SEO Site Review Request

[jacob]

Since Boron is being so kind as to offer SEO reviews, I figured I'd prop up my blog for review which is using my own PHP script.

http://mindbox.ca

I'm also curious what tools you're using to come up with these. I'm sure you've already mentioned them in a post somewhere so feel free to just direct me there ;) (mornings are painful when you've stopped drinking coffee!)

Any other feedback is welcomed - design, ad placement/blending, writing style, etc.

Thanks!

[boron]

http://www.mindbox.ca/blog/

1. SITE LOADS in 1 second on T1 connection, but over 10 sec.o on a 56k modem (just checked). See test (http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/wso.php?url=http://mindbox.ca/). Home page size is 117Kb from which the image in the header is 85Kb, what can cause slower loading.

Passed HTML validation. :)

DESIGN: Image is beatiful, so hard to recommend anything here. It seems to be a blog about programming, you don't say this in any title..but I even didn't miss it. Clean site.

Look in different BROWSERS (http://browsershots.org/website/http://www.mindbox.ca/blog/).

NAVIGATION:
Upper links
Blog - can be Home maybe.
Contact doesn't work yet.

Links seems to be OK, didn't check all though.
Switching between pages is fast, lower "page" menu is convenient.

CONTENT: Hm, I'm not a programmer, but I've seen you have some nice short posts. For my taste font size is small, it goes well with the design though - it gives a "fine look". Sometimes post content can't be predicted from a post title, which pushes the visitor to read the post. I missed "exact" title and subtitle but maybe it's just me. It would be fine if titles were more prominent, maybe in some stronger/live color.

ADD PLACEMENT: Very good, ads are not seen on the Home page on the first look which makes site nice. Who will click and who won't...

PR = 0.

BACKLINKS:
www mindbox.ca/blog Google: 0, Yahoo: 3 (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?p=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.mindbox.ca%2Fblog&bwm=i&bwms=p)
mindbox.ca/blog Google: 0, Yahoo: 0

INDEXED PAGES:
www mindbox.ca/blog Google: 0, Yahoo: 5 (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?ei=UTF-8&p=http%3A%2F%2Fmindbox.ca%2Fblog&bwm=p&bwms=p&searchbwm=Explore+URL)
mindbox.ca/blog Google: 29 (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&q=site%3Amindbox.ca%2Fblog%2F+%22%2Bmindbox.ca%2Fb log%2F%22&btnG=Search), Yahoo: 4 (https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/advsearch?ei=UTF-8&p=http%3A%2F%2Fmindbox.ca%2Fblog&bwm=p&bwms=p&searchbwm=Explore+URL)

You can do 301 redirect. It is always good to use only one link: www or no-www, mindox.ca or minbox.ca/blog.
Some backlinks will be needed to move up in Search engines.

It's one of the best andd beautiful designs I've seen on blogs. Your writing style is like a personal diary - to announce and share your work, more than "advertising".

--
SEO tools (http://freespaces.com/freespace/SEO.html).
Create a sitemap:
http://xml-SITEMAPS.com/
and submit it in Google:
https://google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/about.html

[jacob]

erm, nm... no coffee can be painful in the morning...

[Mystic]

My observations:
# You do not provide an RSS Feed. This is a must have for a blog.
# The Contact page isnt active yet. Some people say that having a contact page makes your site more trustable to the search engines.
# Make sure you have a sitemap and submit it to google and yahoo.
# The favicon didnt load here.
# Meta tags are absent.
# "Last 5 Entries" link should be placed above the header "category"
# You need to do link exchange. Technorati reveals (http://www.technorati.com/blogs/http://www.mindbox.ca) that no other blog links to you. And oh yeah, go and claim your blog. Also make sure you ping Technorati everytime you write something. You can use http://pingomatic.com/