Today I have a special post, Quinn from CubicleFree.com and myself have both been building authority websites and sharing all the details of the process on our sites. We have been emailing back and forth some suggestions on how to improve each other’s site and learning a lot.

The information we were emailing each other we thought would have a lot of value and learning’s for other people building authority niche sites so decided to do a detailed review of each other’s site and post it for all to see!

You can see his review of my authority website here:

• http://www.cubiclefree.com/site-review-exchange/

This post grew into a pretty long post and so here is a breakdown of the post…

• Who Is Quinn
• Benefit of a Cold Eyes Review and Publicly Sharing it
• Monetization Review
  • Action Step #1
  • Action Step #2
• Content Review
  • Action Step #3
  • Action Step #4
• Web Design / Engagement
  • Action Step #5
  • Action Step #6
  • Action Step #7
  • Action Step #8
• On Page SEO
  • Action Step #9
  • Action Step #10
• Off Page SEO
  • Action Step #11
  • Action Step #12

Who Is Quinn @ CubicleFree.com?

Quinn has been making all his living full time online for the last 10 years. What I like about his approach is he is solving real problems and adding real value with the sites he builds. He has been able to make six figures per year and is continuing to build his online empire. I believe I have a lot to learn from him and am looking forward to seeing his thoughts on how I can improve my website!

In fact one of his websites made almost $400k in one year!

His review of my authority site is located on his blog – here

The Benefit of a Cold Eyes Review and Sharing it Publicly

When I launched my authority website in September I created this site to showcase my progress and keep me on track! However, one aspect of sharing my site I did not anticipate was the benefit of making contacts with other people at all different stages of growth in their online businesses. These contacts and discussions that have resulted from me publicly sharing my case study have been enjoyable and definitely rewarding.

• Publicly Sharing For Others To Learn From – By sharing the review of each others site publicly other people will be able to learn how we think about improving sites and apply what they think is beneficial to their own website.

• Cold Eyes Review – In my day job I work essentially as a project manager and one requirement is for a cold eyes review at several gates in the lifecycle of a project. The benefit of a knowledgeable set of eyes reviewing the status of your project/website/business is that they bring a different perspective and can add some suggestions I may have completely overlooked.

Review of Authority Website

In this section I will go through 5 aspects of his site and provide what I believe are his key strengths and what I believe are areas for improvement.

1. Monetization
2. Content
3. Web Design/Engagement
4. On Page SEO
5. Off Page SEO

Website: http://www.rsacoursesonline.com/

Review Module 1 of 5 – Monetization

Results To Date – $80 as of the end of November

How RSACoursesOnline Makes Money

RSA Courses Online makes money by providing useful content answering questions about RSA courses online which results in visitors from search engines finding the site. Once on the site they are directed to the money pages which are in depth reviews of online RSA courses. If a visitor goes to one of the RSA online courses website and purchases the course Quinn makes affiliate income from the sale.

 

Monetization Strength

Website to Offer Match – There is very tight alignment between the topic of the website and the main affiliate offer.

 

RSA Courses Online is doing a great job of Website Topic to Affiliate Offer Overlap!

 

Monetization Improvement – Improve Conversion from Blog Posts to Money Pages

Improve conversion from the blog posts on the website to the money pages. There is one tool that can do this effectively…

 

ACTION STEP #1– Install the plugin QuickAdsense (free) and create 2 ads for all blog posts, one to go top left alignment and one to go bottom middle both of which are to direct people from blog posts to your money pages.

• Ads1 – Top Left Alignment:
  • “ Discount to our top rated NSW course
  • Claim a discount for the top rated national course – here “
• Ads3 – Bottom Middle Alignment
  • “NSW – Review plus discount to our top rated NSW course
  • QLD, SA, WA & NT – Review plus discount to our top rated course“

Monetization Improvement – Improve Conversion from Money Pages to Affiliate Sales Page

I believe this improvement will have the biggest impact by improving click through rate from money pages to the affiliate offer. The basis for my recommendation here comes from standard conversion advice shared by people like Derek Halpern from SocialTriggers and Peep Laja from ConversionXL.

