bookofjoe website a failure

On the brighter side, I scored much higher than Yahoo's main page on an assessment by Search Engine Optimizer's free web page analyzer tool.

From Sitening, Search Engine Optimizer Analyzer looks at the underlying structure of your website, focusing on:

• web standards
• semantic structure
• obsolete HTML
• improper use of table elements
• inline styles
• download size and time
• outgoing links
• top keywords

It takes less than a minute to spit out a numerical score on a 0–100 scale, 100 being best, along with a feature–by–feature analysis of your website and a brief description of what you're doing right and wrong and how you can improve it, ideally by hiring them.

The average score is 57.

I scored 55, below average and putting me in the red zone — "unacceptable" — along with the majority of sites analyzed.

On the other hand, as I noted in my opening sentence, Yahoo's main page scored 30, which would seem to indicate that tens of millions of dollars don't necessarily make things better.

But what makes me not too disheartened about my poor score is the the quick and dirty "rubber to the road" test I just ran.

In it, I timed how look it took for bookofjoe to come up and then for Search Engine Analyzer's home page to appear.

The results?

The same: both pages loaded almost instantly.

Now, you can say that my test is meaningless and stupid and measures nothing but I will tell you in response that it doesn't matter how well your page is optimized for search engines or how great its content if it takes so long to load that people get tired of waiting and leave without ever seeing it.

That's still the case with a large proportion of web pages, both commercial and personal.

Then I had an idea.

Hey, it happens, what can I say?

I went back for a second opinion or, in this case, a re–analysis of my website.

And guess what?

In ten minutes bookofjoe had somehow shaped itself up: I got a 65 the second time around, which the Analyzer said was "satisfactory" though it still needs work.

Full disclosure: you will note that 55 was the score for http://bookofjoe.com and the 65 was received by http://www.bookofjoe.com.

If simply adding www makes that big a difference — I mean, bookofjoe is the same no matter which URL you use to get there — then something's wrong with the measuring tool, it seems to me.

But what do I know, after all, being a TechnoDolt™ and all?

********************

Man goes to a psychiatrist.

Psychiatrist says what's the problem?

Man says I think I'm crazy.

Psychiatrist listens to the guy for a while then says, you are.

Man says, I want a second opinion.

Psychiatrist says, you're ugly too.

********************

w00t!

But guess what?

We're not done yet with this Analyzer tool.

I had the crack research team explore the Analyzer more deeply using supersecret search techniques even Google and the NSA haven't incorporated into their algorithms.

Some of my kid spies have, though: that's how I twigged to them.

But I digress.

Lo and behold, after hours of work the team found a perfect site!

Yes, this site — www.ordon.pl — scored a perfect 100 out of 100 according to the Analyzer.

But some people, it appears, are a bit harder to please than others: the Analyzer said of this site, "Although your web page may not be perfectly optimized, it contains most of the elements necessary for search engine optimization."

Huh?

Gimme a break.

I'm reminded here of Eve Babitz's epigram, "I'm easy to please — but hard to satisfy."

Not me — satisfaction happens here on a daily basis.

Looking at that perfect web page it suddenly becomes obvious as to what to do to optimize your web site: have almost no content on your page so the search engines can home right in on it.

What a joke.

[via Giv & Doe]