Your Comments on my Website Please
-
Please post constructive comments about my website:
http://www.thewebhostinghero.com
Some of the stuff you may want to look at:
- Free tools: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/free-tools
- Web host lookup: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/who_is_hosting.php
- Articles, news, tutorials: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/blog
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WebHostingHero
I'm still weighting the option of building a new website and if I do, I want to make sure I won't do the same mistakes again.
Don't be scared to be brutal... but constructive.
Thank you
Stephane
-
What do you think about the new homepage layout?
I know I still have a lot of work to do, I'm still working on the About and Disclosure pages, the old ones are still there in the meantime.
-
Thank you Daniel for these great suggestions. I will get at it right away.
You see, I'm a programmer so this is the biggest part of my involvement in this site. I know very little about the other aspects and that's what I'm trying to improve.
-
I completely missed the "valuable content" including the tutorials the first time around. I spent 10 minutes on the site -- about 9 minutes and 45 seconds longer than most people will spend. Which highlights the problem. The good stuff is buried. The initial impression is of a very dubious site.
It is not at all clear what the purpose of the site is at first glance. So users are forced to try to find out who created it. But they will fail because the information is not there.
**Constructive Suggestion: **Include a Mission Statement near your logo. Something like: "Your independent expert guide to website hosting." (If that's what you're doing.)
**Constructive Suggestion: **Completely reorganize your navigation and UX. Eliminate extraneous material.
The most important page on any website of this kind is the about page. You don't have one. See this article on About Pages. (Note: by de-cloaking, I simply meant revealing who you are on page.)
Try looking at this website by my client Jon-Erik Kawamoto for an example of a good About page that establishes the site owner's credentials. The site also surfaces valuable content. It uses a blog format and the right hand column sorts content by category and also recent highlights.
The other part of the right hand column includes some affiliate marketing stuff.
Along the same lines, take a look at this site by my former client Jon Goodman. There is a wealth of free material, along with some premium products and affiliate promotions in the right hand column.
Constructive Suggestion: Try highlighting your best tools and content on the home page, perhaps in promtional boxes.
-
When I started this affiliate website about 5 years ago, I basically did the same thing that other affiliate sites did.
The reason why I posted this thread is that I'm aware of this and I want to take the website to another level. Eventually, I would like to get rid of the affiliate marketing business model and go toward selling advertisement instead. I'm not sure yet. But I can't do this all overnight. I need to get there gradually.
-
(By the way, sorry for my english, I speak french!)
Well I don't mind brutal comments but I also asked for constructive comments.
That said, I appreciate your honesty however it's easy to bash something without suggesting how to make it better.
1. "The fatal flaw is the anonymity. No sensible person would ever attach any importance to buying reccomendations that come out of nowhere from an anonymous nobody."
I do agree with you on that. Now how do I solve this? Should I include a byline with my picture in every post?
2. "Worse, this garbled, illogical and contradictory disclosure is deeply buried in a footer and confirms worst suspicions"
I admit I simply copied the disclosure policy sent to affiliates by some web hosting companies. Do you have any examples of what you consider to be a clear, concise disclosure?
3. "I'm not saying affiliate marketing is always and everywhere wrong. But first you have decloak [...]"
What do you mean by "decloak"? To me, "cloaking" is showing a different content to search engines than to visitors.
4. "[...] publish valuable content free [...]"
Did you look at the 220 tutorials I published? I put a ton of effort into them to make them as valuable as possible. Unlike many web hosting sites, I DO know my stuff, I've been a programmer, web developer and sysadmin for more than 18 years.
http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/category/tutorials
That said, there is some early content that makes me cringe a little when read them. I'm setting them to "noindex" and removing them gradually.
I also provide some free tools I've developed myself and I think this one is especially useful:
http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/speed/
If you think the content is not valuable enough, please explain a bit further.
As for the top 10 lists, they will soon be transformed into valuable buying guides instead of simple comparison grids.
5. "The basic pitch is that you would never jeopardize your reputation by recommending anyting other than valuable products you use yourself."
I do have accounts with most of the hosting companies advertised or listed in any top 10 lists (of course I get them for free most of the time). Obviously, I can't run 20 "real websites" just to use these services so what I did is I set up an identical blog on each of them and I perform benchmark test regularly.
Like I said, constructive comments are welcomed!
-
You asked for brutality, so here goes:
The site looks, feels and smells like a scam.
The fatal flaw is the anonymity. No sensible person would ever attach any importance to buying reccomendations that come out of nowhere from an anonymous nobody.
Worse, this garbled, illogical and contradictory disclosure is deeply buried in a footer and confirms worst suspicions:
"This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog accepts forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation.
