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!

The requests just keep pouring in! I can’t seem to keep up with them but I aim to please so I’m straying off my path of randomness once again. This request couldn’t possibly live up to the epic APCO Credit Union analysis but I’ll give it my best shot.

WEBSITE: http://www.springofknowledge.com/

Holy text Batman! Within 5 seconds of viewing this page I had to look away because my eyes hurt. Actually, I had something in my eye at the time but still, I would have looked away anyway. It was hard for me to make it through the first paragraph without being distracted by the extremely unpleasant look of the yellow highlighted copy, “visual learning method”. Is that the most relevant text to highlight and is it truly the thing you want your readers to draw their attention to? Probably not. From there I just jumped around in no real order, chuckling along the way, as I thought of many ways to be overly cynical in my analysis. (The image of the 3 dudes in blue jeans, each with a lower cut shirt than the next, was too easy to make fun of so I won’t go there). But you know what? I’m a changed man – well at least for today. Instead of just overly criticizing everything, I’ll try to be as constructive as possible and offer just a few easy solutions to turn this site around.

These Guys Wail!

The main problem with the site is it’s near impossible to scan the text and digest why this software (it’s software right?) is so great. I have no desire learn about the software, let alone purchase it, because there is simply too much information. The intro paragraph is decent actually, but center aligned text is a design no-no (and I’m no designer). It is too difficult to read. On top of that, I had to take a deep breath to get through that entire first sentence (try it, you’ll see…can’t be done!). That first paragraph or top portion of the page needs to sell the product. Right now, it just looks like a Word document. Without having to do a major overhaul, you can drastically improve the top part of the home page by just picking 3 to 4 key features of the product and list them as bullets under a revised and shortened intro. This would immediately reduce the amount of time visitors have to take to understand what they are looking at and provide some sense of flow for the rest of the website.

The copy on the right side of the page that covers the entire length of the page is overkill. There may be some great information in there but it’s too much to spell out on a home page that is already chock full with text. A good idea would be to move this content to another area of the site, perhaps under a navigation labeled “Music University”. This would allow more room on the home page to feature the product and even include a call to action so people can actually purchase the software.

Come on Spring of Knowledge, make better use of the navigation (what the hell does Spring of Knowledge mean anyway?). People instinctively look to navigation to, well, navigate. There is no sense in cramming tons of information onto the home page if your content is laid out in an understandable and intuitive manner. Perhaps try adding a few navigation items like “Software Features” or “FAQ” so people can easily locate information or find answers to any questions.

I made mention of a call to action earlier but wanted to stress how important it is for users to not have to think about what to do next. Without a nice, strategically placed button that is easily found and shows visitors how to make a purchase, you’re reducing your chances of actually getting someone to open up their wallet, purse, or murse.  You can lead a horse to water (your product)  but you can’t make it drink (purchase), so you should do everything possible to make it easy for a consumer, or horse, to convert. Clicking on the “order” link in the navigation brings me here:

Uh oh!

This is preventing your horse to drink. Now, not everyone would be frightened by this warning sign, but I’m sure a great deal would be and would most likely leave your site. Potential customers – GONE! Update that security certificate and let your horsey drink!

This could seriously benefit from a major overhaul on the design and SEO front but unfortunately not all people have the money or resources to take on such a task.  If you can only handle a few things, start with cutting your home page copy in half and at the very least, move some of it to another page on the site and link to it. Add a button for software purchasing, get rid of the highlighted text and you are on your way….FREEBIRD!