COMMENTS
Michael makes a good point when he says, "there are some things that you can’t automate and a site audit is at the top of that list. You can use tools to help you gather that data, sift through it, sort, arrange it, and dissect it anyway you want. At the end of the day you need a an experienced analyst interpreting that data for you. You don’t want the SEO equivalent of a check engine light. There’s reason site clinics are so popular at search engine conferences, People need to expert advice on how to fix things from time to time."
The fact that engadget.com received such a good grade, despite its many problems, clearly shows that the tool is insufficient in performing site audits compared to knowledgeable humans.
David: Not sure I totally agree. For large, complicated sites that can afford an "expert" to spend time with them, great. They should do that.
WebsiteGrader is for the masses of people that can't afford to find or hire such an expert. At least not at the get-go. It gives them a quick way to test a few simple things.
Also, regarding the Engadget example that Michael elaborated on so deeply - it is important to recognize that the Website Grader score is not just about SEO. It looks at:
1. Traffic
2. Social popularity
3. Inbound links
4. On-page SEO
5. others factors
What the tool is trying to measure is marketing effectiveness -- not SEO.
I'd argue that just because you have "perfect" SEO (if there is such a thing) doesn't mean your site is effective from a marketing perspective.
And, just because you've made some mistakes on SEO, doesn't mean your website is not effective.
you know, i don't see why engadget.com is a good example. michael made some good points otherwise, but why would the engadget team (or a similar sized site) use a free tool like this?
it's good for sites that get graded in the 40's and 50's. i took a few of the recommendations the report gave me, and they're actually good tips.
In your description of the tool (bottom of home page) you state: "Website Grader is a free SEO tool that provides an SEO score for your website with custom search engine optimization and marketing advice for your website. "
So when you say, "What the tool is trying to measure is marketing effectiveness -- not SEO," aren't you contradicting yourself?
Let me get this right...100,000 people (plus various other technical publications & web sites) have used a free tool in the last year to get a better understanding of their web site marketing effectiveness and that is a bad thing? I think providing basic SEO information for no charge is a public service. Maybe someone is trying to stir up a little traffic by embedding
www.websitegrader.com into their blog posting. :-)
my issue isn't with providing free tools/info which I think is great.
What bothers me is the context the information is provided in. How many of those 100,000 people thought they had just completed a "full seo site check", when in fact what they really got was a cursory glance of some technical aspects.
The tool does some really nice things, it just needs to be framed more accurately with what it's actually doing.
Don't give someone a complete clean bill of health scoring 99 out of a 100 when you only made sure they didn't have any crust in their eyes, mucas up their nose, and wax in their ears.
You know the one thing I really love about Website Grader is that it does not exist in a vacuum. The web is changing, so is WSG. Michael's article points out some things that it doesn't do, but with a little bit of effort, it can do those things. It's a tool, and a good one at that, and it will continue to get better, so keep the criticism coming!
David:
I've changed the description of the tool on the home page of the site to make it more clear as to what it actually does.
Graywolf / Michael: The report makes it clear that 99% does not mean a clean bill of health. All it means is that compared to all the other websites that the tool has scored this one is more effective -- based on the factors we look at.
99% does not mean completely healthy. 99% means more effective than the others websites we've looked at.
Let me start by saying that I like automating routine tasks and that in my opinion Website Grader offers information, nothing more nothing less, not guaranteed recommendations about what to do. I think that a tool like Website Grader is an excellent first step to assessing your website's online marketing effectiveness and visibility. Without question you need to do something with the information, test it and see if you're changes make a difference - and that's where the experience and insight of a trained expert comes in - but just to be able to receive a free "quick assessment" I believe is an invaluable service. We all know there are other not free software tools that SEO experts use to diagnose websites, the fact that the HubSpot team is offering this as a free service is commendable and I agree with Dan, a good public service. Keep up the great work HubSpot.
Let me jump in on the side of the tool. Free or otherwise tools can help demystify the routine and provides a good diagnostic first step analysis. Plus I don't have to go to seven places to get different things (rank, inbound links etc), I get it in one.
In my case (probably your target audience - novices) it was helpful to get stuff in the red (too many meta keywords - not that they count!) to push me to look for more info on those things.
