1. Color. I really like the blue color in the design. It stands out, and it is pleasing to the eye. I also like the color of the bars next to “SiteMost” in the header.
2. Photos in Posts. I think you are doing a great job with the inclusion of photos in the posts. It adds something rather than having text only.
3. Interesting Content. The content is very interesting to me, and I’m definitely going to take the time to go back and read some of the posts here.

What to Improve:

1. About. I like that there is an About section, but I think it could be better by including a little more information.
2. Contact Page. I think adding a seperate page with contact information would also be beneficial.
3. More Posts. It looks like the blog is updated once a week. While this is regular, I believe that posting several times a week would draw in more readers and keep readers. When I go to a blog, it makes a difference when I see that it is updated often, and I am more prone to check back every few days to see the new content.
4. The large feed button. I think the feed button is too large. I think the sidebar would be more appealing if the size was a bit smaller.
5. myBlogLog. I like this tool, but I think the version with the larger avatars is more appealing to readers.
6. Text Link Ads. I think you might benefit by signing up for Text Link Ads. You can sell a text link(s) spot in your sidebar for a fixed price every month.
7. Three columns. I think your blog might benefit from a three column design rather than a two column design. This way, the reader can better see everything you have listed in your sidebars. I had to scroll down quite a bit to see the archives and categories.
8. Guest posts and blog carnivals. In order to promote your blog, I would try getting some guest posts at other blogs or submitting an article to a blog carnival.

I like the colors, but they are a bit bright and harsh on the eyes. Go for deeper, darker, or more subtle hues.

The front page is really long. Limit to five posts showing on the home page at most.

The ad, (for SEOBOOK) should be moved up, since it is not visible without scrolling. Certainly this product should appear before Technorati and LinkedIn links. I would put it right under the e-mail subscription field.

Generally, I think archives should always go at the bottom of the sidebar or in the footer. Categories should be fairly accessible since this is what most visitors use to navigate.

Footer space could be better utilized. I suggest moving the Archives to the footer.

Content
Contact page missing, and this is really mandatory, even if it’s only a form. There’s nothing more frustrating than having no way to contact a business.

Add a Services page detailing all services offered, including the process a client will go through (i.e. obtain quote, rates, payment types, etc.). Alternatively, the Services link in the main navigation area could link to the company site – http://www.sitemost.com.au/

Also, the company site should link to the blog and navigation between the two should be seamless.

Include a Home link in the main navigation area so visitors can navigate back to the blog’s main page.

Writing
There is a typo in the first sentence: point-out, which should be point out.

In the Categories section, Blog Recap’s, should be Blog Recaps. See my article Is It Plural or Possessed? for more information. Heheh.

Consider hiring a freelance writer or editor to make sure that such mechanical errors are not peppered across your professional web site or blog. Otherwise, proofread, proofread, proofread!

General, Additional Feedback
If you want more subscribers, speak more to your readers. Find creative ways to encourage comments and subscriptions. Take the time to foster a community. You need only peruse the many articles on ProBlogger to find out how this can be done effectively.

“If you like this post, you might also enjoy” – I’m not a huge fan of this widget. Chances are, I can find similar posts in the Categories on the sidebar. In this case, the header is styled exactly the same as each post title, making it almost appear as a separate post, which it’s not. I suggest either changing the header style for “if you like this post…” (make it smaller, a sub-heading) or removing it altogether.

The Good
Usually I start with the good, but this is an exercise in critique, so I’ve saved it for last. There are some aspects of this site that should be left alone:

1. Post Info – It is preferable to include the author, post date, and category, as well as comments or number of comments – with each post (either after the post title or at bottom of post). Glad to see it’s all here.

2. Share This – a MUST, and hugely beneficial. Keep it.

3. Subscription options located at the top of the sidebar – perfect placement!

4. Images in posts – obviously a good habit. This adds to the aesthetics of the site, and increases the visual interest in each post. Kudos here!

This was a fun project. I do these site reviews as part of my freelance services, but haven’t had the chance to do a blog yet, so it was good practice for me. Thanks Darren and Brisbane SEO Blog, for the opportunity to provide you with feedback!

-Melissa Donovan
Writing Forward

1. I find the blue background is a little hard on my eyes and my first impression of the website was it was boring and narrow. I would like to see the content part a little bit bigger and the font a little less generic.

