Improved Website Grade
Filed Under: Tools
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Remember this post about Website Grader. Well I’ve checked my grade periodically and slowly implemented some changes. As of today I had a grade of 90, that’s a big improvement over my orginal grade of 60.
It’s funny, since I did that article I’ve noticed many others have done posts about Website Grader too. It is a very useful blogging tool. Website Grader was recently listed in PC Magazines Top 100 Undiscovered Websites. Here’s a quote from Website Grader:
The software is constantly being upgraded and the algorithm enhanced. The number of potential recommendations provided by the tool is also increasing frequently. Please check back often.
Here were the main areas I needed to work on:
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Add a description element in the meta tag - This was easy using All In One SEO Pack.
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I needed a permanent redirect so that www.itswritenow.com and itswritenow.com would be the same. - This was automatically taken care of when I upgraded WordPress to version 2.3.
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I also needed to renew my domain for longer than the current year. - Which was also an easy one click thanks to DreamHost.
My Alexa Rank went from 932,518 To 179,327.
My Technorati Rank went from 540,306 To 32,949.
So I seem to be moving in the right direction. I still have a lot of improvements to make and I’ve seen some blogs that started around the time I did progress a lot faster. Never the less I still have some tricks up my sleeve, and I have some high hopes for the future of It’s Write Now.
Popularity: 20% [?]
Dharmesh Shah | Oct 21, 2007 | Reply
Thanks for using WebsiteGrader (I’m the original inventor and co-founder of the company behind the website).
Congrats on the progress. Being a blogger myself, I can tell you that it’s rare to see that kind of improvement in traffic and links so quickly. You should be proud.
Regards,
Dharmesh Shah
Emma | Oct 21, 2007 | Reply
Thanks Dharmesh, the encouragement means a lot to me. WebsiteGrader is a really useful tool. Thank-you for creating it. You deserve all of your success. Emma
Qtpies7 | Oct 22, 2007 | Reply
Your Alexa score actually got worse, the lower the score the better on Alexa.
Alexa is the most frustrating and stupid ranking system ever. It is useless in ranking pages because it only ranks pages based on how many people who use Alexa go there, and I can’t find any way to get Alexa downloaded and use it myself.
Emma | Oct 22, 2007 | Reply
@Qtpies7 My Alexa Rank went from 932,518 To 179,327.
Umm 179,327 is less than 932,518.
Nicola | Oct 22, 2007 | Reply
Thanks for showing us that site, Emma, it’s really useful. I won’t disclose my rather poor grade (I am quite new) but I will be taking the recommended steps to improve it.
Emma | Oct 22, 2007 | Reply
Thanks Nicola, my first grade was a 60. You can probably beat that.
Emma
YC | Oct 22, 2007 | Reply
Those are fantastic scores Emma! Your rankings are moving really fast! Congrats!
Emma | Oct 22, 2007 | Reply
Wow, Thanks YC. It’s always nice to hear from you.
Emma
Cyberpartygal | Oct 30, 2007 | Reply
Hi Emma,
According to Website Grader, my blog has a score of 84 and Google PR of 3 but the “green bar” is only showing a ONE. Dropped from its original 3. I wonder if the toolbar or Website Grader is out of date.
I’m so disheartened
Emma | Oct 30, 2007 | Reply
Hey Cyberpartygal, I checked your site in website grader and http://www.blog.cyberpartygal.com is a 1 and blog.cyberpartygal.com is a 3. What that might mean is you don’t have a redirect so that links for each one counts. If your using WordPress there is a plugin by Matt Mullenweg called no WWW or it’s built in to the newest version of WordPress. There’s also a way to edit the code, but that’s a little advanced. I’ll try to do a post about it in the future. Thanks for visiting. Emma
Cyberpartygal | Nov 1, 2007 | Reply
Hi Emma,
Thanks for the plug in. I already activated it but I don’t see any changes.
Emma | Nov 1, 2007 | Reply
From what I can tell Google did a page rank update last week. So, if your links were split and not counting together then that could of affected the rank they gave you last week. If that’s the case then you won’t see any improvement until the next page rank update. Whenever that happens.