Good step, in the right direction, let's support it people! :)
-Avinash.
PS: Dharmesh here is a request. Perhaps you can go look at stuff beyond root domain. My site is
www.kaushik.net/avinash not
www.kaushik.net. You truncate to the latter hence you don't report technorati rank for my report (its 2,153) or Delicious Saved. No biggie though.
I would agree on some of this, but i have a free seo tool that works great: http://www.seotrail.com
I think Website Grader has done a wonderful job till date. While the name 'free SEO tool' may be misleading; it clearly states that it's main purpose is to check marketing effectiveness.
The tool definitely gives you insight on how you can do the 'little things' better. My company's website first started out with a website grade of 49 which meant we were in serious need of some basic help to turn things around. Not having enough funds to purchase the services of an SEO expert or any personal SEO experience, I found this resource to be invaluable as it clearly gives you enough information to get the basics right - Meta keywords, Headers, Site description, Image description, Title, etc. It also helps you to understand the need for resources like Google analytics and gives you Google crawl dates and page rank.
The tool gives you a lot of useful marketing info - while it cannot replace an expert (an no where does it claim to do so), it can definitely point you in the right direction. It's a one stop shop where I get enough information on my website to know how it's doing on the web. They also email you asking whether you would like the services of a SEO expert to further tweek your site but it's always a one-of email every 4 or 5 times I use their tool (they never spam you) for which I am grateful.
Keep up the good work guys!
P.s - On a personal note, you need to fix the technorati ranking and Delicious count as it doesn't give you those details.
I have a relatively high-traffic site and I have hired SEO consultants from time to time. They are very expensive, only provide a point-in-time analysis (rather than one that you can revisit to gauge improvement), often difficult to work with and hard to evaluate. I much prefer software-based solutions because they help me learn about what's going on, while the consultants have an incentive to obfuscate the information so that I continue to hire them.
Compared to most of those submitting comments, I'm a novice at running my own site (although not a technology novice). I've used websitegrader and find it easy to understand and a great tool for telling how much impact even single events have. Dharmesh, keep up the good work!
I like the idea of taking the temperature of my website regularly vs. regularly visiting a doctor. Website Grader is a great idea and I never would have heard about it were it not for the "bad idea" article -- thanks!
I believe websitegrader is great as a good first pass analysis tool. It has demonstrated appropriate rankings for good vs marginal sites & provided hints for improvements.
Now I also think the use of multiple tools lends added info that helps to further achieve good rankings.
Jorge, the site you referenced: http://www.seotrail.com how do you get started with the tool? I find the site & tool somewhat confusing. Any hints will be appreciated.
Thank you. Paul G.
I always like checking out SEO tools, especially the free ones. I see both points of view, but I agree more that they are a good idea. The more informed we can become, the better.
I think the tool is great. I'm not convinced that there's any problem with the tool because someone was able to identify 5 issues with Engadget, a couple of which were fairly obscure and all of which are only debatably problematic.
I think identifying on-site issues with a tool is a great use of automation for the most part. The reason that Engadget has all of these supposed SEO problems and still rakes in traffic and cash by the ton is that high quality content and linking wins every time.
The reason SEO experts love to talk about on-site issues is because they are relatively easy to identify and correct once you know what you're doing, helping them earn their keep. A point Gray drives home by finding his 5 flaws in 15 minutes. Creating great content and generating high quality links is much harder.
I read both posts and I see both sides of the argument; however I can't agree that WebsiteGrader is a bad idea or tool. I use this tool all the time as a starting point on new sites I need to optimize. It lets me focus on some of the more advanced SEO changes a site might need instead of manually checking for all the basics first. However I don't think it is a bad idea either to let the newbs know that just because you might rank highly in WebsiteGrader, doesn't mean your all set. Asking people if they would like an Expert review of their site is a great start.
"Jorge, the site you referenced: http://www.seotrail.com how do you get started with the tool? I find the site & tool somewhat confusing. Any hints will be appreciated."
You get started by signing up then registering your domain with the site. Then after time the site tracks the sites progress against all sorts of site. SEO Trail watches sites like google, digg and other social networking sites for progress in ratings, back links and more.
Hi Dharmesh,
I think websitegrader tool is awesome, but I think you got to work harder on the keyword part of it. I run my pages with different keywords and all end up with the same analysis.