2. You have the comment button at the top of the post rather than at the bottom. When you asked if people would comment, I had to look because I did not know where to comment.

3. You should would up the post to give a little snippet of it and if people want to read further, they can.

4. I also love to hear more about your personal experience relating to your content and not just give me a laundry list of what I should do. Perhaps, why I should do it? Give me a little more personal touch. Treat me like your friend.

5. I also do not like the related post line being as big as your title.

6. As to content, I was overwhelmed by all the links and information. I would break up the post and center on one concept. I have this problem too since I have so much to say. Remember who you are audience is. They may not know anything about SEO or they just have limited time to grasp one comment. (kind of like me!)

7. Add a most popular sidebar link People may just want to read what other liked.

8. What is the word is “Whilst?” Is that a common word use in Australia? It was bothering me.

9. As for monetization: Very little. I would remove the Firefox tool on the sidebar. How about some good amazon books to read or what you are reading?

PS I love the title about nose picking and …It made me laugh which caught my attention. Titles are everything.

Pete-I also give you credit for putting up your blog for review. I am not sure if I could take my blog being scrutinized…The comments are amazing here and I want to flush my blog down the toilet and start again.

Everyone, happy holidays!

You may be able to spoof up the blog by ditching the generic “Categories, Archives, Blogroll” in the side bar. I’m not sure about anyone else but I associate the “Categories, Archives, Blogroll” more for personal blogs then business blogs.

The RSS feed is in a very prevalent place, that good! But the top bar is under utilized, try add more specific pages that would tell us more about your company an eliminate that personal blog fee.

I LOVE the “If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:” feature but it shouldn’t look like a blog heading. It needs to be differentiated from a “normal” blog post and deemphasized a bit.

Like most people, I find the design and color scheme refreshing. A lot of business blogs are boring but yours stands out.

What I don’t like is scrolling so much on the home page. I prefer each post to be its own page.

If you’re trying to monetize, move the ads up above the “recent articles” section.

Who are you? I like to learn about the bloggers behind the words. Include an About Me section up top.

However I imagine that perhaps the color matching was intentional by the designers and therefore there is a sound design decision that I am missing?

I think a few of the earlier comments mentioning font concerns hinted at this issue but did not mention the font color specifically.

(I am using Firefox on XP)

Thanks everyone, excellent suggestions!

I would make the navigation to previous posts both clearer and easier. The current “previous entries” link is very small.

I like the simplicity of the theme. It has clear definition and it’s pretty much clutter free.

Content: In the post http://blog.sitemost.com.au/2007/11/28/sitemost%e2%80%99s-blog-recap-281107/ there are so many links it’s a bit overwhelming. I’ve only seen this many links in Darren’s group writing projects. :) I also looked at some more of the blog recap posts and I’d suggest shortening them. Unless it’s just me and all of those links are too much for me to digest in one sitting. :)

I like the use of photo’s in the posts.

The About page is quite sparse. I’d like to see something about the author of the blog. Also it’s not clear whether there is only one author or several because the posts I saw were all by Pete but the About page mentions this is a blog for the employees of the company.

Since the blog is for the company, I’d add a bit more about the company and follow it up with a “learn more here” link.

I also think it’s helpful to put up a picture even if just a head shot of the author so that the readers know who the blog is being run by; it makes the blog more personable.

Monetization: According to Pete’s vision (in Darren’s post above), he doesn’t mention monetization so it sounds like they aren’t focusing on that in the blog. At the same time they have 2 ads in the sidebar and if they were going to add more, there is a lot of whitespace in most of the sidebar on each page where they could include some ads…that is if they are going to leave 10 full posts on each page. I think that they could shorten that to 5 or so posts.

Promotion: I think that by applying for the critique here at Problogger that they took a step in a good direction for promotion. They could also comment on other blogs like courtneytuttle.com (he blogs about SEO).

SEO & Promotion: I’d use the blog as a case study and blog about how they use SEO to increase traffic to it. This way they can attract bloggers/customers to their company and services who want to use SEO tactics to improve their own blog.

Hope this helps!

