-accomplished speaker and marketing professional. Stay up to date on Trey’s speaking schedule, and be sure to catch him if he comes to your town. You won’t regret it.
I took a look at Trey’s website and found a few things. I am just starting the conversation. Please share your thoughts below:
- No Phone Number – I mentioned this before on the Christa M. Miller site review. It’s true, with all the different ways to connect the phone seems archaic. However, phone numbers lead to credibility. If spamming or solicitation is a concern, I recommend Google Voice. It has multiple blocking and call screen options available. I have a Google Voice number listed on my site. The truth is the number is rarely used, but I feel it makes me more “legit”
- #smBBQ – I was excited to see the barbeque and social media combination. Unfortunately, the information is out of date. I suggest updating it or removing it from the top tab.
- Title Tags – To dig deeper in to the SEO world, I looked at how Google is seeing many of the pages on this site. See the screen shot below.
What’s missing is “you”! Like me, Trey’s name is his brand. Because of that, it’s imperative to make sure the title tags contains the right keywords and topics, in this case “the brand” is an essential key topic.
“publicity”, “sales”, and “inspiration” have no search engine value on their own. A better option would be to add a tag line after all of these, like this:
“Publicity – Trey Pennington is a marketing pro, speaking, author, and social media integrationists”
or
“Sales – Trey Pennington — connections, content, conversations: commerce™”
Okay, those are 3. What am I missing?
Tags: landing pages, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, site review, South Carolina« « $100 Credit for New Clients | That is the Wrong Question » »
April 21st, 2011 at 12:50 pm
Thank you John (and all of John’s readers who will comment).
There’s quite a bit more to be said in analyzing my blog. You can probably tell by looking at it that I’ve struggled with where the blog fits in my overall strategy. Though good things have happened to me because of the blog (tons of international speaking events and even two phone calls from acquisition editors at two huge publishers), but those things have traveled on the road Serendipity and not necessarily Strategy and Purpose.
Now I’m ready to take the blog to the proverbial, cliched, next level (actually, I don’t think the “next” level will help; I need to take a quantum leap). I NEED to turn my blog into a systematic revenue-generating or enhancing machine while still maintaining the “I’m here to help you” reputation of my brand and blog.
So, thank you for taking time to dig deeper and critique enthusiastically.
Trey
April 21st, 2011 at 1:18 pm
Another great review! Since I met Trey last week and have visited his site a number of times, I’m happy to jump in. Of course, my comments are more from a design and usability perspective.
I think the site is great overall, but there are few things that I think could be improved. First, I think the static image behind the text makes the site very hard to read. I would consider moving the image of Trey to the header and keep the background behind the text white. If you want to keep the image in the sidebar, that’s fine, but I would lesson the transparency so less of the image shows through behind the text.
I noticed the SMBBQ page before and was bummed to find out I missed it!
I’m a little confused by the “let’s connect page.” It looks like a MailChimp sign-up. Is the person signing up for your e-letter? If so, then it should say that a little more prominently. I thought this was the “contact” page. I do see contact information below the form, but I think it would make sense to have a separate “contact Trey” page with a contact form that sends a message by email. The address and phone can go on that page as well as another alternative.
I might also consider moving from a three-column design to a two-column design. Right now, the right two columns seem to take over the page and the primary content on the left gets a bit overshadowed. Take a second look at all of the widgets and question if you really need them all. Or, at least consider consolidating them into one column.
Hope this helps!
April 25th, 2011 at 11:17 am
Trey, I have a similar issue with my blog. In the back of my head I have this idea that it should be a resource for small businesses that can’t afford to hire me outright, but then I read sites like Mack Collier’s and I think I should be going one better for myself…
I agree with much of what Laura said above about the images/readability, and moving from a 3-column design to 2-column. I had a similar critique about the columns in my other blog, and I do think moving to 2 columns improved its readability. You could also try two narrow columns on either side of the main content, as long as 1) the page is wide enough and 2) the columns’ purpose/content is clearly delineated enough.
