Would appreciate any feedback on this blog

[EugeneK]

http://nsterusa.blogspot.com/

Hello,
I've recently moved my blog from Tumblr to blogger.com and would like to ask for your feedback on it.
Initially it was planned as a in-site resources for people who need help with making or promoting their websites and blogs.

Main question still persists - where should I move in terms of guidelines?
What are the main questions that people have in SEM, SEO, and overall website development?
Are the guidelines easy enough to read?
Are the links after each post helpful or not?

Your feedback is much appreciated!

[smanaher]

Eugene,

I like your layout. Its simple. I really like the way you have your content structured. You are headed in the right direction here. You provide a lot of useful information and then you provide some helpful outside resources at the end of your post. This is quality writing.

There are a couple of suggestions I have. For the content, try and engage your readers at the end of your posts by asking a question. For example for your most recent post, ask something related to landing pages.

For your layout, I would consider adding a header image and move your sharing links to below your posts. You should also organize your topics into a main navigation bar with topics on each page.

As far as the main questions people have for SEO and SEM, I think there are too many facets to name specifically but in general you need to write things around ranking websites, link building, onsite optimization, PPC, social media, development, usability, analytics, etc.

Spend some time on this forum and others and you will get a good idea of what kind of information people look for.

Best,

Shawn

[Anneliu]

hi, i am working on affiliate marketing now, and i am almost new to that field, and i meet some problems with that, and just cant make out it, the efficient way to recruit the top performance affiliates, and to increase the Conversion Rate, these all give me headache. hope you can help me in that way. Thanks

[EugeneK]

Eugene,

I like your layout. Its simple. I really like the way you have your content structured. You are headed in the right direction here. You provide a lot of useful information and then you provide some helpful outside resources at the end of your post. This is quality writing.

There are a couple of suggestions I have. For the content, try and engage your readers at the end of your posts by asking a question. For example for your most recent post, ask something related to landing pages.

For your layout, I would consider adding a header image and move your sharing links to below your posts. You should also organize your topics into a main navigation bar with topics on each page.

As far as the main questions people have for SEO and SEM, I think there are too many facets to name specifically but in general you need to write things around ranking websites, link building, onsite optimization, PPC, social media, development, usability, analytics, etc.

Spend some time on this forum and others and you will get a good idea of what kind of information people look for.

Best,

Shawn

Hi Shawn,
Thank you for a high quality feedback - I really need to work on the layout and this will be the next thing on my to-do list.
Also, you just gave me a good hint for the next topics - I've really skipped the usability and analytics questions...

[EugeneK]

hi, i am working on affiliate marketing now, and i am almost new to that field, and i meet some problems with that, and just cant make out it, the efficient way to recruit the top performance affiliates, and to increase the Conversion Rate, these all give me headache. hope you can help me in that way. Thanks

I will have to do some digging to give you a comprehensive answer, but from the top of my head here is what you can do:

1. Register on the forums such as Digital Point and Dream Team Money and post your message in the Affiliate Programs subsection.
I'm not sure if you can look for affiliated marketers on site point.

2. Depending on the product you're focusing on, look up for the companies who has a complementary stuff to sell and establish the affiliated relationships with them.
For examples, If I'm selling computer hardware I will look up for people who sell computer software...

[WebEminence]

My 3 suggestions would be:

1. Create some sort of navigation. Right now, visitors can only scroll down your page.
2. Create a logo or have one created. Even more creative text would add a lot. That's usually the first thing people look at and just a plain text can give it a cheap look.
3. Make it easy for people to learn what your blog is about. right at the top of the home page.

[EugeneK]

My 3 suggestions would be:

1. Create some sort of navigation. Right now, visitors can only scroll down your page.
2. Create a logo or have one created. Even more creative text would add a lot. That's usually the first thing people look at and just a plain text can give it a cheap look.
3. Make it easy for people to learn what your blog is about. right at the top of the home page.

Thank you for the feedback.
1. I actually have some problems making usable navigation right now - blogspot seems to give only a limited number of options =(
Anyhow, just changed the navigation menu layout - hope it's better now

2. My company has a designer that works on logo - I'll put a temporary version. Good idea!
Let me ask you - what do you mean by "creative text"?