I like the choice of colors. They aren’t overpowering. The content is fantastic. Beginners and old pros alike can learn a lot from the articles. When searching the site it was difficult to distinguish when a new post would begin. Making the headers a different color or just slightly bigger would correct this.

To many images make a site busy, but not enough make it boring. A few more wouldn’t hurt. Also swapping the image from the left side to the right side breaks things up a bit. Just one more thing about images. Change the alternative text to a more accurate description of what the image is.

SEO can be intimidating to a beginner, so maybe a beginner section containing some “must reads” would help the young bucks out.

That’s all I have really. First impressions are everything. Changing a few things that your average reader would appreciate would probably benefit you more than a bunch of HTML and code changes.

There are too many categories and too less content, get rid of all the 1-2 posts categories at least till you get more posts, till then you could add those posts in a closest related category.

You need to have a ‘top posts’ list on your sidebar, personally that is the first thing that keeps me to a site. When i visit a new blog, the first thing i do is to check the top posts ( if there was such a list on the sidebar ) and browse through all the content, that helps me to quickly evaluate the blog, cos’ i get to see immediately what the blog writer considers his best work.

If i were you i would do away with the space on the sides, find a stretch template with the same design, with this you are wasting valuable space. But that kinda gives your blog a less cluttered feel, so thats your choice.

It is good to see that you’ve joined the do follow movement. Just an observation, nothing to do with your blog design.

Its good that you don’t use advertising in anyway on this site.

Thats pretty much all at the moment.

Overall, this design is gorgeous and very juicy. Visually interesting with the photos. Very easy to read.

However, as the home page is a listing of the lastest posts, I’d lose the “Recently on SiteMost”, or at least move it much further down the sidebar.

I think that the Categories list should be at the top of the sidebar content (after the RSS link) so that people who land on the page for the first time can quickly get a feel for what’s covered on your blog.

Having the search bar at the very top of the page (part of the header even) is starting to become a standard, and something I think you should consider. Not only does it free up space in the sidebar, but it means that visitors will always know where it is and not have to scroll for it.

Ordinarily I’m not a fan of the Archives widget, but I think that it serves a purpose on an SEO site. A lot of the information really is date specific, so it does have value.

I’m wondering if you have a business reason for including the Blogroll. If it was a list of links that you thought truly benefitted your visitors then perhaps have a dedicated page of “Links” or “Resources”. Why make it so easy to send people away from your site?

The Recent Readers widget looks like a vanity exercise for the “cool” people. If I’m looking for SEO information, I don’t really care about who else is reading it. So, in summary, what’s the business benefit?

Having the NoNoFollow graphic is good, shows that you have an opinion. But I expected it to link somewhere.

CONTENT

You have a definite personality in the content, which is good. The content covers a good range of material. Your blog is only new, so I’d expect the content to evolve in response to comments and traffic numbers.

PROMOTION

You really run the risk of confusing your visitors with your branding. Are you “Brisbane SEO Blog” or are you “SiteMost”?

I’m in Brisbane too and I was actually really disappointed that your site had nothing Brisbaney about it. Not even a generic shot of the Storey Bridge.

Yes, I know that Brisbane has grown up in the last few years and we’re quite the cosmopolitan city, but you know that fundamentally, we’re still a very provincial mob. The locals need to know that while you’re doing what you can to be professional and broad in your appeal, you haven’t forgotten where you come from.

Also, making more of your Australianness means that Americans will forgive your British spelling ;)

SEO

I figured that’s what you do, so I was happy to skip this part of the review.

MONETISATION

Normally I hate all the monetisation efforts on blogs as a waste of screen real estate and making me scroll more than I would have to if the page just contained the content. However, I think that you have the opportunity to SHOW what you do and DEMONSTRATE that it works.

So, add your AdSense, affiliate links or whatever in ways that you would if your site belonged to a customer of yours (assuming you also offer that kind of advice), and at the bottom of the sidebar show the cumulative profit made from the site, as well as a graph showing the revenues over the past year.

Having a blog for your existing business is a great way to interact with and inform your customers (standard business maintenence), as well as being a gateway to having masses of fresh traffic (extra monetisation opportunity), all of whom are potential new customers (growth)

But without an obvious link-back to (or even mention of!) the main Sitepoint page, the blog loses all those reciprical benefits that exist between blog and website, which make business blogs such useful tools.