“Remove all extra clutter – links, menus, buttons – that have nothing to do with the particular ad/campaign. The point is that the visitor cannot ignore your message by navigating away, and therefore focuses on only that page.”

From Peep Raja – “How To Build High Conveting Landing Pages

Right now there is too much clutter on the money pages resulting in people that have made it to the money page leaving the site and going to other posts instead of converting into a sale.

 

Current Money Page:

 

Recommended Money Page:

See an example of the Landing Page – Here (quickly built with StudioPress Landing Page)

I believe this change will result in the biggest improvement for your site!

 

ACTION STEP #2 – Turn your money posts into landing pages – Since the site RSA Courses Online is built using Genesis/StudioPress theme this step will be easy…

1. Create a new page using the template “Landing Page”
2. Copy the HTML from the old post into the new landing page
3. 301 redirect the old post URL to the new page URL using plugin “redirection”

Review Module 2 of 5 – Content

Content Strength

Quinn is a big believer in adding value to his visitors, his beliefs are aligned with my own when it comes to truly helping people with websites and that will result in traffic and income.

A lot of the content at RSACoursesOnline is truly helpful and provides valuable information about how to get your RSA certification.

 

Content Improvement –Add More Content

Right now there are 12 pages indexed in Google for RSACoursesOnline. Although the topic of RSA courses online doesn’t allow for a daily posting schedule due to the topic not being deep enough there are opportunities for creating more content to increase the number of daily visitors.

 

Action Step #3 – Add 1 to 2 Posts Per Week

Continue creating good quality content but increase the rate of posting to 1-2 posts per week. One option to get quality content created for a low cost is this strategy.

 

Content Improvement – Add Required Pages (Privacy Policy)

Even though RSACoursesOnline does not have AdSense on it I still think it is a good idea to build a website that complies with AdSense Terms of Service. The terms Google defines for its AdSense publishers is likely a good indication of what its search uses as part of its quality score when reviewing websites. Therefore I always try and make sure my websites have an About, Contact and Privacy Policy page.

Action Step #4 – Add Privacy Policy Page

I like to use the free tool here to generate my Privacy Policies. On the post I make sure to flag it as a nofollow noindex post since it is duplicate content. Place the link to the privacy policy page as a drop down in the contact page or create a new menu to go in the footer and place it there.

 

Review Module 3 of 5 – Web Design / Engagement

With the Web Design/Engagement module I will be looking at the current layout of the website to provide the user with a good experience and how well the site is set up to achieve the goals of the site.

Strength – The website is built using WordPress and Genesis/Studiopress which results in a very user friendly and attractive site.

 

Web Design/Engagement Improvements

Below are a list of all the action steps in the Web Design/Engagement module that I believe would improve the user experience on the RSA Courses Online website

Action Step #5 – Change Slogan

When someone comes to a website you have 6 seconds to have them understand what the website is about. When I first went to the website I did not understand “what is an RSA course” although most people that get there would understand what it is I believe modifying the slogan to be more clear would provide value.

Try one of these which more clearly lays out what an RSA course is and the benefit of it…

• Best way to become a bartender in Australia
• How to be a certified bartender in Australia
• Fastest way to become a licensed server in Australia
• Make more money by becoming licensed to serve liquor in Australia

Action Step #6 – Logo Modifications

Currently the logo doesn’t clearly indicate what the RSA Courses Online website is about. A logo that includes an aspect of Australia, Online and Liquor would help immediately convey the purpose and benefit of the website.

Current vs Suggested

 vs.

The suggested logo is just an example of a more tightly focused logo (even though its very ugly and not recommended).

 

Action Step #7 – Modify Embedded Video to Fill Entire Area

Currently the video is the default embed code size and doesn’t eat up the entire area. By modifying the embed code to a custom size it will take up the space and look more “finished”.