The compensation received may influence the advertising content, topics or posts made in this blog. That content, advertising space or post may not always be identified as paid or sponsored content.
The owner(s) of this blog is not compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the blog owners. If we claim or appear to be experts on a certain topic or product or service area, we will only endorse products or services that we believe, based on our expertise, are worthy of such endorsement. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider."
I'm not saying affiliate marketing is always and everywhere wrong. But first you have decloak, publish valuable content free, and then be much more transparent in your disclosure. The basic pitch is that you would never jeopardize your reputation by recommending anyting other than valuable products you use yourself.
-
How would that make the website better?
I want to get comments on the content quality.
-
Actually Martin ,sorry, I misread your reply and should not be questioning your logic in this case
-
Header image is great but instead of header.png you could name it the-web-hosting-hero-header.png. The same for others pics
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Language for URLs on new international websites
We are due to launch our new site and it will be targeting an international market. We have setup these new sites in the following way www.website.com/fr/content-goes-here www.website.com/es/content-goes-here This has been done in conjunction with setting up the parameters in GWT and making sure it is optimised for the language itself, and that countries search engine. But our web dev team have said that the URLs at the moment will be in english and not the native language, so if you were on the french version of our site you would see the url in english and not french. Will this negatively affect the site for SEO, and who else would think it would be negative from a usability perspective? Any help is appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | RyanCrawf19840 -
Best practice for a website where the publications (catalogues) expire frequently
Hi guys, Hope to find some smart SEOs around here and where I can to contribute to the community! I wanted to share an issue we are having with our website, which is focused on the promotional flyers of the supermarket chains. These are often valid for a short period of time and then expire. So it makes no sense to keep them but also, if we delete them, that would create a lot of 404s or something. So how do you think it is the best way to go around this problem? should we delete them? or when deleted to redirect the dead pages to the homepage? or keep them in an archive live site.com/brand/archive/ ? Thank you so much for any opinions, much appreciated! Best
On-Page Optimization | | commissionshare0 -
What is the best way to target two keywords with one website?
I have a client that needs to target two different citys for her service. I have her front page ranking first page for one of the cities, but I have tried all sorts of things and can't get her front page to rank first page in the second (and less competitive) city. I know the drill about making a second page and trying to rank that page but is there a better way?
On-Page Optimization | | jonnyholt0 -
On site SEO review please
I'd appreciate it its anyone could take the time to review my on site SEO and suggest improvements. it's an adult dating site at http://www.local-sex-search. All pages can be found at http://www.local-sex-search.com/sitemap
On-Page Optimization | | SamCUK0 -
Meta Geotag - two locations on one website
I have a client that I would like to do a Meta Geotag for. They have two locations. Am I able to do two meta geotags on their website? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | OOMDODigital0 -
How can I maintain my website's authroity if I change the domain name?
I have 2 sites. Site A is doing well and growing, but has a low Domain Authority. Site B is older, has a higher authority but I want to retire it as the site's topic is well dated. Can I move all of my content on site A, to site B, change site B's name to Site A's name keep its higher authority and add all of the content and 301 redirect from site A to site B? Whew, Thanks for any thoughts, Jeff Strassman
On-Page Optimization | | biggieshaws0 -
My report indicated that I have 340 crawl warnings. Not sure how to fix them. Please provide links on where I need to go to fix them.
My report indicated that I have 340 crawl warnings. Not sure how to fix them. Please provide links on where I need to go to fix them. http://pro.seomoz.org/campaigns/95663/issues#notice-issues
On-Page Optimization | | cyaindc0 -
Why my website is duplicating and pasting links one after another,i dont know whats happening??
This is my problem: duplicate_title Starts here:www.ezstreetsports.com/%5C www.ezstreetsports.com/ www.ezstreetsports.com/casino_winners_corner.aspx www.ezstreetsports.com/casino_winners_corner_game.aspx www.ezstreetsports.com/ezfree100_rules.aspx?idSource=474 www.ezstreetsports.com/lounge_bootypatrol.aspx www.ezstreetsports.com/lounge_hardcarporn_1.aspx www.ezstreetsports.com/lounge_hardcarporn.aspx www.ezstreetsports.com/sports_periods.aspx www.ezstreetsports.com/sports_futurebet.aspx www.ezstreetsports.com/sports_referralrules.aspx www.ezstreetsports.com/sports_referralbonus_rules.aspx www.ezstreetsports.com/how_to_bet.aspx . this is the end. Itry to find the reason inside the css and htnl program but i can't find! please you can help me or give me the direction to how i can do it?
On-Page Optimization | | mrMaximo19790