The SP site and blog should be interconnected both ways. Hiding a link in the about page is no excuse!

(This would solve something else too: the sparse-look the blog has by only having frontpage and about page.)

I think someone else mentioned the name of the blog (is it Sitepoint or Brisbane SEO?). It should be clear in the header that the blog is Brisbane SEO and it is the blog of Sitepoint SEO company.

The sidebar is a bit messy- a little css styling could get the rss and search functions looking prettier and in half the space, and a larger font-size with a ‘popular articles’ section up top could really drive people into your blog.

Get rid of the ugly buttons and sell some ad space or use an attractive affiliate program (adsense, chitika etc). Cut the top 1000 bloggers from the blogroll and start networking with smaller bloggers in your niche- you can use the blogroll to get their attention and to maintain friendship with them.

I like the idea of the blog “a public forum ” for the SP staff, why not personalise things with a photo thumbnail and short bio of the author at the bottom of each permalink? You’ll find there are hundreds of cool things you can do fairly simply with wordpress if you take the time to get about the docs and forums a little.

Like I said the content looks great; information and tutorials on SEO are great google fodder; I wish you good luck!

That’s all I can see that could be fixed right now. Good luck with your blog and I hope to see more of that great content!

Are you Brisbane SEO Blog or are you Sitemost? Your logo should say whichever one you are to avoid confusion and for better branding.

I adore your use of good pictures at the beginning of each post. The pictures are just perfect, and they make your posts look really nice in a reader. I like the links to related posts at the end of your posts, it makes it easy for a new visitor to get the skinny on just about everything your blog has to offer, and to subscribe if they like what they see. We live in the ADD generation, so you have a small time frame to sell yourself, lol.

I like the easy to spot rss button at the top of the site. It’s big, it’s bold, and it’s tucked unobtrusively to the side, making it appear to be entirely for the benefit of the visitor, rather than the blog itself. The sidebar in general is really nice. It’s there if I want it, but seems to “disappear” if I don’t. Your buttons look good, and none of them are pixelated or chunky, and that’s always a bonus.

A good way to promote the site might be guest posting on other blogs. Networking with fellow bloggers is a good way to share their traffic, since if what you wrote was relevant to their audience they’ll probably check out your site.

For starters, your blog is Brisbane SEO Blog and yet the logo of the site says SiteMost Search Engine Optimization. I am really confused what that is or its affiliation with your blog. I think that should be replaced with a unique logo for your site, which could be used for your favicon later. The plain text of your title that links to your main page is too bland!

Another thing I noticed is your site runs a bit slow. I don’t know if it is because you are getting massive hits from ProBlogger, but it is something to analyze. While looking at the content it is very important to look above the crease of the page. The first post is good with an image that grabs my attention, but the sidebar is bland and not attractive above the fold. It seems as if your site screams RSS Feed before the user can even analyze your content.

With that there are many different colors on your site and some of them are hard to read. For instance the text saying when the post was published is a bit hard to read. I also hate blogs that have the text fill the width of the page. It makes the spacing look horrible, but that is my opinion.

As for your content it is quite good, but think about adding some more pictures to the longer posts. I see you are adding pictures to most postings, but they are all left aligned. Some of the posts go on for quite awhile and only have the introductory image. For aesthetic purposes I would add at least one more image to the long posts.

Overall it is nice that your site is not flooded with advertisements, links and buttons. That seems to be a major concern with many blogs now. Consider cleaning up some of the items and clarifying your blog’s image.

The first thing that strikes me is that the header looks a bit too big. The second thing is that “If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:” is the same font size as the story titles, so it’s difficult to see the breaks. The third thing is just a generic feel to the site. Nothing grabs me. Perhaps you need a picture of the staff or of the post author (or an avatar if you’re camera shy!) somewhere to catch people’s eyes.

Categories – having the number of posts after each makes the blog seem empty.

I don’t think the technorati favourites button should be there, and the LinkedIn button belongs perhaps on the About page – it does seem rather large. Not sure if the Recommend Firefox button should be there either.

Finally, I think the SEO Book image should lead to a local pre-sale page rather than jumping straight to the sales page.

On the plus side, I find the story bodies easy to read (minor typos aside) with just the right amount of white space.