Does Your Website Make the Grade?

Yesterday I discovered Website Grader, and I’ve been doing some experiments to improve my overall grade. My initial grade was 74, and I had a few significant problems. Namely, and I’m embarrassed to admit this, my site did not have a description or Meta keywords set. Shame, and I call myself “savvy.” When I used to hand-code all my pages, I did not have that problem. Since I switched to WordPress, I did not pay attention to it… until now.

After a few slight modifications and additions, my grade has shot up to 87, so now in the B+ range.

Permanent Redirect

My main issue that I need to address is that I lack a “permanent redirect.” What that means is that if you type either http://tipsfor.us OR http://www.tipsfor.us into your browser, you will reach this site, BUT some search engines may treat those URLs as two different sites. My grade will go up a few more points if I set a “permanent” (or “301″) redirect from one of those links to the other.

I’m going to do more research on redirects before I implement one. My site already gets a decent amount of traffic for certain keywords, and I just want to make sure I know what I’m doing so that I don’t break anything.

Pagerank

What else did I learn from Website Grader? Currently, tipsfor.us has a Google Pagerank rating of 4. What does Pagerank mean? From the mouth of Google:

Google PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves important weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important.

Essentially, sites are ranked from 0 -10. The more incoming links and traffic you receive, the higher your rank. I was surprised that I earned a ranking as high as four, as I do not spend as much time maintaining or promoting this site as I should. So, I’m happy with a ranking of 4 right now.

For a full score explanation for tipsfor.us, please follow this link. I hope that by fixing my redirect problem I can boost my score into “A” range.

My Offer – Get Linked!

Speaking of links, here is my offer to you: earn a link in my sidebar! All you have to do is get your site graded and post a comment below. Include your overall score and a “report link,” which is included at the bottom of your evaluation.

Why include your report link? We’re talking grades here, so I have to verify that there is no cheating happening, of course! I reserve the right to refuse a link if it is pornographic, offensive, or outright spam, but hopefully there will be no trouble with that. Remember, a link coming from my site will help improve your Google Pagerank and your overall score.

So, post your scores, even if they are “failing!”

Bookmark It