Website Grader: What Does the Grade Really Mean?

Grade Your Website, Find Out Your Strengths

– Your website is your face to the online world. You want to optimize and structure your website to maximize its potential effect. Running the website through the website grader will tell you just how well it is doing.

You will get a number from the website grader, based on a 100 point scale. The closer you are to 100, the better your website is doing. Knowing what that grade means will help you know what is working on your website and what is not.

The website grader looks at five aspects of your marketing success.

Blogging

A blog is a major component to any Inbound Marketing strategy. It is a place where you can present current, high-quality content that keeps your website fresh and in the sights of the search engine bots.

The website grader looks at six critical factors. First, you need a blog. That one is pretty easy to do. The other five factors involve making sure people can find your blog and making it easy for them to follow it. These factors include setting up an RSS feed, adding social sharing buttons, adding a social subscription option, adding an email subscription option, and adding social sharing buttons to your blog.

Social Media

Social media is something successful Internet Marketing cannot do without these days. It widens the audience you can reach. It also allows you to carry on a two-way conversation with people you have never met in person.

The website grader looks at three factors in the grading process. You need to have a Twitter account set-up as well as a Facebook account. Both accounts need to be for the business and both need to be linked to your website.

SEO

Search engine optimization is by no means dead. It plays a key role in how easy it is for your audience to find you on Google, Bing, or Yahoo.

The website grader looks at three factors to give you an SEO grade. All images need to have alt tags. This makes it easier for the search engines to catalog your images. Your page titles should not have your company name in it. That title should be SEO optimized instead. All your pages need unique descriptions, as well.

Lead generation

One of the key purposes many commercial website perform is lead generation. To do this, you need to have certain pieces in place to make it easy for your customers to sign up as a lead and easy for you to monitor what is going on.

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To measure your lead generation possibilities, the website grader looks at three factors. First, you need landing pages where you can direct your visitors to the lead sign-up form. Next, you need analytics in place to measure your progress. Third, you need a marketing automation piece in place to make life easier to manage.

Mobile optimization

Mobile devices are going to overtake laptops and desktops for web browsing sometime in 2014 or 2015. That is a reality you need to face by optimizing your website for mobile device.

The website grader looks at two factors. You need to have either a CSS dedicated to mobile devices or a redirect your mobile device guests to a mobile website. The website grader also looks for a meta viewport tag that tells the mobile device how to orient the page once it loads.

Take a moment and run your website through the website grader. You may be surprised at what it tells you:

Marketing Matters Inbound?is an inbound marketing firm specializing in online conversions, content?strategy, PPC campaigns and traditional media placement. Our experience in?B2B digital?marketing?and?traditional media?allows us to deliver results through a strategic media mix. We believe in?aligning and merging marketing and sales/operations for optimal return on your marketing investment.