When you drive an ultra luxurious, touring edition 2001 Infiniti i30 with over 116k miles, you are sometimes forced to make slight repairs to maintain its elite performance. (No, I am not a balding 48 year old man in case you were only picturing that type of individual driving this car.) Since I have no loyalty to any repair shop in San Diego, I often find myself using the internet to find the best deals or highest rated mechanics. Now this critique is for an auto center that was actually recommended by a friend. I didn’t use the web to find details about their shop, in fact, I didn’t even find their site within the first 33 pages of Google’s listings under “san diego auto repair” or “san diego auto service”. After discovering this, I knew something must be seriously wrong. Something needs to be done so so beyond pointing out some simple user experience enhancements, I’ll point out some very simple SEO tactics that could help this site rank in the top 50 for some choice keywords.

SITE: http://rayfreyautocenter.com/

Look up here, okay, say "cheese"

Upon landing on the site, you are greeted with an image that really doesn’t paint a pretty picture of the auto center.  An aerial shot of Ray Frey’s Auto Center with a handful of employees posing awkwardly isn’t necessarily the first thing I’d like to see when browsing for a new mechanic. When someone lands on your site, it shouldn’t take more than a couple of seconds to understand what the site is about.  When I land on Ray’s site, I am not sure if they are a classic car repair shop because of the logo featuring cars from the 1920s or a lube shop.  To clear up any confusion that may arise when first entering the site, I suggest replacing that main graphic with one featuring a collage of the cars they repair (or even move those logos at the bottom to the top) with some of the core services offered (also tucked away at the bottom, unfortunately out of sight).  Maybe even make that “free car wash with every service” special a little more…well, special.  It is a nice bonus for those deal seeking shoppers like myself.

Beyond not being able to easily browse the services offered and prices charged, I notice there is only one review under the review page. Not to make an overly generalized statement but people are influenced by others. Look at Yelp for example. How often do you go to once restaurant over another based on recommendations from people you don’t even know? My guess is every time. Reviews are powerful. If you only have one positive review on your site, it either shows nobody likes your shop or you aren’t popular enough to warrant a review, neither of which is good for your reputation. Spend some time gathering reviews from your current customers and post them on your site. You’d be surprised how much this impacts a consumer’s decision.

My biggest issue with the site isn’t necessarily the user experience or the quality of the content; it’s the site’s absence in any search results for highly relevant keywords.  Why does Ray Frey not show up for searches like “san diego auto repair” or “san diego auto service”? There are a number of contributing factors but below are three main reasons why the site isn’t ranking and a quick ways to help fix the issue.

1. Title Tags – The title tag currently reads “Family owned and operated, Ray Frey Auto Center services the surrounding area.  Kearny Mesa, Clairemont Mesa, MCAS Miramar, Miramar, Pacific Beach, Mission Valley, Mission Beach, University City”. Phew!!! That was a long one. The title tag is the most important on page element when it comes to a search engine optimized page and this one just plain sucks. It is long and doesn’t describe what the page is about.  Pick 3 keywords that are: (1) extremely relevant to your business but are somewhat specific, and (2) have a decent amount of search volume. Check out Google’s new keyword tool for some help picking keywords. If I were to write the title tag for this, I might choose something like “Best San Diego Auto Repair and Mechanics | Ray Frey Auto Center”. Write new title tags for every page on your site, each with 2-3 keywords that best represent that page.
2. Keyword Usage in Body Copy - Many home pages have zero or little text for the search engines to read and decide what the page is actually about. Ray’s site actually has a nice body of copy but has no real keyword density. In order for the search engines to help decide what the page is about, it’s important to take the keywords used in the title tag and repeat them in the body of the page. There are no hard and fast rules but a good practice would be to use each keyword 2-3 times for shorter pages and 4-6 for longer ones. Get those keywords in that first paragraph and Google will start to see your site as an authority for whatever keywords you select.
3. Linking - This site lacks quality internal and external linking, but since internal linking is much easier to fix, we’ll focus on that.  Boiled down, the more links that point to a specific page, the more important it is to the search engines. One would argue Ray’s auto repair services would be the most important content on the site and therefor should be the page with the most inbound links. The best place to put a link to these interior pages is in the top navigation. Links in footers and within the content are good too but navigation links hold the most weight. Currently there are no links to the “Services” page. Actually, there isn’t even a page listing all the services with descriptions. If someone is looking for brake repair, it would be in the site’s best interest to have a page dedicated to brake repair, or at the very least a page with some of the core services. Once this page is established, links from other pages should direct to this page. If you have a huge site with lots of pages, you’ll want to link pages with similar content to create a tightly themed linking strategy. The home page has the most authority and it can pass that authority to other pages via links (sometimes called “links juice”).  For Ray, he needs to link to the most important pages on his site from your home page using keyword rich anchor text.  This will help both the readers and the search engines in understanding the important pages on the site.

SEO is not something you implement and instantly see results. SEO takes careful planning, execution, and time. The three tactics listed above are just a few of many ways to optimize your site for search engines. If done properly, you can expect an increase in site traffic and hopefully customers. On the other hand, bad SEO can drastically impact your website in a negative way so it is important to consult with an expert before attempting to do the work yourself. Wow, I sound like a mechanic don’t I?