3. Great point - I'll try to add some sort of banner in the layouts header.

Any comments on the blog's topics?
Are they easy-to-read?

Thank you guys!

[WebEminence]

By creative text, I mean a more stylistic web font. You can look at Google Web Fonts for examples. Or you can create a graphic within photoshop or some other photo program to give the text in the logo more style.

I don't see the topics you added. I just see the archives on the right.

[EugeneK]

By creative text, I mean a more stylistic web font. You can look at Google Web Fonts for examples. Or you can create a graphic within photoshop or some other photo program to give the text in the logo more style.

I don't see the topics you added. I just see the archives on the right.

You're right - and we have our designer working on making a good looking logo.
Also, I've change the navigation on the right, so now you should be able to see posts and dates they belong to.

The good part is that it's blog will be moved to our website nster.com, once we've have a good understanding on what kind of content do people need for their needs.
For this reason, it will be very helpful if people on this forum can voice any kind of problems they're struggling with and we'll be posting guidelines on solving them

[edwinedwin]

image used for Backlinking 101-301 is a little old school. the background behind the facebook and twitter icons at the top take up too much white space.

[EugeneK]

image used for Backlinking 101-301 is a little old school. the background behind the facebook and twitter icons at the top take up too much white space.

Old schooool! Yeeeeah!
Ghm, sorry. Do you mean the picture with anchor and indirect layers?

Also, guess I need to highlight it again - we're using this blog to test the content. Is it useful, what would you change there, what topics would you add...

Once we have it, we'll create a full-scale database with guildelines for people to use.

[xubuntu69]

Why don't you build it on your own hosting provider and use a unique domain name rather than blogspot ? You mainly work for blogspot right now!

[EugeneK]

Why don't you build it on your own hosting provider and use a unique domain name rather than blogspot ? You mainly work for blogspot right now!

It's very simple - as I've said in the first post, we're only testing content on the blogspot.
Once we have 30-40 posts that people are said to be useful, we'll move it in our website as a part of on-site guide book.

Common people, please focus on the content

[JeremyC]

The content is great, but as one other person said it would help to try and engage the readers and give them a reason to leave comments. Comments can give a whole different view on a subject and maybe even lead to a new article for a discussion point that was raised.

[EugeneK]

The content is great, but as one other person said it would help to try and engage the readers and give them a reason to leave comments. Comments can give a whole different view on a subject and maybe even lead to a new article for a discussion point that was raised.

Yeah, engaging in a conversation with the readers would be great, but it's quite a challenge - I will be trying to get some people from Google+ to talk to me

[alastairbrian]

Edit URL before publishing your post and make it short and user friendly. It will be best if you can adjust some a keyword related to the main idea that you have discussed in the post to get your site rank better in Google.
The guidelines are easy to read. Try to make one post about pros and cons for each off page activity and it possible add some list of resources under each post as well.
For example if you take profile linking activity - write pros and cons and once you are done then do give list of some websites for quality profile links.

[EugeneK]

Edit URL before publishing your post and make it short and user friendly. It will be best if you can adjust some a keyword related to the main idea that you have discussed in the post to get your site rank better in Google.
The guidelines are easy to read. Try to make one post about pros and cons for each off page activity and it possible add some list of resources under each post as well.
For example if you take profile linking activity - write pros and cons and once you are done then do give list of some websites for quality profile links.

Very good one,
Thank you.

Let me remind everyone who reads it - if you have any questions, comments, tips - if you can also post them right on the blog it will be great!

[bnynn]

Nice overall look, I always appreciate people willing to diverge from plain web layouts and choose a colorful background. However, I have to be honest, that's about as colorful as it gets.
- As others have mentioned, you need a logo to unify your website as a whole. It's hard to trust a website that doesn't have a name for itself.
- Also, your articles need major work. The title needs to be bigger, you need more font deviance- as in I noticed that your numbered lists are just plain text- make them headings or change their boldness.
- Everything is in pure black and white, try changing headings to blue and normal text to a really dark grey like #333 or something.
- One tip I suggest is changing that font to Georgia or some other serif font because serif fonts are known for higher readability.
- also as others have mentioned, you need more pages.
Good luck!