Either center the video or create a custom embed code size to fill the entire space.

Action Step #8 – Modifications To “Welcome” Section

Based on many heat map studies the welcome section of the RSA Courses Online website is likely the most looked at section of the site.

Improving this area should result in lower bounce rates and improved click through rates from the homepage to the money pages.

Current:

 

Suggested:

Photo from jelloneck

Review Module 4 of 5 – SEO On Page

RSA Courses Online is built using the WordPress Framework Genesis and using the”Delicious” StudioPress theme.

The Genesis framework takes care of most on page SEO issues and there is very few improvements that would be resuired.

11 Point On Page SEO Audit Checklist:

1. Site Struycture (using WordPress) – Good
2. Premium Theme with built in SEO or SEO Plugin – Good
3. Title Tags – Good
4. URLs – Good
5. Meta Tags – Good
6. Image Names – Bad
7. Image Alt Tags – Bad
8. On Page Content – long enough, original, quality – Good
9. Site Navigation Easy to navigate – Good
10. Webpage Speed test (Google Insights) – Good (one medium priority)
11. Local Targeting – Bad (as Quinn shows here)

 

Action Step #9 – Improve Image SEO

Improve both the alt tags and the image URL/Title for the screenshots.

This would be a lot of work to go back and do on all existing pages, either outsource this activity or just make the changes on all future posts.

Here is a great article talking about image SEO: Top Rank – 6 Tips for Image SEO

 

Action Step #10 – Locally Target Your Website

The problem Google is having is determining what region your website is built for. Since you live in Canada and server is located in the US Google would have a hard time of telling what market your website is for. To correct this add relevant Australia keywords on the website. Currently on the homepage there is no mention of Australia.

1. Add “Australia” keyword naturally to the homepage (not there now)
2. Link to relevant Australia Bar/RSA links in the sidebar on posts

 

Review Module 5 of 5 – SEO Off Page

This is interesting since Quinn has clearly made a decision to not build backlinks…

“I will not be doing anything that is potentially harmful including fancy backlink strategies”

From Quinn’s case study introduction – here

However, from my point of view the benefit of working to build some high quality relevant white hat backlinks outweighs the risk.

Current Link Profile:

From Majestic SEO the link profile for RSACoursesOnline is showing high trust flow due to a quality link from an existing website Quinn owns. Typically most sites have a higher citation flow than trust flow so to improve off page SEO Quinn could do well to increase the number of backlinks.

 There is one simple strategy that can help build valuable white hat links and that is Blog Commenting + Guest Posting on relevant websites

 

Action Step #11 – Blog Comment on Relevant Sites

Using blog commenting to reach out to other relevant websites in your potential market is a great way to start building relationships and links.

1. Make a list on a Google document or hire a VA to make a list of all bar, server, nighlife forums and blogs for the Australia
2. Visit each or on a weekly basis to leave a value added comment

Action Step #12 – Guest Post on Relevant Sites

Once you have built a relationship with some of the request the opportunity to guest post on their site and receive a backlink from them

1. Identify websites from the list in the action step above that you may be able to guest post on
2. Build a relationship with the webmaster by emailing them and leaving comments
3. Approach them about potentially guest posting their website

This guest posting strategy goes into more details on how I have been doing this for my authority website.

 

See These Results on Jan 7 2013

Over the next month we will implement the changes…I will make the changes Quinn recommends on my site and he will do the same on the recommendation above. On Jan 7 we will share the results of what changes we can confirm worked and which ones failed or we couldn’t get enough data to measure.

 

Did I Miss Anything Obvious?

What Improvements Would You Recommend?

If there are any improvements to his site http://www.rsacoursesonline.com/ I didn’t include but should have please put them in the comments section below and I will update this post with the recommendation and who recommended it…

Action Step #13 – to be added from readers’ comments below…

 

Want me to review your site? – Contact Me