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Yesterday we talked about blog evaluations – things you can look at to evaluate the current condition, or progress, of your blog(s). Today I’m going to share an example of a blog evaluation for one of my own blogs – WebWritersGuide.com.

BACKGROUND

I chose to evaluate WebWritersGuide.com, because it’s a relative infant compared to some of my other blogs. That means it has a huge amount of room to grow from this starting point. If you follow this blog regularly, you also know that I recently launched the first in my Web Writer’s Guide e-book series – the blog was originally launched as a vehicle to promote those e-books. It’s made no trackable income on its own yet through the last complete month (September 2008), and I’m obviously hoping to change that through e-book sales. That makes this the perfect time and the perfect blog for an evaluation – I can see what I’m doing well, what I’m doing wrong, and make changes to improve the blog’s value to me.

THE EVALUATION

• Audience – I think the audience here is reasonably well-targeted, and doesn’t need a change. The title makes it clear that the site is targeting Web writers, and I think most of the content makes it clear the site focuses on two primary things – 1) Freelancing (not full-time employee jobs) and 2) Web writing for yourself. I do have a blogging category setup that has no posts yet, so I should branch more into that to try to attract more bloggers to the audience (especially since there’s an e-book planned down the road specifically targeting bloggers). I’d also really like to put my marketing / PR background to good use and make this site the source for freelance Web writers to find information on effectively marketing themselves.
  
  



• Content – I see two current problems with the content right now – 1) There’s not enough of it, and 2) Most of the recent posts are about the e-book rather than value-added content for visitors. While that’s expected near launch time (announcing sneak peeks, announcing the launch, announcing the affiliate program, etc.), I should have been working in other content at the same time, and I’ve done a poor job of that. So increasing content needs to be the #1 priority I think.
  
  
• Search Rankings – There are currently 31 pages indexed in Google. That’s pretty “normal” given that there are only around 15-16 posts live, plus the home page, category pages, etc. To improve my presence there, I need to post far more often.

  In Google’s search results, one of my pages comes up #8 for the site title (not in the top 30 for other general phrases like web writers or web writing yet). Ideally, I want this to be #1 for at least the site title, or at a bare minimum in the top 3 – 5.  There’s a book with the same short-version title, so that’s going to be the primary competition to beat out for placement. I’m completely anti black-hat tactics, so it won’t be a terribly quick process to fix that, but I’ll start by evaluating my site meta details, adding post meta details to all new posts, tagging, and doing more link-building for the site title. In essence, SEO is just a limited form of PR (which is what I do best). It’s about visibility in a narrow medium (search engines), and that’s what I need to work on. At the same time, I’m very against becoming a “Google slave” – relying on search engine for the bulk of my traffic, and therefore income / sales. So I’ll be putting emphasis on improving traffic from other sources far more than directly worrying about SEO constantly – this has proven to ultimately lead to much higher rankings for target phrases in the end for me on other sites, and I don’t plan to mess with that strategy.
  
  

• Traffic – Traffic has increased quite a bit in October since the e-book’s launch, but let’s focus on full months for now. The first month with traffic was May 2008, with only around 50 unique visitors and a little over 500 pageviews – pitiful. I’ve done a terrible job of building the site up between then and September, which is my own fault for not posting regularly and building up a solid following on that site for blog itself (which was designed to later be the promotional vehicle for the e-book series).

  This is an area where I need to make some major efforts to see some major improvements. Stats in September were a little under 150 unique visitors and a little over 2200 pageviews (while not officially counting it here, there are already over 500 uniques and 5000 pageviews for October, so it’s definitely improving with the launch of the e-book, and that’s only been live for about a week now – November should be the first full month to witness changes related to the e-book being released).

