Published May 13, 2014

Roundtable Summary – May 13, 2014

The Seattle Search Network Roundtable evaluated four business websites tonight with help from six search marketers in attendance:

  • Jefe Birkner (SSN Treasurer), Cobalt – SEO Analyst
  • Dave Lindahl, Senior Search Specialist at ADP Dealer Services
  • Zac Palmer (SSN Director of Speaker Engagement), Divot Agency – Search Strategist
  • Josh Patrice, Director of SEO at Portent, Inc.
  • Paul Kriloff (SSN Member), Marketing Consultant at Zero To Summit Ventures
  • Michael Bawwab (Director of Logistics), Wheelhouse Search – Senior SEO

Symmes Law Group, PLLC

Symmes Law Group is an experienced Seattle Bankruptcy lawyer for chapter 7 or chapter 13 personal bankruptcy cases, with some of the lowest attorney fees in the Seattle area. Affordable bankruptcy representation.

Analysis & Recommendations:

  • Make sure image is in text format
  • Checked alt tags on images;looks fine
  • Good logical structure and flow for the site
  • Good content strategy focused around blog posting
  • Good consistency overall with posts
  • Very keyword rich and written as questions to appeal to the Hummingbird update
  • Site didn’t have G+ authorship or publisher
  • This can be added through Yoast SEO plugin in WordPress
  • Some inconsistencies with citations, but generally looks pretty good as shown on Moz.com/local
  • Add more structured data in to the site.
  • Look at how the domains are set up. Has a couple of exact match domains. Should look to do page level redirects to a more general domain.

GolfDiscount.com

Golf Discount provides the highest quality golf clubs, bags, shoes and accessories for your golf game at great discount prices.

Analysis & Recommendations:

  • Golfsmith.com is competition
  • Wants to improve conversion rate
  • Uses GA
  • Noticed a lot of traffic ends up going to the left one
  • Has 2 navigations right now. Should look at consolidating because right now it is splitting users apart.
  • First time shoppers spend more money
  • To convert better, start limiting choices. MEGO – My Eyes Gloss Over
  • Look at exits from the site and consider adding video.
  • 45% of traffic was branded last year.
  • The first few words in G+ is your title in the SERP
  • Look at testing color of CTA buttons. Blue blends in and Red is a stop button.

Un-Cruise® Adventures

Small ship cruises focused on wilderness, wildlife, and culture in Alaska’s Inside Passage, Hawaiian Islands, Mexico’s Sea of Cortés, Columbia River, Coastal Washington, and British Columbia. Unrushed. Uncrowded. Unbelievable.

Analysis & Recommendations:

  • Great pictures!
  • CMS strips out the schema
  • Might want to consider moving at least the blog to WordPress
  • Should look at getting Open Graph added to the templates for each page
  • WordPress is a good solution for this, but will be building new site next year.
  • New site should also be responsive.
  • Great images and content, but just needs better markup and a more flexible CMS.
  • Add a last-minute specials email signup to increase cruise occupancy rates.

San Diego Mortgage Blog (Second SSN Roundtable)

San Diego’s VA, FHA and Jumbo loan resource. The site was inaccessible to us but was shown to be accessible to others, using Down For Everyone Or Just Me.

Name Withheld – Fitness Center & Gym

This business contacted the SSN before the event, giving us valuable time to conduct a more complete review. Unfortunately, no one from the company attended the roundtable. Therefore, we chose to withhold their name from this summary.

  • Analysis mostly reputation focused
  • All the content is from 6 months ago and nothing else has changed.
  • Look at somehow adding dynamic content to their website.
  • Uses old name on Twitter and Facebook
  • Looked at Moz.com/local to check listing score and consistency of listings.
  • Have 2 different Google + set up. One has pics and one has been claimed, but has nothing else.
  • Categorization for business is inconsistent.
  • Need company LinkedIn page
  • Has scathingly bad reviews on BBB.
  • Has 3 different business names, no privacy policy and no information about management
  • Yelp is bad – 2 stars
  • Brand is suffering.
  • Homepage lacks Call To Action
  • See the Current Schedule, the only place to mention yoga

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