[EugeneK]

Nice overall look, I always appreciate people willing to diverge from plain web layouts and choose a colorful background. However, I have to be honest, that's about as colorful as it gets.
- As others have mentioned, you need a logo to unify your website as a whole. It's hard to trust a website that doesn't have a name for itself.
- Also, your articles need major work. The title needs to be bigger, you need more font deviance- as in I noticed that your numbered lists are just plain text- make them headings or change their boldness.
- Everything is in pure black and white, try changing headings to blue and normal text to a really dark grey like #333 or something.
- One tip I suggest is changing that font to Georgia or some other serif font because serif fonts are known for higher readability.
- also as others have mentioned, you need more pages.
Good luck!

Thank you for taking your time to your and doing the review

We're still working on the corporate logo - I really don't want to put our temporary logo on the blog right now.
Goog point about fonts, I'll be changing them as soon as I can.

When talking about pages, you mean static pages such as "About Us" and the others?

Regarding the trust,
We have a solid website (nster.com) with 30,000-40,000 unique visitors per day.
The blog is simply not for promotion purposes. As I've said before, we will be integrating its content in our website once we have enough feedback.
Just not there yet

[bnynn]

Thank you for taking your time to your and doing the review

We're still working on the corporate logo - I really don't want to put our temporary logo on the blog right now.
Goog point about fonts, I'll be changing them as soon as I can.

When talking about pages, you mean static pages such as "About Us" and the others?

Regarding the trust,
We have a solid website (nster.com) with 30,000-40,000 unique visitors per day.
The blog is simply not for promotion purposes. As I've said before, we will be integrating its content in our website once we have enough feedback.
Just not there yet

Haha, nice! And yes I mean't stuff like about us, current projects, etc.
Have a good one!

[webcosmo]

Hi, your blog looks clean, simple and helpful, and all the links are where they should be. I would like to see the new logo, as it realy needs one. Also in terms of design, there should be a bit of contrast for the Main Menu. Would be great if the right menu could be customized so that it shows some sort of categories instead of Date of the posting. Good luck, it`s a good job you`ve done there so far!

[Neso1974]

I really like simple layout and design.
To answer your question :

What are the main questions that people have in SEM, SEO, and overall website development?

- SEO is difficult to understand and with all the changes from Google algorithme we all need updates on changes.

Are the guidelines easy enough to read?
Yes, all it's fine for me. Nothing to improve

Are the links after each post helpful or not?
Yes really helpful. It's a good way to add nice content to your website for you readers. It's always important to leave sources and with the link it's a nice way to do it.

[EugeneK]

I really like simple layout and design.
To answer your question :

What are the main questions that people have in SEM, SEO, and overall website development?

- SEO is difficult to understand and with all the changes from Google algorithme we all need updates on changes.

Are the guidelines easy enough to read?
Yes, all it's fine for me. Nothing to improve

Are the links after each post helpful or not?
Yes really helpful. It's a good way to add nice content to your website for you readers. It's always important to leave sources and with the link it's a nice way to do it.

Thank you for answer - it's a good one.

1.

- SEO is difficult to understand and with all the changes from Google algorithme we all need updates on changes.

You have a point here, but there are still certain central problems - while not many folks have problems with typing meta description, a lot of people don't know how to do back linking, especially in with the Google updates that rolled out.

2.

Yes, all it's fine for me. Nothing to improve

You just made my day

3.

Yes really helpful. It's a good way to add nice content to your website for you readers. It's always important to leave sources and with the link it's a nice way to do it.

Majority of the links (if not all of them) are only directing to the resources that might be helpful - when writing a post, I'm usually digging through forums, talk to people and get their opinion on this or that.

[sabarna]

The site is great overall. I cant answer the first one but about the second and third questions

2. The guidelines are good and there doesnt need to be any more improvement in them. Leave them as they are.

3. The links are helpful and can increase traffic for you in small ways.

Try to different font styles to make the site bit better and use google analytics to improve the site. The layout is good and simple.

[EugeneK]

The site is great overall. I cant answer the first one but about the second and third questions

2. The guidelines are good and there doesnt need to be any more improvement in them. Leave them as they are.

3. The links are helpful and can increase traffic for you in small ways.

Try to different font styles to make the site bit better and use google analytics to improve the site. The layout is good and simple.

Thank you for reviewing, I'll work on the fonts