  I’m fortunate in that I have four other writing-related blogs, and a business-related blog. I basically relied on knowing they were their with built-in audiences, rather than building a significant separate audience for WebWritersGuide.com – that’s going to be one of the biggest changes moving forward (more notes in the branding section). I’d really like to see this at 2-3k uniques per month and at least 20k pageviews per month within 3 – 6 months, more in line with where this blog was with the same amount of effort. I need to get it on a regular posting schedule, and make it “my baby” for a little while.
  
  

• Inbound Links – Google’s Webmaster Tools show 1605 incoming links, and Yahoo shows 2517 Inlinks. This is as high as it is most likely from my own links from other sites in my network, as well as forum signatures. I need to build more natural links. I won’t submit to link directories or submit my own sites to social bookmarking / networking tools (while I used to have no problem with this, over the last year or so I’ve come to consider it unethical, and don’t want my blog’s brand tied to it). A new free report I’m hoping to launch soon may help with this.
  
  
• Brand – The blog (and e-book series) have strong branding potential, but are both too new and unknown to have a solid brand yet. I need to map out the brand image I really want to establish, and work out a PR plan that combines both branding for the blog and e-book series with personal branding (for example, there’s very little personal branding now – I need to add a photo of myself for the trust factor, more background info, etc.).
  
  
• Profit – Assume no profit through the last full month (Sept. ‘08). The few ads there weren’t uniquely trackable, and profit would have been minimal if anything. Also assume no costs beyond $10 – 15 for the year (for hosting and the minor portion of the Web hosting package it’s included on).

  A new income stream was launched in October ‘08 – the Web Writer’s Guide e-book series. Sales have been off to a slow start, with no current affiliate sales. The biggest thing to do now to increase profits is to promote the affiliate program. I also need to come up with a broader promotional strategy for the e-book for direct sales.

  While I don’t believe in general article marketing through article directories to promote personal brands / services, I’m considering trying it with 5 – 10 articles promoting the e-book in the resource box. I’ll also be making the sales page the link I include when commenting on related blogs in the niche, and will be introducing graphic ads onto other sites within my own network before the end of this month. I’m also planning to release a free short report to promote the e-book in the next few weeks.

  Another obvious way to increase profits moving forward will be to add more e-books to the series, although not too quickly in succession (don’t want to jeapordize the sales potential of each title by oversaturation within my target market too quickly).
  
  

• Design – The design is a free template without major edits. Overall, the color scheme suits the niche and audience, and the general layout works well, giving me room to promote the products and blog posts equally well (including multiple decent potential ad placements, which will let me play with conversions in different areas if needed).

  There are some minor things I can do to improve the design – for example I could decrease spacing between lines, and increase it between list elements for easier scanning. The current blue for the links in-post is a bit washed-out looking, so I could darken that and see if it improves clickthroughs.

  In the long-run, if the design seems to inhibit sales, traffic, etc., it might be worth getting a custom theme created, but for now it doesn’t seem to be necessary for this particular site.
  
  

• Domain – The WebWritersGuide.com domain was registered in February 2008, so it’s still a relatively new domain. Nothing can be done about that but to let it age.

  The domain itself is top-level (in this case .com), key-word rich, and brandable, meaning it’s generally a good domain for the niche and blog (and products promoted there), and doesn’t need improvement on that front.

Related posts:

1. WebWritersGuide.com Merging with AFW
2. Freelance Writing Challenge – Blog Evaluations
3. Evaluation Time – Monthly Marketing Mix – November 2008
4. Free Blog Hosts vs Hosting Your Own Blog
5. One Blog’s Journey to $2000 Per Month

About the Author: Jennifer Mattern

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Jenn is a professional blogger and freelance business writer. She has worked as a freelance writer since 1999, and has been an active business and niche blogger since 2004. She owns All Freelance Writing as well as several other sites and blogs covering PR, small business, and related topic areas. She is also currently writing a nonfiction book for freelance writers called The Query-Free Freelancer, and is the author of the Web Writer's Guide e-book series.

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TAGS: blog evaluation, Blogging, blogs, freelance writers, freelance writing, web writers, web writers guide, Web Writing