I say that because the sidebars themselves seem busy. I would keep your speaking engagements and other events in the left sidebar (moved to the left of the main content), with subscription, social connect options and other stuff remaining in the right sidebar.
I also think that leaving the tabs up at the top of the page makes it easy to miss them. Consider moving them between your header and your content.
Back to your blog and SEO overall, I notice that your blog titles, other than “4 Keys to Increasing Your Klout Score,” don’t appear to be particularly optimized… like me, you seem to go for summing up the “theme” of your overall blog post. I’d like to think there is a happy medium between blatantly optimized titles (playing by the “SEO rules,” LOL) and more descriptive titles, but I admit I haven’t put a lot of attention towards this, myself.
I guess what I’m wondering is this: how important is search to your blogging efforts? You wouldn’t have asked John to review your site if it weren’t important on some level, but you seem so well connected that I wonder — in the scheme of serendipity vs. strategy — how much of your business do you really think will or want to come from search, vs. through one of your connections, LinkedIn, etc.?
April 25th, 2011 at 1:37 pm
Definitely agreeing with Laura / Christa…the only thing that I would add is a pet peeve of mine…
Having the ‘tweet this’ and “like this’ option on pages is fantastic, but there are some pages that it just seems inappropriate on…ie. the Contact page. Should be selectively implemented.
April 25th, 2011 at 6:11 pm
Has a question on phone numbers on sites. What if I have a link to schedule an appointment for a call?
See the problem I have with putting my phone number out there is then people expect a call back (because I’m not answering if I don’t expect the call.)
(Oh, and Trey I’ve loved your site for a long time. John’s suggestions are few and good ones.)
April 27th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
John, I’d like your input on this.
I ran SEO Site Tools on Trey’s homepage and some things it found:
-It said there should be no more than 100 unique links per page and it found 154 on homepage. Gave a “Red” warning for that. (meaning it’s a big no no)
-Title tag of 64 may be too long for search engines and be cut off (yellow warning, not so bad)
-Most image tags found but said missing 5 image tags (yellow warning)
-No text phone number (yellow warning)
…also, I noticed no post tags. Are they no longer helpful? Any thoughts on tag clouds used sparingly vs keyword stuffing?
Thanks
April 27th, 2011 at 4:45 pm
Glenn,
Yes, good move with the tools. I saw many of those as well, but I like limiting my first go-round to 3.
Let’s go through them …
100 links per page – That often draws a red flag with Google, because it looks like keyword and link stuffing. Although, I have no indication that “100” is their number, it’s just a general industry rule of thumb. However, in Trey’s case, he’s not abusing the links. They are 100 natural links. One quick and easy solution would be to eliminate a few of the posts that show on the first page. I would only show the most recent 3-5 posts.
Title Tag – The title tags do need an overhaul, per my original comment. In some cases, they are too long like you mentioned. In other cases, they are too small.
Image Tags – Yes, all images should have alt tags.
Text Phone Number – Phone number is needed, but yes, a text phone number is even better.
Tags – Tags can be useful, but in this case we’ve already established there are too many links. Let’s not add more to the page.
- John
May 5th, 2011 at 11:10 am
I built SEO Site Tools… it is a red warning but its really just a suggestion. I believe Google used to limit the number of links it crawled but I saw a webmaster video from matt cutts that says it doesnt really matter as much anymore… just good rule of thumb
May 11th, 2011 at 1:17 pm
Thanks for the opportunity … Here are a few thoughts:
1. The photo background image distracts your eyes from the content.
2. Navigation is top of page, should be more at eye level (i.e below header/logo).
3. I personally find the three column layout very busy. Two column will offer more open space in the design.
4. What’s the primary call to action? Read the blog, or Book me for your event? Make it known in the design.
5. I believe contact forms offer a higher level of professionalism than the “send email” text link. Sends a messages to potential clients.
Just a few thoughts. Hope you find them helpful. Enjoyed reading the other comments as well.