I made a blog post about WebsiteGrader today at http://www.mycatalyze.org/Blogs/CatalyzeBlogsCurrentWisdom/tabid/1006/BlogID/28/EntryId/872/Default.aspx.
I think this is a great tool and wanted to tell more people about it.
Thanks for providing the FREE tool!
For newbies like myself, websitegrader is the best of learning tools. Dharmesh makes it quite clear that better options are available for anyone who needs more than a free SEO tool.
Just wondering what is the best SEO grade any website owner who has come up with to date?
It might be an idea to list say websites that are graded above say 70% or higher...
Are you aware all mail sent to info@hubspot.com is being rejected ? The error is :
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 13):
On top of that , One or more of your MX records points to a CNAME. CNAMEs are prohibited in MX records, according to RFC974, RFC1034 3.6.2, RFC1912 2.4, and RFC2181 10.3.
The problem MX record(s) are:
mail.hubspot.com.
sybil.hubteam.com.
69.147.173.200
SOA MINIMUM TTL is : 181 seconds. You need to consider increasing this value to somewhere between 3600 and 10800
Please donsider fixing these issues as it will allow mail to be sent to you without errors and performance of your website will greatly increase.
I hired a company to revamp my site. I ran it before we went live, on my old site and got a 5, then ran website grader after the launch and it got 67/100, I waited a week and not it doesn't find anything and i got a 10. I don't get the grading system. My website folks say they have done everything and don't know why it won't find it. Suggestions.
Website is a great tool. We are a small biz (husband/wife) and have been able to move our site from 100+ to page 3 in about 4 weeks. Would anyone know why website grader saw our blog for a few weeks... then seemed to lose it? Clearly we have one at http://www.everafterimages.com then click the blog link far right or just go to it at http://blog.everafterimages.com
Thanks for tools like websitegrader!
I like websitegrader and check my own websites against it. It quickly pulls together some useful facts and figures and is a good starting point for a proper web health check.
I know enough about SEO not to treat its results as gospel and I pick and choose whatever I find useful.
I wouldn't give one of its reports to a client without adding my own comments to its suggestions. That's because some of its checks won't matter to every website. Whether you're getting dugg on Digg isn't relevant to many smaller websites. Not all websites need a blog. Personally I find Alexa's stats worthless for smaller websites.
It's a good idea. And it is useful, you just need to apply some human common sense to the results.
I have just started using the websitegrader.com and very useful it is too. However, how can a site graded 76/100 rank below a site ranked 17/100, either the checks are missing something quite important or.... (I can't think of an or)?
I doesn't get more inexperienced than me. I used my computer as a word processor and for internet searches before this point. This article and the comments have been educational but not a revelation. While I like to imagine that God will speak when I reach 100, I suspect this will not be the case. I am just incredibly grateful for your site and the grader. I brought my site from a 7 to a 68 on the grader. Alexa ranking 6,164,099 to 2,084,483. Virtually everything I have learned so far about SEO has been through your site. I don't have the money for the experts. So from the little man, in this case little woman, thank you. Now I'm just trying to figure out how to bring my blog http://hcferris.wordpress.com and my website http://www.heatherferris.net together and how to get your grader to read my blog, as it exists on my site but has somehow fallen out of grace.
OK, that first sentence will haunt me for some time. I feel compelled to add that I actually speak English reasonably well and graduated from Barnard.
I'd love to see 2 things:
Website Grader address the WEIGHTING they give to each section. You don't have to reveal all the Aces up your sleeve - but some inkling of the most glaring weak-spots to fix might help people make quick, meaningful changes.
Also , I use
www.mailchimp.com for List Management. Grader seems totally unaware and isn't detecting their newsletter sign-up code on my pages.
@Anthony "how can a site graded 76/100 rank below a site ranked 17/100?" - that's where the human interpretation part comes in - plus Website Grader doesn't claim to be deconstructing any of the search engine algorithms.
I have come to like website grader - not because it is a completely accurate ranking, but because it allows you to compare statistics over time that are transparent.
WebSiteGrader is a fantastic tool to use alongside other tools for SEO. You can never have enough tools, it's down to how the results are interpreted by the site administrator and also how results differ with competing sites.