I’d bet my girlfriend’s dog on the fact that there is a point in every man’s life where they think they should try to brew their beer. I know I’ve thought it (and tried it), my friends have thought it, and just about every other beer drinker I know has fantasized about making a home brew. Now where would one get such a kit? Well online of course!

KEYWORD: “Beer brewing kits”, Page 1 in Google’s Results Page (#3 )

WEBSITE:  http://morebeer.com

For this review I decided to enlist the help of tool that I’ve been toying around with for a few months. It is certainly not the greatest heatmapping  or eye tracking software out there but it does help demonstrate where people would be looking on your site within the first few seconds. The tool is called Attention Wizard and was created by the folks at SiteTuners here in San Diego. What I found after uploading a screenshot of the home page was not at all shocking.

More Beer Please!

I'm Looking Where?

Above are two images, the first being the home page of www.morebeer.com and the second being the “heatmapped” version. What you’ll notice from the mapped version is how a significant portion of the eyeballs are settling on the “Free MoreSaver Shipping” section of the page. Free shipping is fine and dandy and a lot of people are interested in saving money, but is it the first thing you want people to see when you land on your page? I suppose the image of the boxes is more compelling than the hop pellets which resemble the aforementioned dog’s poop, but there has to be something more appropriate to display on the home page. Maybe some of the best sellers right smack on top of the page. I do like the Deal of the Day concept but its just not presented well. Remember, when users are browsing for particular products or are in an active buying mode, it doesn’t take much for them to leave your page if they don’t find what they want within the first few seconds. Now, that is not to say there isn’t a portion of the population that takes the time to conduct research thoroughly, but we’re playing the numbers game here. There are a lot more lazy people in the world and we must present the most relevant information in an easily to understand manner so an action can be made.

Following the gaze path, we see a jump to the upper left hand corner of the page towards the logo. At this time visitors are probably asking themselves, “where the hell am I again and what did I click on?” When you first land on this page, it is not easily distinguishable what the site is about. I mean sure I’d love to get to know Darren Schleth, the squirrly looking dude in the middle of the page, just as much as the next guy, but perhaps some nice clean images of actual brewed beer would wet our appetites a bit more. Notice how the Products navigation is completely passed over. The lack of any real organization or structure would makes me glance right over this as well. The site would be better served by grouping similar products instead of a mass list. The New and Featured Products section gets a little attention which is nice to see though I’d rather see this section swapped with the one above it which clearly gets viewed more but lacks anything of real importance. Oh and speaking of importance, keeping the number of font styles on a page to less than 4. Any more than this and things just looked to disconnected, confusing and amateurish.

My final critique about MoreBeer.com is on the actual presentation of the products. Take the Mr. Beer website (currently ranked #2 for the same search term) for example; all of the products have been shot professionally and actually give you confidence you are buying a quality product. Their stuff could be crap for all I know but they’ve spent the time and money to make them look good. I realize it can be expensive to take professional photos but I guarantee it would be worth the investment.

Despite several design shortcomings, the site is optimized pretty well for search engines and does feature a lot of beer making supplies for the most avid brewers. With some of the changes and suggestions I mentioned above, it might just become my go to place for all my beer making needs. Cheers to that!

After being inspired by seeing PGA Tour player Stuart Appleby’s 59 this past Sunday, I found myself wondering what golf ball I should use to give me the best chance of shooting a sub 60 round. Did I say sub 60? Okay, how about sub 80? I couldn’t possibly fathom shooting a round in the 50′s but I still was curious what type of golf ball he used.  This thought led me to my next random site pick

He beat out who?

Keyword: “best golf balls” -Page 1 in GOOGLE SERPs

www.golfballsreview.com/best-golf-balls.php

Ugh, trying to make money from Google Adsense right off the bat huh? The huge ad 5 lines under the main paragraph on the home page is a sure fire way to upset any readers. Okay, I understand you want to monetize your site, but at what cost? Loss of readership? Frustrated visitors? I am fine with having paid ads on your site but keep them away from your key content – its distracting and annoying. If you make it a better experience for the user, people will return to your site or even better, link to it, which as we know will improve its authority and likely generate more traffic. Keep those ads to a minimum.

Now if you look beyond the fact that there are more advertisements than content, the site is actually laid out in a very simple and efficient manner. Overly simplistic and boring, yes but nonetheless navigable. The navigation elements are straightforward and easy to identify though I’m not a fan of the dark text on a dark background – lighten it up a bit and people will find it much easier to locate and click.

Now I can’t knock this site too much because it showed up #1 in Google when I searched “best golf balls”. That is right, #1. Ahead of Titleist the “Number one Ball in Golf“, Callaway, TaylorMade, Nike and dozens of others. In fact, the first ball manufacturer that shows up on Google for this keyword is Top Flite. Excuse me? Top Flite? That rock of a golf ball is showing up before Titleist, TaylorMade, Nike and Callaway? Time to step up your game a bit big players. I don’t care how big of a brand you are, there are 12,100 monthly searches (according to Google) for “best golf balls” and all of you are losing out to Mike Pederson, golf fitness instructor. Ahh, the power of SEO! Good work Mike!